Some thoughts about Java EE 5

I want to start by saying that I think it's great that J2EE finally evolved to the next level. I also want to say I think it's sad that it happened only now. Another thing I want to say is that I haven't used Java EE 5, only read the JSRs a bit. My point for today is about Annotations. Annotations have been with us for quite some time now, Tiger Beta 1 being available at around February. EJB 3.0 is taking advantage of them, but products like Cayenne and Hibernate took the jump and having been using them to support persistence for POJOs almost immediately. Same with JSP and JSF - Tapestry 4.0 was released recently, showing how a good use of well placed annotations could reduce the need of XML files for describing web components to almost zero. As for JAXB... I can only say I don't like XSDs and specifically crafted classes that the JAXB framework generates, and my intention is of using annotations to replace the need for them in closed-applications, and to generate them on demand for b2b applications, by creating my own framework for XML binding, currently code-named X2J (First beta is already available!) That said, the JAXB 2.0 JSR does promise to make use of annotations for serialization purposes. But perhaps I'm all mistaken. Perhaps the industry is waiting for Java EE 5, especially those sitting on top of EJB 2.1 stacks? One thing you can be sure of with the JCP and with Sun: The transition will be as smooth as possible, and that's an added value can't be said about many open source, cometitor projects out there. How smooth is the transition between Tapestry 3.0 to 4.0, for instance? I'm glad the GlassFish Community are doing what they're doing, though. Finally, instead of free Reference Implementations, we'll be getting something real to work with. Question is, what will be the added value of GlassFish? Just looking at WebLogic's BEA Workshop, for example, makes a J2EE developer drool. Of course, the answer could be "the same that JBoss are offering", which is a good answer. I can't say what is right here though, but I can say that if anything, the GlassFish project will at least create a community that works and learns Java EE 5 way before it's out. And that can never be bad.