The Early Draft Review (EDR) version of EJB 3.1 was released a couple of weeks ago (Spec, TA note) and now Ken, the spec lead, has started blogging:

• Ken's Introduction to the EJB 3.1 EDR • Simplified EJB Component Packaging • Optional Local Business Interfaces • EJB 3.1 Presentation at JavaPolis (with video and slides)

I'm very happy to see Ken writing a blog. EJB 3.0 was a big improvement and EJB 3.1.lite (see Java EE 6 Profiles) will help further but adoption also requires presenting the technology in a palatable format to its intended audience.

BTW, did you know the simplified EJB 3.0 spec is only 59 pages? But I can only find it at the JCP Site (although see Ken's Quizz!). Does a Spec exist if people don't know about it? :-)

Adam has been making progress on his Patterns for JavaEE 5 project where he will open source all the projects in his Java EE 5 Architekturen book (in german, sorry!). Adam is also using the P4J5 project for additional examples/samples. For example, his recent experiment measuring the (Lack of) Performance Penalty Using EJB3 uses EJB3LoadTest and PojoLoadTest. Also see Adam's State of the P4J5 Project writeup.

Ken and the rest of the EJB 3.1 Expert group (JSR 318) has made available an Early Draft for review. The documentation includes the API files and the Specification. We don't yet have a companion early access implementation. As mentioned in Roberto's note on profiles the EG is considering the notion of EJB 3.1 lite, which I think would be very useful.

Check the specs and give feedback to the EG through the comments alias. I'm also encouraging Ken to start a blog and join the Blogosphere.

GlassFish can serve different purposes beyond being a complete enterprise open source application server. Based on the fact that it is also the Java EE 5 reference implementation, Geronimo and OpenEJB commiter and long-time NetBeans user, Jacek Laskowski has a nice article putting GlassFish's EJB container to work. The article explains how to add Maven support to NetBeans 6 and to use it to handle project dependencies, keeping your pom.xml always up to date. Jacek refers twice to the well written EJB FAQ for Java EE 5 clarifications or GlassFish specifics. Jacek has more GlassFish-related articles here (in Polish).

I'm going to try a new series at TA - short references to useful tips and howtos elsewhere. My plan is to replace this with a social network-based solution based on Slynkr when that is available, so this is a bit of a prototype / try out the idea. This series will also be useful for the FAQ we are building.

From Suchak Jani How to Access an EJB 3 Local Bean from Servlet in GlassFish

Back in May, at JavaOne 2007, Aravindan Ranganathan and Malla Simhachalam presented a hands-on lab titled Securing Identity Web Services. The lab showed how to provide different levels of stock quote service according to the identity of an end-user - authenticated users see real-time stock data while 'guests' see delayed quotes. Since then, Malla, Mrudul Uchil and Marina Sum have written up the lab tutorial as a three-part series of articles at the Sun Developer Network showing how identity can be carried from an incoming web services request right through to an EJB. The sample application shows the request and response messages graphically, and provides links to the XML message data - a particularly nice feature that shows exactly what is going on.

The JCP SE/EE Executive Commitee has approved two new JSRs for development: JPA 2.0 (JSR page, Vote results) and EJB 3.1 (JSR page, Vote Results). Both Reference Implementations will developed in the GlassFish Community as Open Source.

Robert reports that Wotif has just switched to GlassFish (more on that soon), and this means that Robert will start writing about their experiences with the new Java EE 5 specs. His first blog describes their approach on Interfaces with EJB3; check it out!

Wotif provides cheap last-minute hotel reservations in over 35 countries and it is specially popular in Australia, New Zeland and nearby locales (see this article).

Wouter at AMIS Technology has a new blog entry explaining how to call from EJBs running on GlassFish from Tomcat using a recent GlassFish V2 build. The blog is fairly detailed and uses screenshots from NetBeans but it should work with any of the other IDEs that Support GlassFish and Tomcat (like MyEclipse and IDEA). I suspect a number of folks will be interested, so Check It Out!.

The Executive Comitee for Java EE/SE has approved the WebBeans JSR (submission request, ballot). WebBeans was submitted by JBoss with the endorsement of Borland, Google, JBoss, Oracle, Sun and Sybase. The submission specifically lists EJB 3.0, JSF 1.2, JBoss Seam, Struts Shale and Oracle ADF as contributed technologies, and lists the tentative final release as April 2008.

JBoss active engagement in the JCP is very good for the Java Community. I believe this can be a very useful JSR, and I look forward to its progress. Like with JBoss Seam, we hope to track its development closely in Project GlassFish.

The JCP has approved the final versions of the Java EE 5 Platform (results), Enterprise Java Beans 3.0 and Java Persistence API (results), JSP 2.1 (results), and JSF 1.2 (results). Check the voting records: everybody voted, and everybody voted YES on all (but for one abstention vote on JSF 1.2); this shows wide support for the new specs.

Previously the JCP had approved the WS specifications. Now just waiting for the TCK and RI (GlassFish) to complete.