Jakarta Data in Jakarta EE 12 M2: From Repositories to a Unified Data Access Model

Enterprise Java persistence has been expanding its scope over the last few releases, slowly but deliberately moving away from the idea that persistence is synonymous with relational databases. With Jakarta EE 11, that shift became explicit through the introduction of Jakarta Data , a specification that standardizes application-level data access across both SQL and NoSQL databases. Jakarta EE 12 M2 builds on that foundation, not by changing direction, but by completing ideas that were intentionally deferred in the previous release. Jakarta Data did not replace Jakarta Persistence. Instead, it introduced a new abstraction layer, focused on how applications use data rather than how data is stored . This distinction is subtle but fundamental. Jakarta Persistence remains an ORM specification, deeply rooted in relational concepts, SQL semantics, and persistence contexts. Jakarta Data, by contrast, targets a higher level: the repository, where domain logic meets data access.