The launch of the Adoptium Marketplace on May 26 is exciting news for the millions of developers, researchers, and organizations who rely on TCK-tested compatible Java runtimes. As noted in the announcement, by providing a vendor neutral home for the OpenJDK ecosystem, the marketplace makes it easier than ever to access Java SE-conformant binaries necessary for cloud native and enterprise deployments.
But there’s more to the story. For a long time, compatibility has been the name of the game when it came to Java implementations. The Adoptium Marketplace has been set up to take the Java ecosystem to the next stage of its development.
That’s where Eclipse AQAvit comes in. It brings quality assurance metrics into the marketplace, so that the Java community can begin to select binaries not just based on compatibility but on quality.
Eclipse AQAvit Brings Quality Assurance to Java
Everything in the marketplace will be compatible with the relevant version of the Java SE Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK).
But TCK compatibility doesn’t tell you anything about the quality of the implementation. In recent years, the number of OpenJDK-based runtime distributions has absolutely exploded. And although many vendors maintain their own release quality tests, OpenJDK distros have historically not been built to any consistent quality standard. It has become increasingly clear that the Java ecosystem needs a consistent, multi-vendor definition of quality.
Ensuring high-quality binaries are ready for production deployment is crucial for the Adoptium Marketplace. The AQAvit project team compiled tens of thousands of tests and built a few of their own to produce a comprehensive, systematic way of ensuring the quality of runtimes available. The AQAvit Quality Verification Suite covers a broad set of requirements, ensuring binaries provide superior:
- Performance
- Security
- Resilience
- Endurance
They also ensure that the binaries can pass a wide variety of application test suites and can verify new functionality during runtime development. That’s what’s unique about the Adoptium Marketplace: it provides peace of mind knowing that the binaries are not only compatible but will actually meet the demanding requirements of your enterprise applications.
Contributing Helps Ensure AQAvit Meets Your Needs
And in the spirit of open source, you give a little to get a lot.
Many of the founding members of the Adoptium Working Group are Java developers and vendors, including Alibaba Cloud, Azul, Huawei, IBM, iJUG, Karakun AG, Microsoft, New Relic, and Red Hat. The marketplace enables working group members to promote their Java SE compatible releases verified to Eclipse AQAvit’s quality criteria. Their membership helps support the cloud-based infrastructure that drives Adoptium’s efficiency as a shared community project. In other words, the working group collaborates to create and provide access to high-performance, enterprise-caliber, cross-platform, open source-licensed, and Java-compatible binaries of OpenJDK builds, through the marketplace.
Contributing to the AQAvit project is one of the best ways to ensure access to runtimes that meet specific needs. We encourage Java community members to get involved and contribute additional tests to cover the use cases their applications require. They’ll be incorporated in the AQAvit test suite, so every binary going forward will have to meet that standard. This way enterprises and developers can be confident any AQAvit-verified binaries they use will function as needed.
Security Updates for Java
Quality assurance is a big part of what makes the Adoptium Marketplace unique, but it’s not the whole picture. Security fixes are also an important focus.
Once upon a time, you could count on getting security fixes for old versions of Java for a long time. After all, if you’ve deployed a set of applications on a version, you’re probably going to want to use it for a long time.
That’s no longer the case elsewhere. But all the distributions in the Adoptium Marketplace will be kept up to date with the latest security patches or those patches will be backported to older LTS versions. This way you can be sure that your applications are secure, no matter which version of Java you’re running them on. Of course, this goes for new versions of Java too.
Everything Users Need in One Place
The Adoptium Marketplace brings together all these elements — quality assurance, adaptability to community needs, security updates for every version, sustainability — into a one-stop shop for binaries. Ultimately, this delivers five key assurances to end users:
- The binary has been tested and is compatible with the relevant version of the Java SE TCK
- The binary was built in accordance with open source principles
- The binary has been fully verified using the AQAvit quality verification criteria, having passed through multiple tests to ensure it meets industry quality standards
- The binary is as secure as possible, with the latest security updates included
- The binary is brought to you by a vendor committed to supporting and participating in a multi-vendor, vendor-neutral collaboration
If your organization is considering participating in the Adoptium Working Group, have a look at the Charter and Participation Agreement. Or if you have questions, email us at membership@eclipse.org.
