Jira Server vs Data Center API and app development

Hi,
Is there some documentation about differences in Jira Server vs Data Center API and app development? Is the API same for the Server and Data Center editions?
Thanks

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Generally speaking, app development for Jira Server and Jira Data Center is identical. There are some differences specifically to Scheduler API and Caching API.

Is there anything specific you’re looking for or are you experiencing any issues that we can help you with?

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Both Server and DC use the same API.

Data Center is just a version of Server that supports multiple nodes - you could use Jira Data Center on a single node if you wanted to.

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Thanks for the fast replies, guys. I have no specific problem, just asking generally. We are using just common API functions like create or update issues etc.
I’ve been confused by the fact that Server support is ending, but the REST API doc (and other doc, too) still mentions Jira Server only. (Also, @ibuchanan has moved this question to Jira Server and not Jira Data Center). So, seems to me like Data Center is on the decline, not the Server :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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@OndejMedek sorry to create confusion. To confirm what @remie and @DaveLiao said, these are effectively the same product, in the sense that both are the same binary. Technically, and as “exceptions that prove the rule”, there are 1 or 2 different APIs only available to Data Center, but these are about cluster management. For example, the cluster resource.

Given both APIs are the same, and the binaries are the same, Jira Server is often used as the way to express the union of Jira Server and Data Center. Hence, my categorization. (I’m just “gardening”, so if anyone disagrees, tell me and I’ll stop.) It is no secret that Atlassian is using all incentives we can to get customers out of both self-managed options and into Cloud. If Data Center is on the decline for Cloud, that would be according to plan. That said, there no disincentives (like an end-of-life) to push people off Data Center at this time. In my day job, I often explain, “Please don’t give self-managed customers one more reason to stay. But there is no harm in going beyond that floor to satisfy some of Atlassian’s largest customers still on Data Center.”

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Good call-out on the DC-specific APIs! :muscle:

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@ibuchanan thanks for the explanation, it’s much clearer to me know. So, the Atlassian is mainly focusing on cloud. I have though Data Center supersedes the Server and will evolve, because it has the active roadmap.

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@OndejMedek, yes DC has “legs”. It continues to receive investment; hence, the roadmap. But I would advise to consider DC a mature platform: decisions will favor stability over innovation. I would characterize most of the things on that roadmap as “non-functional characteristics”, improving things like reliability, security, and performance. Increasingly, that means customers would expect Data Center App to match those characteristics.

As a developer, stability and predictability are great! But do expect a degree of “what you see is what you get” with APIs, tooling, and the platform. Even fixing bugs comes with risk of destabilization so you should expect lots of “work-arounds” over radical solutions. More or less, all that is appropriate to the way customers operate Data Center. They are more prone to taking upgrades only once or twice a year, so even if there were lots of fast changes in products, they wouldn’t propagate to customers quickly.

In contrast, Cloud is getting lots of new things that are both functional and non-functional. Cloud can and does make changes many times a day (much to some Marketplace developer’s chagrin), with most of those changes hitting some segment of customers right away. This will make the difference between Cloud and Server/DC increasingly divergent, both because of the pace of feature change and the way that Apps need to operate to fit with their host product’s operating model.

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To be fair, this is not entirely true. You will be surprised how many large fortune500 companies (and even top 50 of that list) will be requesting host compatibility of your app within days after a new version was released. Although there are definitely also customers that settle on LTS versions, the ecosystem on DC is vibrant enough to encourage you to deliver frequent updates to your app.

We decided on a shared code base for our apps (~95% of code) and are delivering at an equal pace to cloud & Server/DC, and that strategy is definitely paying off for us.

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We found for Confluence job module this note:

The perClusterJob attribute, if set to true, indicates that this job will run only once when triggered in a cluster rather than once on every node.

Cheers.