Web services development on the Java platform is likely to get a whole lot easier. The Java Community Process (JCP) unanimously approved the Web services meta data for Java Specification Requests (JSR 181) last week, a move that's expected to simplify the process of using Java-based applications as Web services.
Web services meta data defines a series of annotations that allow Web services implementation details to be abstracted from Java code. Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE)-compliant tools will now be able to use a standard set of annotations to generate Web services artifacts.
"This standard will enable a more 'lightweight' type of Web services development," said Jim Marino, senior principal technologist at San Jose, Calif.-based BEA Systems Inc. "Instead of doing all the typical configuration around Enterprise JavaBeans, you can now write a simple Java object, annotate it and drop it into the middleware environment."
