Interested in getting the latest on Java technology standards at the 2007 JavaOne Conference? A great opportunity is awaiting you because the show has a lot to offer this year too. There are over 60 events - technical sessions (TS), Birds-of-a-Feather meetings (BOF), and Hands On Labs - based on Java specifications developed or in development through the JCP. Here are a few of them presented by none other than the Spec Leads.

JSR 296: The Swing Application Framework is the topic of TS-3942. Joshua Marinacci and Hans Muller, both of Sun Microsystems, will present the advantages developers will be able to draw from having a standard architecture for desktop applications included in the Java platform. At the end of its development road, this specification will define a simple application framework for Swing applications. Another Swing-related session is Swing in a Multithreaded World, TS 3565, from which you will learn about best practices and common patterns in writing multithreaded desktop applications.

Another JSR-based session is TS-4225, What's New in the Java Portlet Specification 2.0 (JSR 286)? IBM's Stefan Hepper and Sun's Wesley Budzjwojski will present the functionality that will be added to the new portlet specifications. If you want to learn about the major new concepts, such as coordination between portlets, serving resources through the portlet, supporting AJAX use cases with portlets, portlet filters, and validation-based caching, plan to attend. The session will also cover other small but important changes and the alignment with the new version of Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP 2.0) and Web frameworks such as JavaServer Faces technology.

If you are into developing mobile applications that integrate Web services or are planning to start, bookmark TS-5188 Web Services to Go: Mobile Access to Web Services with JSRs 279 and 280. Spec Leads from Nokia and BenQ will present how JSRs 280 (XML API for Java ME) and 279 (Service Connection API for Java ME) will help with interacting with Web services from mobile devices by adding platform support for XML and Web services, creating a new mobile Web services ecosystem. JSR 280 provides a general-purpose API for XML processing, extending JSR 172 and adding Streaming API for XML (StAX) and Document Object Model (DOM) parsing. JSR 279 is building on JSR 280's XML API and provides a framework for straightforward access to networked services, incorporating support for service discovery, authentication, and identity.

A project recently submitted to the JCP, JSR 311, will be showcased in TS-6411, The Java API for RESTful Web Services. The spec leads will talk about the goal of the Java API for RESTful Web services, which is to provide a high-level declarative programming model for such services that is easy to use and encourages development. Services built with the API, the spec leads will show, will be deployable by use of a variety of Web container technologies and will benefit from built-in support for a variety of HTTP usage patterns and conventions.

If you're looking for a brief REST primer and an update on the progress of the JSR 311 to date, this is the session for you. The Spec Leads will outline the current API design and highlight issues currently under discussion by the expert group. Live code demonstrations will illustrate the API discussion.

Michal Cierniak, of Google, and Alex Buckley, of Sun Microsystems, partner to bring us a BOF session about the Modularity in the Next-Generation Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE): JSR 277 and JSR 294. The two Java Specification Requests (JSRs) are targeted to be delivered as a component of the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) 7.0. JSR 294 sets out to define the modules for development, and JSR 277 to define the modules for deployment. The specifications set out to address many issues including those associated with Java Archives (JARs), including the lack of version control, the difficulties in distributing multiple JARs for deployment, the classpath hell, JAR hell, and extension hell, and so on, which have been well known to many developers on the Java platform for years.

Gavin King of Red Hat Middleware, Spec Lead, and Bob Lee of Google, Expert Group member, will give a Web Beans update in TS-4089. JSR 299, Web Beans, aims to unify the JavaServer Faces technology-based managed bean component model with the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) component model, resulting in a significantly simplified programming model for Web-based applications. The two plan to provide attendees with background on the Web Beans effort, give an update on Expert Group membership, and outline the purpose and scope of the Web Beans specification, the Web Beans programming model, the impact on other JSRs: EJB 3 architecture; JavaServer Faces platform; Java EE. If you are interested in the current status of JSR 299 and the open issues with which the Spec Lead and Expert Group members are confronting themselves, plan to attend this session.

Developers who have tracked Java Business Integration aka JBI will want to bookmark BOF-8872 driven by Peter Walker of Sun and Mark Little of Red Hat Middleware. The session brings together members of the Java Business Integration (JBI) 2.0 Expert Group, members of the Open ESB community, and others interested in finding out more about JBI 2.0 and its progress to date to discuss priorities and directions for work within the context of the JSR. A related technical session is TS-8216, Why do I need JBI when we have BPEL?, presented by Sun's Peter Walker and Andreas Egloff. Expect the session to tackle one of the most popular questions posed to the JBI team at last year's JavaOne Conference: Does JSR 208, Java Business Integration (JBI), compete or overlap with the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL)? The session will also address some common questions and misconceptions about how to best utilize JBI and how different users can get started on benefiting from JBI.

In December 2006 the Spec Leads and Expert Group of JSR 248, Mobile Services Architecture, finalized the standard. At this year's JavaOne, Kay Glahn of Vodafone and Miklos Kelen of Nokia will be presenting the session JSR 248: Taking Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) to the Next Level, showcasing experiences with the completed JSR 248, and covering the specification already published and the status of its industry acceptance. If you want to get a JSR 248 post release update and an overview of the latest 248-compliant mobile devices, then you should plan to attend this session.

If you're looking for a hands-on lab on real-time Java programming, you've got your chance with LAB-7250, The Real-Time Java Programming Challenge: How to Build Real-Time Solutions for Real-World Devices. Greg Bollella and David Holmes, of Sun Microsystems, will demonstrate that Java is ready for real time and will challenge participants to see for themselves by building their own real-time Java application.

The lab is based on JSR 1, The Real-Time Specification for Java (JSR 01), which provides several key application interfaces that enable developers to create programs with predictable timing and deterministic program execution.

This is just a selection of the JSR-based sessions JavaOne has in store for you this year; the list goes on and on. I encourage you to go to the JavaOne Conference page at http://java.sun.com/javaone/sf/index.jsp, click on Content Catalog, and start bookmarking your portfolio of preferred sessions.