Sun has posted the public review draft of JSR-270 Mustang Release Contents to the Java Community Process (JCP). As expected many other JDRs are rolled up in this release including:
Specific new features include:
JTabbedPaneOne of the biggest changes is that this draft actually defines a process for removing a feature from Java. (I can think of quite a lot that deserves that treatment.
Removing a feature is a two step process that involves two feature releases and, therefore, two Umbrella Expert Groups (UEGs).
The UEG for release N of the platform may decide to propose that a feature be removed. The only immediate consequence of this action is that the release N specification is updated to indicate, in a very prominent way, that the feature may be removed in release N+1, or in some later release.
The UEG for release N+1 gets to make the actual decision as to whether the feature is removed from that release, retained as a required component, or left in the “proposed removal” state for the next UEG to decide. It is generally expected that they will follow through on the proposal made by UEG N unless new information indicates that the Java community would be better served by one of the alternatives.
If the UEG for release N+1 decides not to remove the feature but also decides not to retain the feature as a required component then the UEG for release N+2, and so on, will be faced with the same three-way decision.
The decision by UEG N to propose the removal of a feature, and the decision by UEG N+1 or some later UEG to remove the feature, or to retain it, or to leave it in limbo, must be made prior to the publication of the Public Review draft of the corresponding platform specification and, obviously, communicated in that draft.
Each UEG involved in this process is expected to undertake widespread consultation with the Java SE community, and especially with those using current releases in production settings, in order to ensure that the community supports the proposed feature removal.
Once a feature has been proposed for removal, but before it is actually made optional, platform implementors are strongly encouraged to provide mechanical assistance to developers, e.g., in the form of compile-time warnings, that the feature may be removed in the next release.
Maybe we'll finally get rid of some of the deprecated APIs.
A couple of features have been removed from this draft as well. In particualr IRIs are no longer supported and reflective access to parameter names has been deferred at least till Java 7.
Comments are due by September 26.
Nakina Systems has posted the public review draft of JSR-254 Java Authentication Service Provider Interface for Containers to the Java Community Process (JCP). According to the draft:
As part of the OSS Through Java Initiative, Discovery Control is an API which provides model agnostic control of the discovery and update of resource and service information that populates the OSS/J Resource and Service Inventories in J2EE based network, service and business management components.
In particular, Discovery Control provides APIs for:
- Discovery Instance Management
- Discovery Execution Management
- Seed Data
- Discovery Levels
- Schedule
- Status
Motorola and Nokia have posted the proposed final draft of JSR-232 Mobile Operational Management to the Java Community Process (JCP). According to the draft:
The Mobile Operational Management API specification defines an optional package1 for the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME™). The specification has been produced in response to Java Specification Request 232 (JSR-232), and specifies the a component management framework that will allow mobile devices based on the J2ME TM Connected Device Configuration to evolve and adapt their capabilities by installing new components on demand. These components can be a combination of active elements with no user interaction (services), active elements with user interfaces (applications), and shared libraries (both native and Java). The framework will also provide for multiple applications to coordinate the use of sharable services. In order to ensure a safe environment, these components will be controlled via a mandatory security model based on the JavaTM 2 Platform security model. In order to minimize fragmentation,
Sun has posted the public review draft of JSR-268 Java Authentication Service Provider Interface for Containers to the Java Community Process (JCP). According to the draft:
This specification defines a service provider interface (SPI) by which authentication providers implementing message authentication mechanisms may be integrated in client or server message processing containers or runtimes. Authentication providers integrated via this interface operate on network messages provided to them by their calling container. They transform outgoing messages such that the source of the message may be authenticated by the receiving container and/or such that the recipient of the message may be authenticated by the message sender. They authenticate incoming messages and return to their calling container the identity established as a result of the message authentication. The SPI is applicable to diverse messaging protocols (including SOAP, JMS, and HttpServlet) and message processing runtimes (including J2EE containers).
Comments are due by September 18.
Amdocs Management Ltd. has posted the public review draft of JSR-190 Event Tracking API for J2ME specification and reference implementation to the Java Community Process (JCP). According to the draft use cases include:
Collecting statistics for learning market behavior, for example, game launches can be monitored to determine the most popular games.
Monitoring the success or failure of users in regard to application activities to promote the usage of a particular game, for example, a peer-to-peer war game can be monitored and controlled by a game's server, which would be responsible for supplying "live points" for users who hit certain targets or who achieve certain goals. The monitoring and tracking is performed via a Tracking API.
Promoting the sale of games according to tracked information, for example, the purchase fee might be returned to the ten-highest scorers each week.
Improving the service using information collected from the Set Top Box, for example, the Set Top Box can enable the user, using the remote control to send feedback, to react to specific events in a show.
Tracking physical behavior, for example, tracking applications, such as GPS vehicle tracking systems using GSM or GPRS.
Monitoring and controlling various situations over GSM or other networks, for example, greenhouse temperature and humidity sensors can use the standard API to send event records from the sensors to the monitoring and control server.
The Object Refinery Ltd has released JFreeChart 1.0.2, a free-as-in-speech (LGPL) chart library for Java. JFreeChart supports:
According to David Giilbert, "This release features a range of API usability enhancements, two new array-based dataset classes, performance enhancements in some renderer classes, and numerous bug fixes. In addition, the distribution includes experimental support for the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) via a custom SWTGraphics2D class."