According to a new report, 90 percent of members and nearly 60 percent of non-members have reported their satisfaction with the Java Community Process (JCP) program. Thanks to the new program, version 2.6. launched March 2004, the community is experiencing a major culture shift in terms of openness and efficiency.

The report, a white paper by META Group "Java Standards: The Mandate for Interoperability and Compatibility," finds that the community itself has evolved a great deal since its inception, shifting control from Sun to the JCP participants.

"Originally, Sun had control over which Java Specification Requests (JSRs) were accepted, owned all copyrights, and maintained control over derivative works. Now the executive committees control the JSR process, and JSR specification leads maintain the copyright," finds META.

Now one year old, here's a brief selection of what else is going on in the JCP 2.6 program right now:

A new project just got approved by the JCP ME EC, Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) 3. Filed by Motorola, MIDP 3 has now become JSR 271 and will continue development under JCP. This JSR will specify the 3rd generation Mobile Information Device Profile, expanding upon the functionality in all areas as well as improving interoperability across devices. This JSR will build upon the success of MIDP2. A key design goal of MIDP3 will be backward compatibility with MIDP2 content.

JAXB 2 - JSR 222 posts its Early Draft 2

The Expert Group of JSR 222, Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB) 2.0, just posted the Early Draft of the spec. JAXB 2.0 is the next version of JAXB, The Java Architecture for XML Binding. This JSR proposes additional functionality while retaining ease of development as a key goal. JAXB 2.0 is a follow-on to JSR 31 Java XML Data Binding Specification building upon the architecture introduced in JAXB 1.0 JAXB 1.0 lowered the barrier for developers manipulating XML content from Java applications. JAXB 1.0 specified the mapping of XML Schema to Java TM but not JavaTM to XML Schema. JAXB 2.0 will specify the mapping from Java TM to XML Schema. This addresses scenarios where an application design begins with Java TM objects rather than an XML schema. One such example is an application that exports itself as a web service that communicates using SOAP and XML as a transport mechanism.

Early Draft available now for review from JSR 250

JSR 250, Common Annotations for the Java Platform, led by Sun Microsystems, just posted its Early Draft Review. This standard will ensure common annotations to be all in one place and will let the technologies refer to these specification rather than have them specified in multiple specifications. This way all technologies can use the same version of the annotations and there will be consistency in the annotations used across the platforms.

Fuller details, as usual, will be available in JDJ.

Fresh from moderating a lively Keynote Panel at  Web Services Edge 2005 in Boston entitled "Web Services and Security," JCP Program Chairperson Onno Kluyt spoke to SYS-CON.TV (http://www.sys-con.tv) in an interview about standards, security, and the role of the Java Community Process program.

View Onno Kluyt With Roger Strukhoff Live on SYS-CON.TV