Java Platform, Enterprise Edition

Java Platform, Enterprise Edition or Java EE is a widely used enterprise computing platform developed under the Java Community Process. The platform provides an API and runtime environment for developing and running enterprise software, including network and web services, and other large-scale, multi-tiered, scalable, reliable, and secure network applications. Java EE extends the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE), providing an API for object-relational mapping, distributed and multi-tier architectures, and web services. The platform incorporates a design based largely on modular components running on an application server. Software for Java EE is primarily developed in the Java programming language. The platform emphasizes convention over configuration and annotations for configuration. Optionally XML can be used to override annotations or to deviate from the platform defaults.

Version history

The platform was known as Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition or J2EE until the name was changed to Java Platform, Enterprise Edition or Java EE in version 5. The current version is called Java EE 7.