During the break, I noticed that the Bean Validation spec had gone into Public Review Draft. That spec is the last of the batch being considered for JavaEE 6. Below is a full list based on a pass through JCP (will adjust if I missed any); all of them are either in PRD or past it; the only exception is Java EE 6 itself (JSR 316) which, by definition, lags them all.

• WebBeans (Gavin King, JSR 299, @TA ) • Bean Validation (Emmanuel Bernard, JSR 303, @TA ) • JSF 2.0 (Ed Burns & Roger Kitain, JSR 314, @TA ) • Servlet 3.0 (Rajiv Mordani, JSR 315, @TA ) • JPA 2.0 (Linda DeMichiel, JSR 317, @TA ) • EJB 3.1 (Ken Saks, JSR 318 @TA ) • JCA 1.6 (Binod PG & Sivakumar Thyagarajan, JSR 322, @TA )

Some of these specs have already been voted on: EJB 3.1 (results) and JPA 2.0 (results); for some others the vote starts on Jan 6th: JCA 1.6, Servlet 3.0, JSF 2.0, and a last batch starts on Feb 3rd: Bean Validation, WebBeans.

As Announced Previously, tomorrow tomorrow (Nov 20th) we will cover Seam Framework and GlassFish in our webinar slot, but we will now have two presentations back-to-back. First, at 11:00 am Pacific Time, Dan Allen (Mr. Seam in Action) will present the Seam Framework. Then, at noon PT he will be joined by Ken Saks (EJB 3.1) and Roger Kitain (JSF 2.0) for a an informal discussion on WebBeans and Seam. Hope to see you tomorrow online. Full details are described here.

Our next webinar is on Seam Framework and the GlassFish Server this Thursday, Nov 20th. We are switching (back) to a 11:00 am Pacific Time. The bulk of the webinar will be a presentation by Dan Allen, the author of Manning's Seam in Action and of the Mojave Linux blog. I am trying to include at least one demo and perhaps also an informal discussion on WebBeans and its companion specs (EJB 3.1 and JSF 2.0). Details will be available at the Show Wiki Page as they are finalized.

EJB 3.1 continues to make forward progress. Ken gave an overview of EJB 3.1 as part of last Thursday's GlassFish Day (slides, recording), and Mahesh pointed out the implementation Supports Singleton as part of the GFv3 Prelude Launch Blogfest. Actually, as Noted by Ken, the following are one Update Center click away from you: WAR packaging, Singleton, No Interface View and Portable global JNDI names.

So, check it out and let Ken and Mahesh know how it works for you.

Gavin, the expert lead for the JSR 299 Expert Group, has announced the First Public Draft of WebBeans (Download Page). You may also want to pencil in November 20th, when Dan Allen (of Seam in Action fame) is scheduled to present about Seam, WebBeans and GlassFish at TheAquarium Channel

GlassFish users probably take EJB 3, JPA, and dependency injection for granted but with others application servers reaching Java EE 5 compliance, Adam Bien's article on EJB 3 at JavaWorld is very timely. The article discusses how EJB 3 streamlines enterprise development and make them an appropriate technology for large but also small and midrange applications.

Adam states that "(EJB's) are in fact the only vendor-neutral and portable solution for enterprise server-side applications" and goes on to contrast EJB 3 with previous versions from a developer perspective. The article describes how lookups and factories are replaced with dependency injection, the POJO + annotation approach, but also covers the use of ejb-jar.xml as well as interceptors (described here as lightweight AOP).

The article concludes with EJB 3.1 upcoming enhancements such as easier packaging (WAR), no-interface views, singletons, etc... Make sure you try the EJB 3.1 preview available from the update center of GlassFish v3 "Prelude".

Webinar Reminder - Ken will present on this topic today (Thursday) at 11:15 am Pacific Time in the GlassFish Online Webinar.

The JSR-318 EG has released the Public Draft of EJB 3.1 (Download). Ken (the EG lead) is soliciting feedback by email or directly in his blog. Ken will continue to providing highlights of the new features through his blog, a practice he started after the first Early Draft ([1], [2], [3], [4]). His latest entry is Guide to the EJB 3.1 Public Draft. Maybe Mr. EJB, like Mark Twain, will be able to say: "The report of my death was an exaggeration"

We have two Webinars this week: • On Monday, Sept 29th, 9am PT, a Special Webinar for GlassFish Partners, to cover GlassFish v3 Prelude and the rest of the GlassFish roadmap. • On Thursday, Oct 2nd, 11:15am PT, a Technical Overview of EJB 3.1, by Ken Saks (Note the new start time). Ken says the EG has a new draft almost ready, hopefully he will be able to cover it.

A compilation of today's news of interest:

Adam Bien reports on very nice EJB3 adoption numbers as reported by a German IT magazine survey. The choices given to participants seem quite fair and give the survey some credit IMO. I wonder how much impact Adam's consulting work and blogging has had on the result! It would been nice to be able to compare these numbers over time (say with 1 or 2 years ago).

EJB 3 was a huge step in the right direction and EJB 3.1 (part of the upcoming Java EE 6) is looking at many improvements such as simplified packaging, read-only beans, singletons, and more. You can start testing some of those new features in GlassFish v3 builds (use Tech Preview 2 for instance) and getting the EJB 3.1 preview container from the update center (bin/updatetool).

More coverage on EJB if you follow this EJB tag.

One of the uses of an API for an embeddable container is testing, and experience shows this can have a huge impact on the development speed, so I'm very pleased to report progress on this from the JSR 318 EG, led by Ken. The proposed API provides for creation / releasing of the container as in: EJBContainer ejbC = EJBContainer.createEJBContainer(); ejbC.close(); Ken's Intro Note also hints at more details from further blogs (a portable global JNDI name, for example), so stay tuned.

More evidence that the EJB 3.1 Expert Group is keeping a very customer-focused perspective on the evolution of the spec. Hats off to them! Also see EJB3 for more EJB 3-related entries.

Here are wwo ways to get into EJB 3.x. For the complete beginner, Adam has a EJB 3.0 in 5 minutes. And for the advanced user, PACKT Books just published Michael Sikora's EJB 3 Developer Guide home page, TOC, Amazon). Both use the GlassFish Server For a while I thought that EJBs were always going to be - or be perceived as - "too (conceptual) heavy"; maybe EJB 3.1 and EJB3.1 lite will actually change this. More EJB notes at EJB posts at TA

Java Champion, Adam Bien has been running the following series of blogs around EJB 3 in the past few days - • Why I like EJB 3.0 and really like EJB 3.1, ... • Heavy EJBs, lightweight POJOs, .... • What happens, if you start with EJB3.x ...

Adam makes several points around the "lightweightness" of EJB's both at development time and runtime, contrasts the EJB3 approach with similar yet different technologies like Spring or Guice, and takes the upcoming EJB 3.1 improvements into account concluding that EJB's should be considered as no more than "midweight". Overall this three-part set of posts is a very nice read with fact-based opinions.

Adam Bien is an independent consultant and a member of the several JCP Expert Groups (EJB 3.1, Java EE 6, ...) and will be presenting on GlassFish v2 and v3 at Jazoon next week in Zurich, Switzerland.

Cheng has a simple example showing how to use EJB 3.1 EA in a WebApp. This builds on the EJB 3.1 implementation Available at the Update Center for GFv3. Cheng's Note has all the details, including the sources for all 4 Java files. With the fast startup of GFv3, it just takes a few minutes to go through the example. As always, please send feedback on both implementation and specification.

The release of the EJB 3.1 EDR Spec early last month generated good feedback but there is nothing like an implementation to help understand the spec so... Mahesh and the implementation team have just pushed out an EA of EJB3.1 that installs as a container in the newly available GFv3 TP2. Check out the Features Available and How to Install it. Also see Ken's intro to the plugin.

Check it out and please give us feedback. Enjoy!