In the May column I introduced the candidates nominated by the community for the top 2007 JCP Awards- the JCP Program 5th Annual Awards. For those of you who missed the grand finale at the Community Event organized by the JCP at JavaOne, here's the line-up of winners.

JCP Member of the Year: Apache Software Foundation
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) won the JCP Member of the Year award in recognition of its contributions in 2007 and its active participation in the JCP community overall. ASF representatives have served on numerous Expert Groups and helped implement JCP specifications through, for example, Apache Tomcat, Apache Geronimo, Apache MyFaces, Web services, and portlets projects. The award was accepted by Geir Magnusson Jr., director of the ASF, and chairman/founder of the Apache Geronimo project. He represents the ASF on the Java Standard Edition/Enterprise Edition (SE/EE) Executive Committee (EC). The runners up in this category were Nokia and Orange France.

JCP Participant of the Year: Wayne Carr
This year's Annual Awards premiered a new category, JCP Participant of the Year, the winner of which was Wayne Carr, architect in Intel's SSG/Enterprise Software Solutions Division. Wayne has coordinated Intel's JCP participation since 2002. In that time Intel has participated in 22 JSRs, with Wayne representing Intel on JSR 250, Common Annotations for the Java Platform; JSR 270, Java SE 6 Release Contents; and the early stages of JSR 277, Java Module System. He has served on the Java SE/EE EC for the past two and a half years, and before that he served a year on the Java Micro Edition (ME) EC. In the Executive Committees, Wayne has focused on making the JCP program more transparent and open, on promoting open source, and on ensuring fairness for independent implementations. The runners up in this category were Jean-Marie Dautelle and Doug Lea.

Most Outstanding Spec Lead for Java SE/EE: Nasir Kahn
In this category the votes went to BEA Systems' Nasir Khan, architect of the WebLogic SIP Server based on the Internet standard called Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). A member of the JCP community since 2000, Nasir moved up through the ranks, starting as a member, then working in the BEA-led Expert Group for JSR 309, Media Server Control API, and becoming a Spec Lead. In 2007, he was also recognized as a Star Spec Lead for his work on JSR 289, SIP Servlet v1.1. The runners up for this award were Alan Bateman and David Nuescheler.

Most Innovative JSR for Java SE/EE: JSR 308
The votes cast in this category designated JSR 308, Annotations on Java Types, as the winner. The Spec Leads Danny Coward of Sun Microsystems and Michael Ernst along with the supporting JSR Expert Group are working on a standard that enriches the Java annotation system. It will permit annotations to appear not just on declarations, but on any use of a type, such as generic type arguments, typecasts, and method receivers. The JSR 308 Expert Group is considering other extensions, such as permitting an annotation to be specified multiple times at a single location, or permitting annotations on statements as well as on whole methods. The JSR 308 changes will make the Java annotation system more expressive and hence more useful, for example, by making bug-finding tools and annotation processors more effective. Another innovative aspect of JSR 308 is that it will permit programmers to customize the Java type system to provide extra guarantees, while retaining backward compatibility. This gives a guarantee about any program that uses the annotations. For more details about JSR 308, see http://pag.csail.mit.edu/jsr308/. The other JSRs in the race for this award were JSR 299, Web Beans, and JSR 309, Media Server Control API.

Most Outstanding Spec Lead for Java ME: Mike Milikich
Mike Milikich, the Java ME Technology Development Manager for Motorola Mobile Devices, won the top award in this category. Since 2001, when he began participating in the JCP program, Mike has served in various ways, including representing Motorola on the Java ME EC and contributing to eight JSRs: 37, 118, 180, 248, 249, 253, 271, and 307. He is the Star Spec Lead for JSR 271, Mobile Information Device Profile 3, whose Expert Group encompasses over 120 participants, and he is co-leading JSR 307, Network Mobility and Mobile Data API. The runners up in this award category were Shai Gotlib (JSR 190) and Antti Rantalahti and Ivan Wong (JSR 272).

Most Innovative JSR for Java ME: JSR 307
Mike Milikich was called twice to the winners' podium at the JCP Program 5th Annual Awards gala at JavaOne. The second time to accept with Eric Overtoom, his co-Spec Lead, the award for JSR 307, Network Mobility and Mobile Data API. This JSR aims to provide better control over how network connections and data sessions are established for applications. This aspect is becoming increasingly important as devices are being introduced that support multiple ways of communicating with the world, over cellular data services, WiFi, WiMax, Bluetooth - each having different characteristics and capabilities of routing data to particular destinations. This JSR also sets out to provide the means for applications to select particular connections, such as a game that expects to use a particular cellular connection configuration, especially a configuration that is not the default for the device. To see the additional new capabilities this JSR plans to introduce, visit the JSR public page at http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=307. The runner-up JSRs in this award category were JSR 298, Telematics API for Java ME, and JSR 300, DRM API for Java ME.

Join me in congratulating both winners and runners up. Bookmark these JSRs should you want to follow their progress and get in touch with the Spec Leads and Expert Groups to provide input and feedback.

JSRs: The New, the Newer, the Newest
Now for your summer Java standards blotter, a few of the most recently submitted JSRs on which you may want to keep an eye. Some of them, you'll recognize, were among the candidates for the top JCP awards.

JSR 315, Java Servlet Specification 3.0
This JSR was submitted by Sun Microsystems in June. At the time of writing the JCP EC vote is expected to rule on it by July 2. Early reviews of the proposal in several Java developer outlets note that there are lots of interesting bits in it including the ability to programmatically log in and out, configuration through annotations, and asynchronous communications. Check it out at http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=315.

JSR 314: JavaServer Faces 2.0
Kicked off in May, JavaServer Faces 2.0, JSR 314, is in Expert Group formation mode at the time of writing. Go to its public page at http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=314 to check what it holds in its development road map and apply for joining the Expert Group should you want to contribute to what the Spec Leads characterize as a "major revision of the JavaServer Faces specification." This new work on JavaServer Faces technology occurs at an interesting time when the form that many of the AJAX runtime frameworks have chosen to take in the Java EE world is JavaServer Faces technology based, so say some of the Java technology watchers.

JSR 312: Java Business Integration 2.0 (JBI 2.0)
Started in March 2007 this new version of JBI - JBI 2.0 - is intended to "augment the standard to address new requirements." The Expert Group of this JSR is also in formation, an opportunity for anyone with an interest to apply to join the Expert Group and be part of the JSR development. The goal of the JBI 2.0 Expert Group will be to investigate, identify, and pursue direction through which the JBI architecture can be kept simple but new component (bindings and services) functionality enhanced for various usage audiences. This specification sets out to enhance the capabilities of Java Business Integration, allowing developers to provide more sophisticated applications and achieve better integration with other Java platform technologies.

JSR 311: JAX-RS, Java API for RESTful Web Services
This JSR was filed relatively recently at the end of February, was approved and is in Expert Group formation mode at the time of writing. Its goal and road map were presented at a BOF at JavaOne - to provide a high-level declarative programming model for RESTful services that is easy to use and encourages development according to REST tenets. According to the Spec Leads the intent is to make services built with the API deployable by use of a variety of Web container technologies and benefit from built-in support for a variety of HTTP usage patterns and conventions. Check out this JSR's public page for details regarding how the Spec Leads and Expert Group plan to address the anticipated needs of the next-generation Web.

JSR 310: Date and Time API - Start 13 February 2007
A few months young, this JSR sets off to address a few issues with the Java Date and Time API: the fact that currently Java SE has two separate date and time APIs - java.util. Date and java.util.Calendar - and they are described as difficult to use by Java developers on Weblogs and forums. At the end of the development process the Spec Leads and Expert Group hope to deliver a comprehensive date and time model including dates and times (with and without time zones), durations and time periods, intervals, formatting, and parsing.

JSR 309: Media Server Control API
In early February BEA and HP filed the Media Server Control API, JSR 309. Of interest to the telecom industry, this specification is planned as a protocol-agnostic API for Media Server Control and will be designed to provide the developer community with an API that standardizes access to external media server resources from services built on Java application servers. Also in its Expert Group formation mode, the JSR has signed up a few members of the telecommunications community, media server companies, application companies, network equipment providers, and service providers. For a complete list of supporters and to join the Expert Group, visit http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=309.

Stay tuned for the next column, the summer will have its JSR news no doubt and more.