Re: [DISCUSS] Support for Hibernate 7 (JPA 3.2) in TomEE 10.1.x ?

Hi all,

I ran some manual tests using the JPA 3.2 shade [1]. I built TomEE locally with the updated SNAPSHOT EE API (including JPA 3.2) from [2]., added no-op implementations for the newly introduced methods in org.apache.openejb.persistence where needed, and tested everything with my applications.

Everything worked fine with both Hibernate 7.0.6 (JPA 3.2) and Hibernate 6.6.16 (JPA 3.1), so I’m optimistic that it will also work out of the box with OpenJPA and EclipseLink.

To further test it, we’d need to deploy a snapshot version of the API shade and run a full TomEE build with the changes to validate further.

Gruß

Richard

[1] https://github.com/apache/tomee-jakartaee-api/tree/jpa3.2
[2] https://github.com/apache/tomee/tree/jpa3.2


> Am 07.07.2025 um 16:29 schrieb Richard Zowalla <[email protected]>:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I've been experimenting with Hibernate 7.0.5 recently, since the 6.6.x (EE10) version is no longer actively maintained.
> 
> As part of this, I noticed that JPA 3.2 introduces a number of new features and deprecations to the API (see: https://jakarta.ee/specifications/persistence/3.2/), though it does not remove any existing features.
> 
> However, upgrading to Hibernate 7.x currently fails when using a JTA transaction type in persistence.xml, due to the following error:
> 
> 
> 
> Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class org.hibernate.jpa.internal.util.PersistenceUnitTransactionTypeHelper$1
> 
> 	at org.hibernate.jpa.internal.util.PersistenceUnitTransactionTypeHelper.toNewForm(PersistenceUnitTransactionTypeHelper.java:55)
> 
> 	at org.hibernate.jpa.boot.internal.PersistenceUnitInfoDescriptor.getPersistenceUnitTransactionType(PersistenceUnitInfoDescriptor.java:67)
> 
> 	at org.hibernate.jpa.boot.internal.EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.determineTransactionType(EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.java:855)
> 
> 	at org.hibernate.jpa.boot.internal.EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.normalizeTransactionCoordinator(EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.java:803)
> 
> 	at org.hibernate.jpa.boot.internal.EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.normalizeSettings(EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.java:657)
> 
> 	at org.hibernate.jpa.boot.internal.EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.mergeSettings(EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.java:592)
> 
> 	at org.hibernate.jpa.boot.internal.EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.<init>(EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.java:224)
> 
> 	at org.hibernate.jpa.boot.internal.EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.<init>(EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.java:173)
> 
> 
> To enable support for Hibernate 7 (which is quite widely adopted), I’d like to propose that we consider including the JPA 3.2 API in our EE API shade, and release a version like 10.1 (or similar). 
> 
> While this could potentially break signature tests in the API shade, it would unblock users who want to adopt Hibernate 7 today.
> 
> I’d love to get your thoughts on whether this is a direction we want to pursue.
> 
> Gruß
> 
> Richard
> 
> 
> 
> (Side note: we could start moving toward TomEE 11, but progress there is currently blocked due to CXF not being EE11-ready yet.)
> 
>