Java has a long history of running on the server. From the early days of servlets, to JSP, Java web frameworks, Java  EE, and Spring, to today’s hip microservice frameworks, the platform has been a strong, solid player, relied upon by thousands of companies, governments, and organizations. But what do these microservice frameworks like Dropwizard, Spring Boot, and Eclipse MicroProfile have in common with the older days of Java? It turns out, there’s quite a lot of foundational tech that made the newer frameworks possible. In this talk, we’ll take a look at different parts of the foundation that you may not even realize you’re using, for everything like handling REST requests, processing JSON, using Web Sockets, talking to a database, performing validation, and more. We’ll also look at how these standards evolve within the Eclipse Jakarta EE, and what’s in store for the future.