Chapter 3. Features

3.1. New and Changed features

3.1.1. Spring Boot product version number for 2.2.11 release

The product version number for Spring Boot 2.2.11 release is 2.2.11.SP1-redhat-00001.

3.1.2. Support for Spring Boot Runtime on IBM Z

The Red Hat support for Spring Boot for s390x platform is supported only in OpenShift environments provisioned on IBM Z infrastructure. Running an Spring Boot application on a stand-alone installation of RHEL on IBM Z is not supported.

Eclipse OpenJ9 Java images for IBM Z and new images for products supported on IBM Z are available in the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog.

3.1.3. Deploying example applications on OpenShift provisioned on IBM Z infrastructure

To deploy the example applications on OpenShift environments provisioned on IBM Z infrastructure, specify the relevant IBM Z image name in the pom.xml file and commands.

Some of the example applications also require other products, such as Red Hat Data Grid to demonstrate the workflows. In this case, you must also change the image names of these products to their relevant IBM Z image names in the YAML file of the example applications.

The Secured example application in Spring Boot requires Red Hat SSO 7.3. Since Red Hat SSO 7.3 is not supported on IBM Z, the Secured example is not available for IBM Z.

3.1.4. Support for AMQ Spring Boot starter

Red Hat AMQ always supports the minor version of the latest Spring Boot release. So, the AMQ Spring Boot starter is not supported for all Red Hat Spring Boot releases. For example, if the latest Spring Boot release is 2.3 and the latest minor version is 2.3.4, the starter is supported for 2.3.4 release. With every Spring Boot release, the support will change depending on the latest version. If you want to work with AMQ Spring Boot starters, you must use the latest Red Hat Spring Boot release.

3.1.5. Support for OpenJDK 8 and OpenJDK 11 RHEL 8 Universal Base Images (UBI8)

Spring Boot 2.2.11 introduces support for building and deploying Spring Boot applications to OpenShift with OCI-compliant Universal Base Images for Red Hat OpenJDK 8 and Red Hat OpenJDK 11 on RHEL 8.

The RHEL 8 OpenJDK Universal Base Images replace the RHEL 8 OpenJDK builder images. The RHEL 8 OpenJDK base images are no longer supported for use with Spring Boot.

3.1.6. Product BOM name change and updates

The Spring Boot 2.2.11 introduces the following updates to the BOM:

  • The Maven groupId of the BOM changes to dev.snowdrop.
  • The Maven artifactId of the BOM changes to snowdrop-dependencies.

  • You can use the BOM as:

    • a dependency of your application in the <dependencyManagement> section, to automatically manage the version of product dependencies that your application uses
    • a parent BOM of your application project, to automatically manage product dependency versions, the name and version of the build plugin, and the settings of repositories that Maven uses to build you application.

3.1.7. New Eclipse Vert.x Spring Boot Starters for AMQP and Apache Kafka

Spring Boot 2.2.11 includes new productized Eclipse Vert.x Spring Boot starters for AMQP and Apache Kafka. You can use these starters to add AMQP 1.0 messaging integration, and distributed streaming capabilities of Apache Kafka to your reactive Spring Boot cloud-native applications. Red Hat provides support for Eclipse Vert.x reactive clients in Spring Boot applications.

3.1.8. Support for reactive Spring application stack with Eclipse Vert.x Components

The Spring Boot 2.2.11 introduces production support for the Spring Boot technology stack for developing reactive applications. The stack is based on the Red Hat build of Eclipse Vert.x. The reactive components also include a set of supported Spring Boot Reactive Starters based on the community version of Spring Starters released by the Snowdrop project. Red Hat provides support for the use of the starters with the reactive stack components to develop applications for OpenShift Container Platform.

3.1.9. Support for Dekorate 1.0.0 with Spring Boot

Spring Boot 2.2.11 introduces support for Dekorate, a collection of compile-time annotation parsers and configuration resource generators for OpenShift and Kubernetes that integrate with Spring Boot. With Dekorate you can automatically configure your application for deployment to an OpenShift cluster without the need to manually write application manifests. When you build your application, Dekorate extracts the configuration parameters from the source code of your Spring Boot application. It then generates a YAML, JSON, or XML-formatted application manifest and populates it with the extracted parameters. Dekorate works independently of the language and build tools you use, and integrates with multiple cloud-native application frameworks, including Spring Boot. Dekorate is distributed as a separate BOM that is include with Spring Boot 2.2.11. Red Hat provides support for the use of Dekorate to generate application configuration templates for deploying applications based on Spring Boot to OpenShift Container Platform with Maven. Red Hat does not provide support for executing Source-to-image application deployments using build hooks generated with Dekorate.

3.2. Deprecated features

No features or functionalities are marked as deprecated in this release.

3.3. Technology Preview

3.3.1. Dekorate build hooks for deploying Spring Boot applications to OpenShift Container Platform

You can use Dekorate to configure a Source-to-image build of your application that starts automatically after you compile your application with Maven. This functionality is provided as Technology Preview in Dekorate version 1.0.0. Red Hat does not provide support for using this functionality in a production environment.