On the site of the Java Community Process, you can now review the Early Draft for J2EE 5.0: http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=244.
This JSR is to develop J2EE 5.0, the next release of the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition, targeted to ship in the second half of 2005.
The major theme for the next version of J2EE is ease of development. The clear message we’ve heard from J2EE vendors and users is that the J2EE platform must evolve quickly to support a wider range of developers, including less sophisticated developers. JSR-175 (A Metadata Facility for the JavaTM Programming Language) is the enabling facility for a new declarative style of programming that significantly simplifies many programming tasks. J2EE must move quickly to take advantage of this capability and deliver significant improvements to ease of development for J2EE developers. In particular, this capability will be used to simplify the development of web service applications.
J2EE 1.4 delivered basic web services support, including support for the WS-I Basic Profile, for the Java platform. Web service standards continue to evolve and it is critical that the Java platform support the latest web service standards.
We propose that:
* J2EE 5.0 will define the J2EE component model, deployment, packaging, and container requirements for J2EE components that use Java language annotations, as defined by J2EE component JSRs.
* J2EE 5.0 will further define the J2EE component model, deployment, packaging, and container requirements for J2EE components that provide or use web services.J2EE 5.0 may also provide minor enhancements to existing APIs and small additional APIs, provided they meet the time and resource constraints of this release.
This JSR will not itself define any new APIs, rather it will enumerate APIs defined in other JSRs or through the JCP maintenance process. We propose to include the following new APIs or API revisions in J2EE 5.0 in support of the above goals:
* J2EE 5.0 is the Enterprise Edition of version 5.0 of the Java platform, and thus will be built on J2SE 5.0.
The following JSRs directly support the ease of development goals of J2EE 5.0.
* JSR-181 (Web Services Metadata for the Java Platform)
* JSR-220 (EJB 3.0)
* JSR-222 (JAXB 2.0)
* JSR-224 (JAX-RPC 2.0)
* JSR-127 (JavaServer Faces 1.0)
* JSR-52 (JSTL 1.1)In addition, to smooth the integration of JSF with JSP, a revision of the JSP specification will be required to integrate the two technologies and to resolve differences in their expression languages. A JSR will be filed shortly to cover this work.
We believe that it is critical to deliver a J2EE platform with enhanced ease of development as soon as possible. To be successful, the target feature set will need to be carefully managed. Very few technologies that aren’t already well defined will be able to be included, and such new technologies will need to be tightly focused on the essential items necessary for enhanced ease of development support.
Nearly all of the JSRs listed above are well underway. Spec leads for all included JSRs will need to remain focused on the goal of delivering enhanced ease of development support in J2EE 5.0 as soon as possible. Those that complete in time will be included in J2EE 5.0. Those that fail to complete in time may not be included.
