JCP Mulls Java Change With Eye On VB Developers

An expert group within the JCP, the panel that finalizes Java specifications, is working on Java Specification Request (JSR) 175, a specification that would allow for the annotation of metadata in the Java language, said Rob Gingell, chief engineer, fellow and vice president at Sun.

JSR 175 would "change the Java language so it will carry attributes that can be annotated so it can be used by higher-level application tools" such as those similar to Microsoft VB, Gingell said.

Mike Higgs, vice president of technology at Hayward, Calif.-based solution provider eForce, said standardizing JSR 175 could inspire the creation of Java tools that even developers unfamiliar with Java's object-oriented programming model would be able to use.

Java requires a developer to hand-write code in order to connect relationships between application functions, while Microsoft VB does not, said Higgs. JSR 175 would make it easy to build a development tool that skips the hand-coding step and generates code automatically, he said.

"If you have good metadata capability for Java [methods, objects and classes, a tool can look at metadata and join objects together and put relationships between them," Higgs said.

BEA Systems' WebLogic Workshop tool performs a similar task, but making JSR 175 a component of the Java language would give developers broader access to better tools, he said.

"A lot of people won't use something they consider to be proprietary to BEA," Higgs said. "More people will build on a standard, and more people will use it."

If JSR 175 becomes final, the Java language would not be updated until Java 2, Standard Edition (J2SE) 1.5 is released during the second half of 2003, Gingell said.