The proposed contents for the Java Persistence 2.1 JSR are listed
on its JCP page, but it is useful to recap here:
Support for the use of custom types and transformation methods in
object/relational mapping.
Support for the use of "fetch groups" and/or "fetch plans" to
provide further control over data that is fetched, detached,
copied, and/or used in merging.
Support for the specification of immutable attributes and readonly
entities.
Support for user-configurable naming strategies for use in O/R
mapping and metamodel generation.
More flexibility in the use of generated values; support for UUID
generator type.
Additional mapping metadata to provide better standardization for
schema generation.
Support for multitenancy.
Additional event listeners and callback methods; availability of
entity manager to callbacks.
Methods for dirty detection.
Improved ability to control persistence context synchronization.
Additional unwrap methods to support use of vendor extensions.
Support for dynamic definition of persistence unit, including
object/relational mapping information.
Extension of metamodel API to object/relational mapping information.
Improvements to the Java Persistence query language and criteria
APIs, including:
support for stored procedures;
support for additional built-in functions, and for the
invocation of other database and vendor functions;
support for downcasting;
support for outer joins with ON conditions;
update and delete criteria queries;
support for mapping between JPQL queries and criteria queries.
Improved support for the result type mapping of native queries.
More flexible XML descriptors.
I know that many of you have candidates for inclusion as well.
Since the focus of Java EE 7 is on the cloud, the one absolute
"must-have" on this list is the item related to multitenancy.
I would like to start with some of the (hopefully) simpler items
first, to get us "warmed up". Once we've made some progress, I plan
to open up a discussion of the bigger issue of multitenancy support,
but interleave that discussion with some of the other higher-priority
items on this list.
-Linda