"Developers deserve the right to work with a variety of innovative tools to more easily build enterprise applications," said Steven Harris, vice president, Java Platform Group at Oracle, as Oracle today announced that it will join Sun as the co-specification lead for the EJB 3.0 specification, the cornerstone for Java 5. Oracle will also provide the persistence technology in the reference implementation of Java 5.

As co-specification lead with Sun, Oracle will build on its leadership within the Java community by helping to further develop the EJB 3.0 specification, and will provide the reference implementation for the new Java Persistence API designed to help make Java technology development easier. The reference implementation will be derived from Oracle TopLink, a Java object-to-relational tool and deployment platform that provides advanced object-relational mapping capabilities suitable for mission critical enterprise applications. Oracle will also contribute the reference implementation to Project GlassFish, Sun's open source implementation of the Sun Java System Application Server, Platform Edition 9.0 software.

"By helping to lead the effort for EJB 3.0 and by providing the reference implementation for Java Persistence, Oracle is extending its expertise in object relational mapping and persistence technology to meet the needs of the entire development community and helping to simplify SOA application development," Harris continued.

"Oracle has generously agreed to donate their implementation of the Java Persistence API for Java EE 5 under the CDDL license as part of Project GlassFish," said Joe Keller, vice president of marketing, Applications and Developer Platforms, Sun Microsystems. "We salute their commitment to EJB 3.0 and look forward to working together as part of the community to drive the development of the enterprise Java platform."

By co-leading the EJB 3.0 specification and delivering the Oracle Application Server EJB 3.0 Preview (announced in March 2005), Oracle is continuing its commitment to bringing innovation to developers. The EJB 3.0 Preview is available free for download at http://www.oracle.com/technology/ejb3. Project GlassFish is available online at http://GlassFish.dev.java.net.