Jakarta EE 11 version clarity

[tjaggi]

We know

• 13.1 is on JavaX.
• 14.0 is JavaX
• 14.1 is Jakarta EE 9/10 compliant
• 15.0 is ?

I'm already using 14.1p with my Jakarta EE 10 app
I'm planning to upgrade my app to Jakarta EE 11 standards,

Question is can I continue using 14.1 ? or will I need to upgrade to 15.0/15.1 ?

[Isomorphic]

Short answer: yes — you can stay on 14.1. SmartClient/SmartGWT 14.1 is compatible with Jakarta EE 11 (Servlet 6.1), running on Tomcat 11 and Java 21. You do not need to move to 15.0 (currently the development release) to support a Jakarta EE 11 application.

Why this works: the 14.1 server framework is already built entirely on the jakarta.* namespace and is certified on the Servlet 6.0 baseline (the bundled Tomcat 10.1). Servlet 6.1 is backward-compatible with 6.0 — it doesn't remove any of the APIs that 6.0 retained — so the shipped 14.1 server runs on Tomcat 11 unmodified. Deploying the 14.1 server on your own Tomcat 11, rather than the bundled Tomcat 10.1, is exactly the supported path for this.

We've verified this empirically, not just on paper. We deployed the 14.1 server on Tomcat 11 / Java 21 against a MySQL database and ran our server-side QA suites — all passing — covering:

• SQL DataSources (fetch, filter, paging, advanced criteria, fetch-size handling)
• Hibernate DataSources (including relations)
• JPA DataSources
• Spring-managed DataSources with @Transactional services and transaction isolation/rollback
• Realtime Messaging over WebSocket (live subscribe → publish → receive round-trip)

A couple of notes:

• The bundled/recommended container for 14.1 remains Tomcat 10.1 — we're confirming compatibility with your own Tomcat 11, not changing what ships in the box.
• Standard DataSource/RPC, Hibernate/JPA, Spring transactions, and WebSocket messaging all behave normally on Tomcat 11 / Java 21 in our testing.