ZK Developer's Reference/Upgrade Tips/Edition Upgrade

Feature comparison

ZK Framework is offered in 3 editions, CE, PE, and EE. CE is the basic version, and EE comes with the most complete features. To see what features are included in each edition, visit the Feature Page.

Note that some of the add-ons like ZK Charts, Pivottable, and Keikai Spreadsheet are not part of ZK CE, PE, or EE. They can be used with ZK CE, PE, and EE, but separate licenses are required to use these add-ons.

Upgrade the Library

To upgrade from CE to ZK PE or EE (or PE/EE Evaluation Copy), download the corresponding PE/EE (or Evaluation) binary files from the Download Page, or specify the evaluation repository and include required PE/EE dependencies if you use maven. Maven instructions here.

Download instructions for paying customers were given at the time of the purchase. If you are not sure, contact us with your License Certificate Number and we will help.

Evaluation vs. Official version

We offer 60-day free Evaluation copies for users to try out ZK PE and EE. The Evaluation copy basically has the same technical capabilities as the commercially licensed version, except for a few differences:

1) With the evaluation copy, it is expected to see the following warning in your server console.

SEVERE: This is an evaluation copy of ZK EE and will terminate after sixty days from the first date of installation. Should you require an open source license or commercial license for ZK EE please contact us at info@zkoss.org for more information. Alternatively you can download ZK CE which is licensed under the LGPL.

Depending on the product you use, the message may be slightly different. This message is to remind you that you are currently with an Evaluation copy which is for evaluation only and cannot be used in a production server.

2) With the evaluation copy, your application will show an uptime warning when it reaches a configured time (normally between 8 and 72 hours) and may block your ZK pages. If you are still within your 60-day trial period, you can restart your webserver to continue your evaluation.

If you develop your application based on the evaluation copy, when you are ready to move to the official (paid) version, you do not need to change your application code. All you need to do is to switch the library from the evaluation repo/jars to the paid repo/jars, following the download instructions we provide you at the time of your purchase.

Include required modules

In addition to the core ZK features, PE/EE users are given access to use certain add-ons and tools according to the package they are on.

For example, the zuti module is an EE-only feature and is required if you wish to use shadow elements. The za11y package is also EE-only and is required if you wish to have Web accessibility support. Some features are located in the same repository, but others are in a separate repository. For example, a EE user can use ZATS Mimic, ZK Spring, ThemePack themes and ZK Calendar - they are not packaged in the core ZK. You will need to download them from their download pages, or, include the dependency in your maven POM file.

If you wish to use a specific feature, reference the document page of that feature, or the content (jar) of binary distributions to see if it is already in the core package, or if you need to specify a different jar file or dependency.

Use PE/EE specific components and features

After upgrading to PE/EE, you can access more components, features, and Java classes. Please read the documentation of each feature to learn how to set it up.

Features enabled by default

After upgrading to PE/EE, some of the features are enabled by default. For example, the client render on demand feature will be enabled by default to improve the client-side performance. Also, with EE, the Tablet UI will be enabled by default, when a tablet or mobile device connects to your application the tablet-supported components will switch themselves to the tablet theme. You can manually disable them in zk.xml if you are not ready.

Change of default behavior

Some of the default behavior changes after you upgraded the ZK edition. For example in the case of server push, with CE, it uses client polling. Once you upgrade to PE, the default push becomes comet push, and with EE it uses servlet 3 comet. Learn more here.

Require configuration

Some PE/EE features are now available for you to use, but you will have to enable them by yourself. For example if you have a big grid or listbox, you can turn on render on demand to boost its performance.

Please reference the documentation of each feature to see if any configuration is required and contact us if you have any questions.