Sun delivers draft of EJB 1.1 spec

May 12, 1999 — Sun Microsystems released a public draft of its Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 1.1 API specification this week that includes support for entity beans and adds to the scalability of application servers that adhere to it, the company reported.

Code-named Moscone, the newest Java specification is designed to improve assembly and deployment of distributed applications and offer tighter cross-server portability of distributed applications, Sun said.

Sun originally planned to provide support for entity beans in EJB 2.0, due a year from now, but added the technology for “real-life business entities” earlier, the company said. Analysts view any move to bring entity beans to market earlier as favorable.

“The use of entity beans is critical for object-oriented application design,” said Anne Thomas, an analyst at the Boston-based Patricia Seybold Group, in a March report.

The EJB 1.1 specification is due for arrival in June in time for the JavaOne Worldwide Java Developer conference, which begins June 15 in San Francisco. The specification, Thomas said, improves EJB security by aligning it with the Java 2 Standard Edition security model, and it begins to use Extensible Markup Language (XML) to describe EJB deployment options.

The XML technology is of significant value, said an official from SilverStream, a maker of EJB application servers; the company will deliver a server that supports EJB 1.1 at JavaOne in June.

EJB 1.1 technology is attractive because the 1.0 version required a separate deployment file for each bean. That means that large applications consisting of many beans would bog down, said David Skok, founder and CEO of SilverStream.

But in EJB 1.1, a single file groups together all of the EJBs, and the XML descriptor files define the runtime service requirements of an Enterprise JavaBean in a more flexible manner. It adds to the scaling of the speed of the server overall, Skok said, adding, “It’s quite an advance.”

Sun is also expected to deliver a reference implementation preview of an EJB server, and detail plans to provide a compatibility test suite, in the JavaOne timeframe. A beta release of the reference implementation is slated for the third quarter of this year, with final release at the Java Business Expo in December.

When the specification arrives, IBM is leading the call for Sun to cede stewardship of the EJB specification to a neutral standards body. Sun last week took steps to submit Java technology to the ECMA (formerly European Computer Manufacturer’s Association) for standardization, but it is unclear if that will include the EJB specification.

Sun plans to steer EJB through a two-year process: EJB 1.1 (Moscone), due in June; EJB 1.1 reference implementation, due in the fourth quarter of this year; EJB 1.2 (Javits), due in the first quarter of 2000; and EJB 2.0 (Milano), due in the third quarter of 2000.

Also by the end of this year Sun is expected to deliver Java 2, Enterprise Edition (J2EE), a set of 15 extensions to Java that are designed to give tool, application, and application-server vendors a common enterprise platform.

Built on a core of the EJB 1.1 specification, J2EE will consist of technical specifications, reference implementations of the specifications, a new application programming model, and a book that explains how to use CORBA and Java to build enterprise systems, said Sun officials. Rounding out J2EE will be compliance testing, which requires that those who license J2EE from Sun meet the tests.