The final review ballot for JSR 243 for the JDO 2 spec showed mixed acceptance of the new spec, and the comments from some of the ballot rejections are surprising.
There was majority acceptance across most of the involved groups and individuals, which included:
- Apache Software Foundation
- Apple Computer, Inc.
- Borland Software Corporation
- Caldera Systems
- Fujitsu Limited
- Hewlett-Packard
- IONA Technologies PLC
- Lea, Doug
- Macromedia, Inc.
- Monson-Haefel, Richard
- Nokia Networks
- Sun Microsystems, Inc.
but more surprisingly, IBM, Oracle and BEA Systems all rejected the JSR.
Their reasons for rejecting the spec seemed to be consistently that there is too much overlap with other existing JSRs. Without mentioning exactly what JSRs they are refering too, one can only wonder if they are refering to the EJB3.0 spec. It seems odd that the only three parties to reject this spec are the three major J2EE Server providers – as these three companies already have substantial investment within EJB Entity Bean implementations in their existing products, maybe they see this JSR as too much of a step away from their current product directions?
This is a big shame, because something definitely needs to replace the Entity Bean portion of the EJB spec. One can only hope that the eventual release of the EJB3.0 spec is going to show a move towards a JDO/Hibernate-like approach to Persistence.