JShell: A Comprehensive Guide to the Java REPL–It's been a year since Java 9 was released, and one of the most overlooked features in that release was JShell. InfoQ have released a guide to using the Java Shell.

Spring Framework 5.1 goes GA–Spring Framework 5.1 has been released, with support for Java 11, just in time for its own release this week. Check out the new features. If you're using Spring Boot, 2.1 should be released next month with support for Spring Framework 5.1.1.

Build a Java REST API with Java EE and OIDC–After his tutorials on building a REST API with Spring, Matt Raible has decided to try to implement the same API in J2EE. Check it out if you're curious what the other side of the Spring/J2EE line looks like.

Pessimistic locking in JPA/Hibernate–Arnold Galovics has published the second in a series of articles about concurrency with Hibernate. This one is on pessimistic locking.

JEP draft: Concise Method Bodies–Brian Goetz has announced a JEP for concise method bodies for using lambda-style syntax to define methods. This would be similar to the language feature that Kotlin and C# have.

Java 11 String API Updates–Grzegorz Piwowarek has published an article describing the new methods in java.lang.String, including new methods for stripping whitespace from a string, and the oft requested String.repeat(int)

JavaFX 11 released–Following the removal of JavaFX from the Oracle JDK, Kevin Rushforth at Oracle has announced the release of the community-supported version, OpenJFX, and the new website for the project: http://openjfx.io/.

Java Community Leaders Clarify Platform Support Options–InfoQ report on an open letter by more than 30 community leaders.

Exception Handling in Java: A Complete Guide with Best and Worst Practices–David Landup has written a good introduction to exceptions in Java, as well as some advice on how (or how not) to use them.

End of Public Updates is a Process, not an Event–Donald Smith, Senior Director of Product Manager at Oracle, provides some information on the upgrade path from Java 8 to newer versions of Java in the coming months.

Get Started with Reactive Programming in Spring–Matt Raible is back with another article, this time on using the new reactive WebFlux style development in Spring 5.