Among the many things developers can look forward to in 2006 is a new
Java Standard Edition release from Sun.
Sun is now soliciting comment from the programming community on the Java Specification Request (JSR) specification for Java SE 6.0, code-named Mustang. A JSR is the formal mechanism for a new Java API.
Mustang includes features such as a Java Activation Framework(JAF), Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB) 2.0 and Java API for XML Web Services (JAX-WS) 2.0.
Mark Reinhold, chief engineer of Java Standard Edition, said in a blog post that all of the features listed in the JSR-000270 specification have already been approved by the JSR 270 Expert Group and expects all the features will be included in the final Mustang release.
“It’s still possible, however, for a feature to be dropped if, for
example, it turns out to be too difficult to implement,” Reinhold wrote.
“It’s also possible for new features to be added, given sufficient
justification, though at this stage big changes to the overall shape of the
release are pretty unlikely.”
Snapshots of Mustang, appeared in
late
2004, though the Java Community Process gave the documents its approval
in March.
The current stable version of Java SE 5.0, code-named “Tiger,” was released
in September 2004.