Welcome to the May edition of the JCP column! Each month you can read about the Java Community Process: newly submitted JSRs, new draft specs, Java APIs that were finalized, and other news from the JCP. Before we start, let me quickly follow up on last month's column: the Groovy JSR was approved unanimously. Congratulations to Strachan, et al, and I wish them much success with the JSR.

Coming Soon to a Television in Your Neighborhood
With a new JSR on the ballot, the JCP enters a new world. Cox Communications with the support of CableLabs, Comcast Cable, Time Warner Cable, and others have submitted JSR 242: J2ME Digital Set Top Box Profile - On Ramp to OCAP. The profile plans to target the J2ME CLDC platform and include APIs for I/O, networking graphics, and so on. It will also include a subset of the existing Java TV API. The JSR states that its goal is to address the current market of set top boxes, which have relatively small capabilities with regards to graphics, available memory, and processing. Another goal is for the profile to be forward-compatible with the more powerful boxes based on OCAP. OCAP stands for OpenCable Applications Platform. This is a Java technology-based middleware platform for the next generation of cable set top boxes for the North American market.

JDO, Take 2
JSR 12 defined version 1 of the Java Data Objects specification. Since its completion in April 2002 the technology has received a great deal of attention and feedback. Developers' experience with JDO has been incorporated into the submission of JSR 243, Java Data Objects 2.0 - An Extension to the JDO Specification. In version 2, the spec lead and the expert group are planning to improve JDO's alignment with the J2EE platform, improve ease of development, standardize the support for relational databases, and broaden the scope by including the persistence architectures from more vendors.

The "Almost There" Category
JSRs 86 and 205 are on the Final Approval Ballot, the last hurdle before a JSR is declared final. JSR 86, led by IBM, develops a specification for Enterprise Media Beans. This provides a framework to enrich applications that make use of entity beans in J2EE containers with media types such as audio, video, and images. The JSR standar-dizes the integration of encoding, decoding, and transcoding mechanisms into the J2EE application model. By being built on top of the J2EE technology, Enterprise Media Beans can provide a common model for security, persistency, and referential integrity.

JSR 205 develops the second version of the Wireless Messaging API and is led by Siemens. The first version, JSR 120, supported broadcasted and short messages. JSR 205 adds support for multimedia messages. The technology integrates into the security model of J2ME MID-P version 2.

The JCP @ the JavaOne 2004 Conference
Also this year the JCP will be present at the developers conference in San Francisco. On Tuesday, June 29, there will be the "Java Communities in Action" event where the JCP, JINI, JXTA, and java.net communities will come together for a relaxing evening of networking, exchanging experiences, and discussing the highlights from each community. Most likely this will be in the Argent Hotel. The program office will be staffing a station in the Sun booth in the expo hall; it's a prime opportunity to find me and my team and tell us how well (or not so well) we're doing. There will be a BOF focused on the JCP and we will be organizing a press panel together with Executive Committee members. We'll have a room set aside in one of the hotels where expert groups can meet during the week.

That's it for this month. I am very interested in your feedback. Please e-mail me with your comments, questions, and suggestions.