Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition containers

A container provides a federated view of the underlying Java™ 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) APIs to the application components.

A typical J2EE product will provide a container for each application component type; application client container, applet container, web container, and enterprise bean container. The container tools also understand the file formats for packaging the application components for deployment.

The specification requires that these containers provide a Java-compatible runtime environment. This specification defines a set of standard services that each J2EE product must support. These standard services are:
  • HTTP service
  • HTTPS service
  • Java transaction API
  • Remote invocation method
  • Java IDL
  • JDBC API
  • Java message service
  • Java naming and directory interface
  • JavaMail
  • JavaBeans activation framework
  • Java API for XML parsing
  • Connector architecture
  • Java authentication and authorization service