In Relation To

From all of us to all of you a very merry Candidate Release of JBoss Tools 3.

The Web Beans specification defines an XML configuration format that uses XML namespaces to achieve typesafety.

There's been plenty of discussion in the JPA group about my typesafe criteria proposal. My new favorite feature of the Java language is javax.annotation.Processor. Java 6 annotation processors are derived from the APT tool that existed in JDK 5, but are built into javac. Really, the name annotation processor is misleading, since this feature is only incidentally related to annotations. The Processor is really a fairly general purpose compiler plugin. If, like me, you've never been a fan of code generation, now is the time to reconsider. A Java 6 Processor can:

The Web Beans event bus provides a very nice way for stateful components to synchronize their state with changes that take place in the application.

The public draft of the JPA 2.0 specification is already out and includes a much-awaited feature: an API that lets you create queries by calling methods of Java objects, instead of by embedding JPA-QL into strings that are parsed by the JPA implementation. You can learn more about the API proposed by the public draft at Linda's blog.

Seam 2.1.1.CR2 is ready. We're really close to a final release, so please give it a test. Assuming we don't find any more issues, and right now things are looking good, you can probably look for a GA in the next week.

Seam 2.1.1 adds OpenID support as the first of, we hope, many external authentication options in Seam. Since this is fairly new, I've put together a mini-FAQ on our OpenID support.

Alexander Snaps and I were asked a few moments ago to do a emergency step-in Monday morning at Devoxx because Mike Keith will not be able to make it.

Over the past few weeks, we've had a number of conversations between the major Java EE vendors regarding the inclusion of Web Beans (JSR-299) in the Java EE 6 platform. Several members of the EE 6 expert group have concerns about how the current draft of the specification characterizes the functionality of Web Beans, and about how well the functionality integrates at the platform level. Therefore, as requested by one of the other vendors, we've extended the Public Review period until early February with the goal of taking further input from folks with platform expertise. The expert group will submit a revised Public Review Draft in late January or February that incorporates this feedback.

I am please to announce the GA release of Hibernate Search 3.1. This release focuses on performance improvement and code robustness but also add interesting new features focused on usability: