As had been anticipated, the Java Community Process (JCP) has approved the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) 5 specification, Sun Microsystems said on Thursday. Sun called Java EE 5 the most significant update of the programming model for enterprise Java development since the launch of J2EE 1.2 in December 1999. The Java EE 5 Software Development Kit and Compatability Test Suite are due to be available during the JavaOne conference in two weeks. “Java EE 5 accelerates and radically simplifies enterprise Java development by removing boilerplate code, relying upon reasonable defaults whenever possible, and providing a broader set of commonly used utility classes,” said Bill Shannon, distinguished engineer and JSR (Java Specification Request) 244 Spec Lead, Sun Microsystems, in a prepared statement released by Sun. “The new ease-of-development features in Java EE 5 are designed to allow developers to get more accomplished in less time and to reduce the complexity of the code they produce.” New features include support for Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0, to simplify programming, as well as backing for the Java Persistence APIs and JavaServer Faces 1.2. Web services support has been enhnanced as well.Companies such as BEA Systems, JBoss, IBM, Oracle and SAP are backing Java EE 5. Software Development