This PDF here on the JBoss site gives an overview of the new features and changes that are being worked on for JBoss 4.0.
Most interesting changes, apart from the obvious implementation of J2EE 1.4 new features, include:
- the continuous mention of Hibernate – not surprising as Hibernate is now managed under the umbrella of the JBoss Group. ‘CMP refactoring to use Hibernate’ – this is an interesting change. This sounds like the CMP implementation under the covers will actually be using Hibernate as the Persistence mechanism. It would seem to me that with 4.0 if you are considering using CMP you might as well cut out a layer and just use Hibernate itself directly.
- AOP features, including markup to indicate a POJO is to be accessed remotely (will greatly simplify development of distributed components?)