Sun has posted the early draft review of Java Specification Request 208, Java Business Integration (JBI). According to the draft,
Enterprise application integration (EAI) and business-to-business integration (B2B) solutions have traditionally required the use of non-standard technologies to create functional systems. This has required end users to either "lock in" to a single vendor of such technologies, or create their own. Each approach has disadvantages. No single vendor can cover the vast functional space of EAI and B2B (consider the thousands of applications and protocols to be supported). This leaves users of integration technologies in the uncomfortable position of selecting less than ideal solutions to their integration problems, and paying dearly for them.
Java™ Business Integration (JBI) seeks to address this problem by creating a standards-based architecture for integration solutions, allowing third-party components to be assembled by the end user. These components provide the many varied integration functions needed; JBI provides the mechanisms to allow such components to interoperate predictably and reliably. By avoiding lock-in to a particular vendor of integration technologies, the user is free to choose components that provide the particular functions that he or she needs, and be assured that a functional integration solution can be assembled from those pieces.
In the past, attempts to compose third-party components into systems that have the attributes required of enterprise systems have not been very successful. JBI addresses this by adopting a service-oriented architecture (SOA), which maximizes the decoupling between components, and creates well-defined interoperation semantics founded on standards-based messaging. The SOA approach creates many other benefits that are applicable to enterprise integrations solutions.
Sun has posted public review drafts of four Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) related Java Specification Requests (JSRs). These are
These drafts update the various profiles to Java 1.4.
Nokia has posted maintenance draft review for JSR-212 Server API for Mobile Services: Messaging. The changes are minor byt functional. Comments are due by October 18.
The Jakarta Apache Project has released HTTPClient 2.0.2. According to the web page:
Although the java.net package provides basic functionality for accessing resources via HTTP, it doesn't provide the full flexibility or functionality needed by many applications. The Jakarta Commons HttpClient component seeks to fill this void by providing an efficient, up-to-date, and feature-rich package implementing the client side of the most recent HTTP standards and recommendations.... Designed for extension while providing robust support for the base HTTP protocol, the HttpClient component may be of interest to anyone building HTTP-aware client applications such as web browsers, web service clients, or systems that leverage or extend the HTTP protocol for distributed communication.
Version 2.0.2 "greatly improves the performance of executing methods where the response contains little or no content." It's published under the Apache 2.0 license.