Re: [jakarta.ee-community] About Profiles

[arjan tijms <arjan.tijms@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 7:14 PM, Richard Monson-Haefel <rmonson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

So then the first question is perhaps; who wants profiles and benefits from it? Is a profile intended for vendors or for users?

Both.  You want the users to have options but still have a standardized platform.  You want vendors to be able to enter into the market and provide users with options.

I understand what you mean, but I see things somewhat differently.

Users can have all the options they want starting from a full or web profile server, using the aforementioned pruning tool. That way they also start out with a fully standard platform, and then tailor it to their specific needs.

Vendors can already enter the market with the current profiles. What does a new profile allow them that they can't do today?

Say we have a new profile consisting of CDI, JPA, and JTA. Call it the "persistence profile". 

If a small vendor wants to enter this market, will they implement CDI, JPA and JTA themselves? Given the maturity and complexity of these specs I think it's much more likely that they will just bundle Weld or OWB, Hibernate or EclipseLink, and Narayana or JoTM.

If a vendor only wants to implement a single component/API, e.g. CDI, they can do so today, can't they? And then just certify for CDI only.

 

I believe that Glassfish and IBM fully implement Java EE 8 but no one would be required to implement the full profile.

They provide the full platform, but don't implement it fully themselves.

GlassFish for instance bundles Weld (CDI), and Hibernate Validator (Bean Validation).

IBM bundles MyFaces (JSF), OWB (Weld), EclipseLink (JPA), BVal (Bean Validation), etc.

 

That’s the whole point of having sub-profiles. 

That's more the definition of a sub-profile, not necessarily the point of it ;) 

 

I'm not sure if a bloated product line-up with a dozen profiles really makes things easier for users.

It’s not boated, it simple the largest profile from which the sub-profiles are derived.

Just to be sure, I didn't mean the full profile is bloated, but that having a plethora of different profiles makes for a bloated product line-up.

I was just remembered today about the many models that Apple had in its line-up before Steve Jobs returned. One of the first things Steve Jobs did was to slash all those barely different models (essentially, "profiles" of a base Mac model), and simplify things by having a small product line-up.

Kind regards,

Arjan