Java Community Process (JCP)

Java Community Process (JCP)

Petition drive seeks Java Data Objects upgrade
February 10, 2004—An Internet petition has been posted urging an upgrade to the Java Data Objects specification for Java object persistence, amidst a movement by the Java Community Process (JCP) to merge JDO with Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB).
Paul Krill, February 2005

Java integration spec pushed
November 1, 2004—Sun Microsystems and several other vendors have released an early draft of a specification intended to ease integration of Java-based systems, but IBM and BEA Systems have dropped out of participation in the effort.
Paul Krill, November 2004

JCP updates specification review process
March 22, 2004 — In an effort to give earlier access of draft Java specifications to a broader group of developers, the Java Community Process (JCP)—the official process for defining Java programming standards—announced in early March the latest iteration of the process and a refresh on the procedures it has traditionally followed when adopting new specifications.
Allison Taylor and Itworldcanada.com, March 2004

In pursuit of perfection
Java is like any development platform/language combination—most developers have a love-hate relationship with it. Sure, for Java aficionados it's better than using .Net, LAMP, or (add your own particular poison here), but we bemoan the complexity of Swing, the bulkiness of the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) specification, performance, additional overheads imposed on skimpy hardware by the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME) platform, the 101 different ways to do things, and on and on. If we could just address Java's weak points, we might make Java that mythical beast—the perfect technology platform...So then, what are those changes? Is there such a thing as the perfect technology platform, and does Java have the potential to become it?
Humphrey Sheil, January 2004

Introducing the Portlet Specification, Part 2
In this second and final article in Stefan Hepper and Stephan Hesmer's portlet series, the authors move beyond the Portlet API basics outlined in Part 1 to detail the API's reference implementation (RI), known as Pluto. They also offer a series of example portlets to illustrate how you can extend the API's standard functions.
Stefan Hepper and Stephan Hesmer, September 2003

Introducing the Portlet Specification, Part 1
Portlets are Java-based Web components, managed by a portlet container, that process requests and generate dynamic content. Portals use portlets as pluggable user interface components that provide a presentation layer to information systems. The next step, after servlets in Web application programming, portlets enable modular and user-centric Web applications. The goal of JSR (Java Specification Request) 168, the Portlet Specification, is to enable interoperability between portlets and portals. This specification defines the contract between portlet and portlet container, and a set of portlet APIs that address personalization, presentation, and security. The specification also defines how to package portlets in portlet applications. Part 1 of this two-part series describes the Portlet Specification and explains its underlying concepts. In Part 2, the authors explain the specification's reference implementation and show some portlet examples.
Stefan Hepper and Stephan Hesmer, August 2003

JavaOne: Java.net: The JCP alternative?
June 9, 2003 — When Jason Hunter joined Sun Microsystems' CEO Scott McNealy onstage at last year's JavaOne conference in San Francisco, it appeared that Java and the open source community were on the verge of a new era of cooperation.
Robert McMillan , June 2003

Effort on the edge, Part 2
Since its inception in 1998, the Java Community Process (JCP) has received much criticism from the developer community. JCP critics often question whether the process serves Java's advancement and whether it helps produce new Java standards effectively. Up to now, answers to those questions had as much to do with perception, though not always accurate, as with fact. For this article, Frank Sommers and Sonali Shah analyze a database of publicly available information about the first 200 Java Specification Requests (JSRs). In the process, they try to dispel a few JCP myths.
Frank Sommers and Sonali Shah, January 2003

Oracle joins Eclipse
November 12, 2002 — Seeking to unite disparate development camps, Oracle has announced a two-tiered strategy for promoting standardization in the tools space. First, the company is joining the IBM-led Eclipse tools initiative, which seeks to provide a universal platform for tools integration. Second, Oracle is introducing a proposal for a single API to access multiple vendors' Java-based IDEs.
Paul Krill, November 2002

Effort on the edge, Part 1
In this two-part series, Sonali Shah and Frank Sommers look at recent changes in the Java Community Process (JCP) and ask whether the JCP helps or hinders Java's future. They also suggest how Java developers can influence Java's future.
Sonali Shah and Frank Sommers, November 2002

Is the JCP adequately preparing Java for Web services?
Earlier this week, Sun Microsystems officially released the newest version of its Java Web Services Developer Pack (JWSDP), a bundled download of the APIs necessary for building, testing, and deploying Java Web services. New to the release are the Java API for XML Registries (JAXR) and the Java API for XML Remote Procedure Call (JAX-RPC), both fresh from the Java Community Process (JCP).
Jennifer Orr , June 2002

Java readies itself for wireless Web services
Convenience is the major motivation behind our adoption of wireless technology. The ability to access information anytime from anywhere drastically increases our productivity as well as our quality of life by allowing us to work from home, car, school, or vacation resorts, and manage time more flexibly. Besides the unprecedented convenience, a wireless Internet also improves the quality of the information services. By taking advantage of wireless devices' pervasive nature, you can dynamically customize information services for each user based on her location, mood, or other real-time data.
Michael Juntao Yuan and Ju Long, June 2002

Discover and publish Web services with JAXR
A registry allows organizations to publish and discover Web services. Currently, two registry standards dominate: UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration) and ebXML. With either of these, businesses can publish a set of Web services so their internal or external business partners can discover them. However, integrating Web services' discovery and registration regardless of the supported registry standard can prove challenging for businesses. For example, suppose some of the ACME company's multiple business partners published their services in a UDDI registry, while others published in an ebXML registry. How does an ACME Web service application discover those services published by all its business partners? What if ACME wants to publish its services to both UDDI and ebXML registries from within a single Web service application?
Kathy Walsh and Sang Shin, June 2002

Score big with JSR 77, the J2EE Management Specification
The J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) specification should ease enterprise computing; we should be able to simply develop enterprise applications and deploy them into a J2EE-compliant product. But the reality is different because the J2EE specification does not go far enough. Many application server features are vendor specific, and, to avoid vendor lock-in, we need further standardization. One particular aspect of standardization is J2EE server management, an aspect covered by the J2EE Management Specification, Java Specification Request (JSR) 77. The J2EE Management Specification abstracts the manageable parts of the J2EE architecture and defines an interface for accessing management information. This helps system administrators integrate J2EE servers into a system management environment and also helps application developers create their own management tools.
Dirk Laessig, June 2002

The open road ahead
At this year's JavaOne, Sun Microsystems announced an agreement with the Apache Software Foundation. After months of negotiation (and a threat to withdraw from the Java Community Process (JCP)), Apache will now become a more active participant in the Java standardization process. But does this make Java open enough for the rest of the open source world? What exactly has changed in the JCP, and what kind of impact will these changes have on the broader Java community? Also, check out what developers of popular open source projects think about this issue in the sidebar, "Do the JCP Changes Affect Your Open Source Project?," at the end of this article.
Robert McMillan , April 2002

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