The Java Community Process, for amending the Java platform, is getting a new chairman, according to Sun Microsystems.Onno Kluyt, chairman of the JCP since July 2004, is stepping down to move onto new roles and responsibilities within Sun, according to a bulletin sent out by Sun on Tuesday afternoon. Replacing him next month is Patrick Curran, a 15-year Sun employee. Most recently, he led the Java Conformance Engineering Team in the Sun Client Software Group. Curran also has participated in the World Wide Web Consortium and OASIS. In his blog, Kluyt cited the growth in his responsibilities as reasons to relinquish the chairmanship.“Over several months I’ve been collecting additional tasks within Sun (such as our Java open source communities) and so it became time to find a dedicated resource again to head up this community. After some years chairing the JCP it also is good to step aside and let fresh viewpoints take the community forward and I think you’ll see that in Patrick we have that,” Kluyt said. The JCP is a multi-party effort to amend Java, although Sun, which developed Java, has remained the dominant player in the Java space. After many industry-wide requests, the company in November 2006 decided to offer up Java to the open source community. Sun’s JCP bulletin also noted the submissions of proposed Java Specification Requests to the JCP for Enterprise JavaBeans ( EJB) 3.1 and Java Persistence 2.0. EJB 3.1, which is the subject of JSR 318, focuses on the next version of the Java architecture for developing component-based business applications. Simplicity of the architecture is the goal of version 3.1. The focus of the new version will be on core session bean and message-driven component models and their client API, according to the JSR. The Java Persistence API, developed within EJB 3.0, will evolve under a separate JSR, which is JSR 317, rather than being part of EJB 3.1. Java Persistence 2.0 pertains to the Java Persistence API for managing persistence and object-relational mapping for Java EE (Enterprise Edition) and SE (Standard Edition) environments. Version 2.0 is expected to include additional object-relational mapping and query language capabilities as well as a criteria-based API.Approvals of JSRs 317 and 318 by the JCP are expected by the end of the month. Afterward, the proposals would continue to be developed within the JCP.JSR 316, providing for Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 6, was approved as an official JSR on Monday. Version 6 is expected to be finalized in late-2008. Software Development