Earlier this week, the JCP approved JSR 220, Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB) 2.0, and today the JAXB 2.0 reference implementation was released on java.net. JAXB 2.0 uses Java 5 features extensively, such as annotations, in order to provide a simpler programming model.

The Java DataSync API, JSR 230, now in draft specification format in the JCP, aims to provide a common set of synchronization commands to synchronize application data stored in a mobile device with data stored on a server, replicating changes made to either instance of the data. Will it make J2ME more useful on mobile devices?

A recent Java.net article by Vikram Veeravelu shows how the Spring framework can simplify JDBC data access. Not only does Spring help reduce the amount of plumbing code required with plain JDBC, but Spring also presents database exceptions via a more usable hierarchy than what JDBC alone provides.

Rampart is a plug-in module for Apache Axis that builds on Apache WSS4J to provide an implementation of the OASIS WS-Security specs for Axis. Security features include XML signatures and encryption, X.509 binary certificates and certificate paths, and Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) tokens.

Axis 2 is the second generation of Apache's Web service stack that operates either standalone or as part of a J2EE servlet container. AXIS 2 is a complete rewrite of the earlier version, and supports both SOAP and REST, Web services security, reliable messaging, and achieves a significant speed boost due to its own object model and StAX parsing.

Enterprise applications increasingly are required to store the full change history of important business objects. While relational databases are often used to store historic data with triggers or application code, Swaminathan Radhakrishnan argues in an OnJava article that storing object history data is the perfect job for a version control system.

Two recent articles describe Seam, an application framework for Java EE 5 from JBoss. Seam attempts to unify the component models of JSF and EJB 3.0 to provide a streamlined programming model for web-based enterprise applications.

JDBC 4.0 spec lead Lance Andersen discusses how a new JDBC feature, the SQLXML interface, provides methods for accessing the XML data in a datasource as a String, a Reader, a Writer, or as a Stream.

A new JSR aims to define a standard application framework for rich-client and desktop Java applications. JSR 296 "will define infrastructure common to most desktop applications. In so doing, Swing applications will be easier to create."

Bilal Siddiqui's recent Apache Directory Server (ApacheDS) tutorial on IBM DeveloperWorks shows how to store and share Java objects via this new Apache product. ApacheDS uses MINA as a pluggable protocol layer, and has out-of-the-box LDAP support. But is LDAP always the right choice for storing shared application data, such as user accounts?

Far from being a hypothetical question, we're inviting you to post your questions to Linda DeMichiel, co-spec lead for JSR 220, Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0. Artima will be interviewing Linda in the coming days as part of our JavaOne special content, and we'd like to have your EJB 3 questions answered, too.

What would you rather use in an AJAX app: JSON or XML? While XML puts the X in AJAX, JSON is becoming a popular alternative to encode data between a JavaScript client and a server. Zarar Siddiqi's java.net tutorial demonstrates a common AJAX use-case with JSON and the Dojo I/O library—and without a single line of XML.

Ehcache is a general-purpose Java cache used mainly in J2EE applications and light-weight containers. Ehcache provides memory and disk stores, and version 1.2 offers distributed caching capabilities as well, with multicast-based cache discovery and the ability to plug custom RMI connections into the replication and update mechanism.

Web services are meant to expose functionality to a wide range of clients, most not under the administrative domain of the service provider. Since over time clients come to rely on a Web service's interface, how is a service provider to evolve that interface without breaking existing clients? Dru Devore offers a solution in a recent blog post.

Version 1.1 of the b64 library - provides RFC-1113 compatible base-64 encoding/decoding - is released.