Java News Roundup: A2A Java SDK 1.0, Jakarta EE 12, JNoSQL, GraalVM, Micrometer, OpenXava, Gradle

The A2A Java SDK reached general availability this week while Jakarta EE 12 stays on track for its milestone releases.

Michael Redlich reports this week's Java ecosystem updates for InfoQ. He covers JDK early-access builds, Jakarta EE progress, and maintenance releases across the Spring, GraalVM, and Gradle ecosystems.

JDK 27 and JDK 28 Early-Access Builds

Build 26 of JDK 27 shipped with fixes for various issues from Build 25. Build 2 of JDK 28 followed, addressing issues from Build 1. Both remain in early access.

Jakarta EE 12 Progress

Ivar Grimstad, Jakarta EE Developer Advocate at the Eclipse Foundation, reported that Jakarta EE 12 remains on schedule. The Core Profile specifications have produced or are about to produce milestone releases. A majority of Web Profile and Platform specifications also track well.

The Platform call revisited configuration in Jakarta EE this week. The group discussed how MicroProfile Config might transfer to Jakarta EE as Jakarta Config, and the need to split out the CDI dependency to avoid cyclic dependencies.

The GlassFish project filed Compatibility Certification Requests for Eclipse GlassFish 8.0.3 this week. GlassFish submitted a CCR for Jakarta EE Core Profile 11 alongside Jakarta EE 11 Platform, a shift from the project's traditional approach of filing only for Platform and Web Profile. This move positions GlassFish to become the ratifying implementation for Jakarta EE 12 Core Profile.

Several specifications target milestone 2 releases for Jakarta EE 12:

• Jakarta Connectors 3.0
• Jakarta Faces 5.0
• Jakarta Transactions 2.1
• Jakarta JSON Processing 2.2

Eclipse JNoSQL 1.2.0 Milestone 1

The first milestone of Eclipse JNoSQL 1.2.0 ships with bug fixes and several notable changes. The release requires JDK 21 as a minimum. The CustomRepositoryHandler class now correctly handles inheritance. Scalar function expressions (UPPER, LOWER, LEFT, RIGHT, LENGTH, ABS) now work in Jakarta Data Query Language string queries. The old engine for Jakarta NoSQL repositories is deprecated in favor of the new engine for Jakarta Data repositories.

A2A Java SDK 1.0.0

The A2A Java SDK 1.0.0 release implements the Agent2Agent Protocol for running agentic applications as A2AServers. The SDK ships with a new integration test kit and a Quarkus-based agent for cross-SDK interoperability testing. The release also adds the ability to expose HTTP response headers in the A2AHttpResponse interface and A2AClientHTTPError class.

The A2A Java SDK for Jakarta Servers 1.0.0 Release Candidate 1 follows. The RC renames package names and artifact IDs to eliminate the server.apps and java-sdk- prefixes. The TCK now builds against A2A Java SDK 1.0.0. Windows support is included.

Micrometer Metrics 1.17.0 and Micrometer Tracing 1.7.0

After three milestone releases and one release candidate, Micrometer Metrics 1.17.0 ships with bug fixes, documentation improvements, and dependency upgrades. Micrometer Tracing 1.7.0 upgrades OpenTelemetry Instrumentation to 2.28.0.

Spring Ecosystem Releases

Spring delivered a wave of point releases across Spring Boot, Spring Security, Spring Session, Spring Integration, Spring HATEOAS, Spring Modulith, Spring AMQP, Spring for Apache Kafka, Spring LDAP, Spring Vault, and Spring gRPC. Spring AI 2.0.0 and Spring Data 2026.0.0 both reached GA.

GraalVM Native Build Tools 1.1.2

GraalVM Native Build Tools 1.1.2 adds Macaron for GitHub Actions workflow checks and support for grund, a polyglot reference checker for validating and reading ID-based citations across Markdown documents and source code comments.

OpenXava 7.7.3

OpenXava 7.7.3 ships with bug fixes, documentation improvements, and dependency upgrades. The release adds French and German translations for labels and messages, plus new common-use labels.

Gradle 9.6 Release Candidate 2

The second release candidate of Gradle 9.6 improves Configuration Cache hit rates by tracking project properties supplied via system properties and environment variables. A new --non-interactive command-line option disables interactive console prompting for automated environments. The Groovy DSL implicit property and method lookup in parent projects is deprecated and will be removed in Gradle 10.0.

What This Week Signals

The A2A Java SDK reaching 1.0 marks a milestone for agentic application development in Java. Jakarta EE 12's steady progress, combined with the Configuration Cache improvements in Gradle and the Spring AI 2.0 GA release, shows the Java ecosystem investing in both developer productivity and the emerging AI integration layer. The JDK 27 rampdown and JDK 28 early access indicate the Java platform continues its six-month release cadence without disruption.