CapTech Ventures has submitted JSR 275, Units Specification, to the Java Community Process. According to the JSR,
This JSR specifies one or more Java packages for the programmatic handling of physical quantities and their expression as numbers of units. The specification includes:
- Interfaces and abstract classes with methods for unit operations:
- Checking of unit compatibility
- Expression of a quantity in various units
- Arithmetic operations on units
- Concrete classes implementing the standard types of units (such as base, supplementary, and derived) and unit conversions.
- Classes for parsing unit specifications in string form and for formatting string representations of quantities.
- A database of predefined units.
This is based on the withdrawn JSR 108. Comments are due by June 13.
Sun has posted a second proposed final draft of JSR 208, Java Business Integration (JBI). According to the draft,
JBI does not define a traditional application programming model. Instead, it embraces a service-oriented approach to structuring enterprise functions, where JBI plug-in components function as service providers and consumers. The APIs and SPIs defined in this specification are for the use of developers of service engines and binding components that “plug in” to the JBI infrastructure, as described above.
The term Service Engine (or SE) is used to refer to plug-in components that provide business logic, transformational services, etc. Service engines can take a wide variety of forms, depending on needs. In particular, some SEs can function as “containers,” presenting a unique programming model to users. For example:
- An XSLT XML transformation engine can support multiple transformation types. In this case, the programming interface is essentially the XSLT language itself.
- A WS-BPEL 2.0 business process execution engine. In this case, the programming interface is WS-BPEL itself.
- An EJB container. In this case, the API is Java that conforms to the appropriate EJB specification.
Binding components provide the ability to use communications protocols to both access remotely provided services, and allow remote service consumers to access services provided within the JBI environment. Protocols can be as varied as the integration problems being solved require, but typical examples include
- SOAP over HTTP [http://www.ws-i.org/Profiles/BasicProfile-1.1.html],
- JMS/MOM [http://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/final/jsr914/index.html] and
- AS1/AS2 EDI [http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/ediint-charter.html] communications stacks.
A Binding Component may choose to implement one or more communications protocols thus offering connectivity services to SEs and thereby enabling SEs to expose their services to remote consumers as well as enabling the consumption of remote services.
Vodafone has posted the public review draft of JSR 209: Advanced Graphics and User Interface Optional Package for the J2ME Platform. "The Advanced Graphics and User Interface (AGUI) Optional Package migrates many of the core APIs for advanced graphics and user interface facilities from the J2SE(tm) platform to the J2ME(tm) platform. These facilities include much of the functionality from Swing, Java 2D Graphics and Imaging, and Image I/O. Applications can use this functionality to develop advanced applications for consumer devices such as mobile terminals and home devices." Comments are due by July 18.
Teodor Danciu's posted version 0.6.8 of JasperReports, an open source (LGPL) Java library for generating reports from XML templates and customizable data sources (including JDBC). The output can be displayed on the screen, printed, or written to XML or PDF files. Version 0.6.8 a few various bugs.
Gaudenz Alder has released JGraph 5.5.1, a free-as-in-speech (Mozilla Public License/LGPL) graph component for Swing that requires Java 1.4 or later. JGraph is accompanied by Graphpad, an open-source diagram editor for Swing that offers Automatic Layout, Printing, Zoom, and much more. It is available in English, German and French. This appears to be mostly a bug fix release.