The Java EE architecture provides services that simplify the most common challenges facing developers when building modern applications, in many cases through APIs, thus making it easier to use popular design patterns and industry-accepted best practices.

Along with the four aforementioned APIs, there are more than 30 Java APIs included as Java EE core technologies, with that number to approach 50 with the eventual release of Java EE 8.

The APIs listed above are just a sampling of the various Java EE components available to developers. All of the APIs defined in the Java Standard Edition, or Java SE, are also offered to Java EE applications.

This process could be accomplished simply using nothing but a text editor and the Java compiler that comes standard with an installation of the JDK. However, there is a rich ecosystem of integrated development environment (IDE) tools that assist in the rapid application development of Java EE code.

There were incremental improvements with the release of J2EE 1.3 in September 2001, with the addition of the JSTL being one of the release's most significant accomplishments. The inclusion of the HTML framework JSF was a further highlight in the release of J2EE 1.4 in November 2003.

The Java API for WebSocket development was introduced, as was the Java API for JSON Processing, making it easier to send information formatted in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) back and forth from the client to the server.