Red Hat Opens Summit With Goodies For Java, JBoss Developers

Red Hat opened registration for an early access program for JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6, which is planned for general release in early 2012. The company also launched a JBoss Certified Developer program the company said would validate a developer's skills and expertise in JBoss-specific technologies and development standards.

Red Hat also unveiled JBoss Enterprise Data Grid 6, a distributed, cloud-ready data cache, which the company said can reduce the load on database servers, reduce response times for applications and provide an additional measure of system failure resilience.

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6 will incorporate technologies from the Java Enterprise Edition (EE) 6 specification, which is designed to make Java development more agile and flexible. JBoss Enterprise Application Platform is the runtime engine for Red Hat's platform-as-a-service products for physical, virtualized and cloud environments.

Red Hat said the early access program would provide organizations with multiple opportunities over the next several months to gain access to code for JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6.

Under the new JBoss Certified Developer (JBCD) program Red Hat will offer developers "multiple specialized credentials" by passing what the company described as "rigorous, hands-on practical exams."

The first credential to be offered will be JBoss Certified Developer in Persistence, indicating that a developer has demonstrated expertise in using the Java Persistence API with Hibernate, the latter an open-source, object-relational mapping framework for Java. The JBCD-Persistence exam is available now in North America and Europe, although the company said availability may vary by region.