Hi Dennis. You are not alone in your concern, but Sun does in fact seem to
have a technology-driven reason for the bundling. Ryan addressed this
question in the recent Java Live chat, which you can view the log of at this
URL:
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/community/chat/JavaLive/2003/jl0422.
html
I'll go ahead and quote the relevant portion here. The question was asked
by Brian Franklin:
Brian Franklin: [...various unrelated points removed...] Will the next
version of JAXB be released only when the next version of the Java WSDP is
released, or can we expect separate interim releases?
Ryan Shoemaker: Excellent points, Brian. To answer your question, the
release vehicle for JAXB will continue to be the Java WSDP.
Brian Franklin: I have to say I'm disappointed by that. The Java WSDP
contains 10 different technology packages. It seems unfortunate to have to
wait for all of them to be synchronized for release. Particularly since it
might hamper increased growth and code improvement for early version
technologies like JAXB, contrasted with more mature releases like JAXP.
Ryan Shoemaker: I understand your concern, but we are working very hard to
make sure that the Java WSDP releases are timely and contain incremental
improvements in the component technologies. The Java WSDP certainly will be
revved much faster than J2SE, for example. In the coming months and years,
we will be revving all of our XML and Web Services technologies. Some of
them will be built on JAXB, and JAXB at some point in the future may make
use of others (mostly in the parser area). We felt it was important to
package together the latest, greatest set of technologies that were tested
together and worked together. For instance, we hope that in the future,
JAX-RPC will be completely layered on JAXB. So we wanted to establish a
pattern of releasing them together as a tested unit. We also realized that
some people would not want all the technologies, so we tried to make it very
clear how to separate out just the technologies you were interested in. This
was a big change from the previous release of the Java WSDP.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dennis Sosnoski" <dms_at_sosnoski.com>
To: <JAXB-INTEREST_at_JAVA.SUN.COM>
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2003 7:05 AM
Subject: Re: Specified conversion customization is not used.
> This very closed approach to the reference implementation seems to be
> creating a lot of problems. I think it'd make a lot more sense to (1)
> provide public beta builds rather than just dumping out code that's only
> been tested internally to Sun, and (2) release JAXB independent of the
> Web services pack, with which it currently has only a tenuous connection
> at best.
>
> We've seen *many* bugs in the FCS code that would have been caught in a
> release candidate build after the original beta. Hopefully there isn't
> as much new code going into the next version, but a beta or release
> candidate build would really help improve the quality.
>
> Tying JAXB to JWSDP seems like some sort of marketing-driven issue.
> Clumping together a bunch of separate XML and servlet related
> technologies and calling them a "Web Services Development Pack" doesn't
> really help developers much, though. JAXB would be much better off if
> released as a separate API, though it could still be included in the
> JWSDP bundle.
>
> - Dennis
>
> Ryan Shoemaker - JavaSoft East wrote:
>
> >
> > Unfortunately, the fix is in an internal build that will not be publicly
> > available until the next version of JWSDP ships which will be "soon" -
> > I'm
> > sorry that I can't be more specific than that.
> >
> > --Ryan
> >
>