It is disappointing to come across the occasional mindset that Java EE somehow limits you to using only what is in the standard and nothing more. This is really not the case now and never was. Java EE is intended to provide a stable, open, compatible and reliable core that the ecosystem can build upon without the risks of vendor lock-in or monopolies. The idea is to provide a seamless platform that just works for the vast majority of cases. The ecosystem on the other hand is free to innovate and extend much farther beyond the standard core, ideally to cover every reasonably conceivable use case. The standard can then draw from well understood, successful use cases and bring those back into the core. To this end, almost every Java EE API today is designed with extensibility in mind. In fact, extensibility through CDI and CDI portable extensions in particular was a core goal for Java EE 6.

DeltaSpike is one of the projects that demonstrates these principles in action. For those unaware, it is a consolidation of Seam 3, Apache CODI and a few smaller projects. It is a set of portable CDI extensions that provide useful features for Java EE applications. In fact, the DeltaSpike team has already been instrumental in standardizing some of the innovative changes in Java EE 7. The project just released version 1.0 and it is a great time to check it out if you haven't done so already. Veteran Java EE advocate Arun Gupta has an excellent write-up on DeltaSpike 1.0.

Here are just some of the things that are in DeltaSpike 1.0 right now:

• Many Java EE 7 features that you can use in Java EE 6 such as @Transactional, @TransactionScoped, CDI support in bean validation/JSF converters, @ViewScoped in CDI and so on.
• An excellent higher level abstraction for reducing boilerplate in JPA based repositories.
• A simplified, pluggable security framework for Java EE.
• Simple integration with Quartz 2.
• Injecting common Servlet objects.
• Many, many more...

A great place to start is actually the excellent DeltaSpike site. The project is almost entirely community driven, completely vendor-neutral  and very friendly to contributors. DeltaSpike was nominated for the Duke's Choice Awards this year - they certainly deserve to win.