Jakarta EE 11 in 2025: 3 Painful Problems It Finally Solves

Aspect	The Old Way (e.g., Jakarta EE 8)	The New Way (Jakarta EE 11 Vision)
Component Model	Multiple models (Servlets, EJBs, CDI Beans) with different lifecycles and rules. Often required explicit configuration in XML or annotations.	CDI as the unified model. Most objects are simply CDI beans, managed consistently across the platform. Less need for special annotations like @Stateless for simple services.
Configuration	Heavy reliance on persistence.xml, beans.xml, and other descriptors, even for standard setups.	Zero-config for standard cases. A beans.xml might not even be needed if discovery mode is annotated. Configuration is for overrides, not basics.

Problem 2: The Synchronous Straitjacket in a Reactive World

The classic Java EE model was built on a simple premise: one thread per request. This was fine for many years, but in the age of I/O-bound microservices handling thousands of concurrent connections, it becomes a major bottleneck. While one thread waits for a database or another microservice to respond, it's blocked, consuming precious memory and CPU resources. This model simply doesn't scale efficiently for modern workloads.

Frameworks like Spring WebFlux, Vert.x, and Quarkus have shown that a reactive, non-blocking approach is the future. Jakarta EE has been lagging in providing a standardized, platform-wide solution.

The Solution: Embracing Asynchronous and Reactive APIs

Jakarta EE 11 is set to make a significant leap by introducing standardized support for reactive programming. This isn't just a minor addition; it's a fundamental shift in how the platform handles concurrency and I/O.

The key is moving away from blocking APIs towards non-blocking alternatives, likely leveraging types like Java's own CompletionStage. Instead of a thread waiting for a result, it can be released to handle other requests. When the I/O operation completes, the result is processed on a different (or the same) thread from a pool.

Consider a simple REST endpoint. Here's a conceptual comparison:

Synchronous (Old Way):

// The request thread is blocked here for the duration of the database call.
@GET
@Path("/{id}")
public User findUserById(@PathParam("id") String id) {
    return userService.findUser(id); // This is a blocking call
}

Asynchronous / Reactive (Jakarta EE 11 Vision):

// The request thread is freed immediately after this method returns.
@GET
@Path("/{id}")
public CompletionStage<User> findUserById(@PathParam("id") String id) {
    return userService.findUserAsync(id); // Returns a future/promise
}

This change has massive implications for scalability and resource efficiency, making Jakarta EE applications first-class citizens in a cloud-native ecosystem.

Problem 3: The Wild West of HTTP Clients

This has been a perplexing omission for years. As applications moved towards a distributed, microservice-based architecture, the need to make outbound HTTP calls became fundamental. Yet, Jakarta EE never provided a standard, injectable HTTP client. Developers were forced to choose from a sea of third-party libraries:

• Apache HttpClient
• OkHttp
• Jersey Client (often tied to the JAX-RS implementation)
• Or even rolling their own with Java's basic HttpURLConnection.

This led to dependency conflicts, inconsistent API patterns across different services, and a lack of seamless integration with platform features like CDI and JSON-B.

The Solution: A Standard, Integrated Jakarta REST Client

Finally, this pain point is being addressed. Jakarta EE 11 will introduce a standard Jakarta REST Client. This is a huge quality-of-life improvement for developers.

The benefits are immediate and obvious:

1. Standardization: Write client code once, and it will work across any compliant Jakarta EE 11 server (e.g., WildFly, Open Liberty, Payara). No more vendor lock-in for your client code.
2. Deep Integration: The client is designed to work seamlessly with the rest of the platform. You can inject it with @Inject, and it will automatically use the configured JSON-B providers for serialization/deserialization.
3. Modern Features: The new client is being built with modern needs in mind, including support for asynchronous operations, easy configuration, and alignment with the latest HTTP standards.

Here's a hypothetical look at how beautiful and simple this could be:

@ApplicationScoped
public class WeatherService {

    @Inject
    private RestClient weatherApiClient; // Injected and pre-configured!

    public CompletionStage<Forecast> getForecast(String city) {
        return weatherApiClient
                .target("https://api.weather.com/v1/forecast")
                .queryParam("city", city)
                .request(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
                .get(Forecast.class); // Async call with automatic JSON-B mapping
    }
}

This is clean, type-safe, and completely integrated. It's exactly what enterprise developers have been asking for.

A New Era for Enterprise Java

Jakarta EE 11 is shaping up to be more than just another version number. It's a statement. It's the moment where the platform decisively sheds the baggage of its past and fully embraces the principles of modern, cloud-native application development. By tackling the long-standing pains of boilerplate, synchronous blocking, and the lack of a standard HTTP client, Jakarta EE is becoming leaner, faster, and significantly more developer-friendly.

For developers who may have looked to other frameworks to solve these problems, 2025 might be the year to take a fresh look at Jakarta EE. It’s becoming the robust, standardized, and forward-thinking platform that the world of enterprise Java has been waiting for.