Announcing Helidon 2.0
Today, we are proud to announce general availability of Helidon 2.0.
Helidon provides a set of Java libraries that simplify microservices development, and offer developers a range of features and benefits:
- Choice of programming styles:
Helidon SE — for functional programming with full transparency and developer control.
Helidon MP — for declarative programming, leveraging MicroProfile and Jakarta EE standard APIs. - Simple to use and fast — a collection of libraries and reactive Web Server running on a Netty core.
- Observability and resilience through health checks, metrics, tracing and fault tolerance.
- The option to compile Java applications using GraalVM Native Image, creating native images with extremely fast startup and small footprint.
- The benefits of an open source project with continuous updates, a fast release cadence, and flexible licensing — combined with options for enterprise support from Oracle.
Helidon 2.0 adds significant improvements for both Helidon SE and Helidon MP programming styles, including the following new features:
- Helidon MP GraalVM Native Image support in Helidon 2.0 adds to the existing Helidon SE GraalVM Native Image support, bringing GraalVM Native Image startup and memory consumption benefits to MicroProfile developers.
- Easy generation of jlink custom runtime images including support for CDS archives for improved startup performance.
- Jakarta WebSocket support is added to both Helidon SE and Helidon MP.
- Helidon MP adds MicroProfile Reactive Streams Operators and MicroProfile Reactive Streams Messaging.
- Helidon 2.0 supports Java SE 11, enabling developers to take full advantage of the new features offered in this Java SE release.
Helidon 2.0 also adds early access features that are ready for developer use:
- A new Helidon command line tool (CLI) will help create Helidon projects, manage dependencies, and build applications using different packaging profiles — jar, native-image and jlink image.
- Helidon SE provides a complete reactive framework with new Reactive Streams and Reactive Messaging features.
- A new Helidon DB Client for Helidon SE provides a reactive non-blocking database client that can be used with existing blocking JDBC drivers and also supports the MongoDB reactive driver.
- Helidon SE adds a new reactive Helidon WebClient for non-blocking HTTP access to external services.
The following graphics summarize the new and existing features in Helidon 2.0:
With its new features for reactive microservices, updated MicroProfile support, expanded support for GraalVM Native Image in Helidon MP, and new build tooling and profile support, Helidon 2.0 is taking the next step forward in enabling and simplifying Java microservices development. We have many improvements that you can explore and take advantage of today. Whether you are building new microservices to support existing architectures or starting out on your microservices journey, extending existing applications or building net new applications, Helidon will offer you powerful functionality, and , developer productivity and flexible choice. Get started!
In addition to Helidon 2.0, today we are announcing Coherence Community Edition in open source. Check out the opportunity to integrate your Helidon microservices with Coherence Community Edition’s proven, reliable, scalable platform for in-memory data grid state management and data processing. All of these features and capabilities are available in open source. We have an example application that you can evaluate today.
Stay tuned for any future updates on integration across Helidon, Coherence Community Edition, GraalVM, and Oracle WebLogic Server.
Additional Resources
- https://helidon.io
- http://youtube.helidon.io/
- https://medium.com/helidon
- https://github.com/oracle/helidon
- https://microprofile.io/
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