- Full Profile (as-is)
- Web Profile (revised to include a few more new specs for building modern applications with greenfield approach). Existing certifications for applications should not be impacted so long as we are not removing any specs from that list. App server vendors would have to re-certify because they need to provide additional API implementations.
- Web Profile Lite (new profile to support only bare minimum web based development using servlet, CDI and a few core specs)
- MicroProfile (as BOM or a la carte for targeting PaaS/SaaS based cloud infrastructure). Whether, MP needs separate profiles to have a certified stack for each PaaS/SaaS platform is for them to decide.
However, I am strongly against "Within a profile a vendor may package a newer version of a
prescribed spec, if it's compatible." This may cause problems at various levels:
- Portability issues across products which are certified on the same version of Jakarta EE as not all vendors may support the newer versions of specs.
- Vendors shipping out half-baked/tested implementations as technology preview and still claiming certifications. This then becomes a marketing gimmick to force the customer to upgrade their licenses to the next version of app server where full support for that new implementation is assured. If someone is interested in supporting later version of specs in their existing servers certified for an existing version of Jakarta EE then they should do so as "feature/preview packs" and withdraw claims to any certifications wherever the feature packs are in use.
- Operational Issues. IT teams would have to manage additional configurations and it becomes harder to troubleshoot issues arising out of various spec versions whose implementations also pull in third party dependencies that may create compatibility issues with existing application libraries in multi-app deployment scenario.
-Mrinal