Oracle Developer Tools Blog

The Eclipse Persistence Services project (EclipseLink) has completed its incubation phase and the 1.0 release is available for download. This release completes the transition of the persistence functionality developed in Oracle TopLink to being fully developed and maintained as an open source project at Eclipse. This also signifies the first release of a project under the recently created top-level Runtime (RT) project at Eclipse.

EclipseLink delivers persistence services for efficiently working with Java and relational, XML, and non-relational data sources. The highlights include:

• Compact: Standard Java distribution is composed of a single implementation jar and utility jars that can be used in any Java SE, IDE, or Java EE hosted environment.

• OSGi: EclipseLink is also available as a set of OSGi bundles. This distribution offers out of the box support for compliant OSGi implementations, as well as Equinox-specific extensions.

• JPA: Superior Java Persistence API 1.0 implementation with many advanced features offering greater flexibility and performance for mapping, caching, querying and transaction processing.

• MOXy: Object-XML binding support with JAXB, offering highly flexible mappings as well as a meet in the middle configuration approach.

• SDO: Service Data Objects 2.1 implementation enabling flexible service integration with dynamic and static models.

• Utils: Migration utilities to assist developers currently using Oracle TopLink or TopLink Essentials in their upgrade to EclipseLink as well as the workbench for compatibility with classic object-relational and object-XML mapping.

A complete index of features and the full user documentation for EclipseLink is available on the Eclipse wiki.
Standards Focused
The mandate of the EclipseLink project is to deliver a set of persistence services that leverage the leading Java standards. In addition, advanced features were added based on user requests but implemented in a way that allows developers to leverage them when needed but not be obstructed by them when they are not needed.

This is particularly true in JPA, where many advanced features are available through JPA persistence unit properties and query hints, in addition to custom annotations and XML. With EclipseLink replacing TopLink Essentials as the reference implementation for JPA 2.0, some of these advanced features will evolve into the specification defined metadata and interfaces. This approach of leading through delivery of advanced functionality, and then contributing back to the standards, is an important aspect of the EclipseLink project.
Growing The Community
The EclipseLink committers understand very well that developing in open source is much more than just providing access to the source code. Building a successful open source project is really about building an active community based on open communication and a transparent development process. We encourage the Java community to try out the 1.0 EclipseLink release and provide feedback. Your contributions and suggestions are valuable to us and will help ensure the project meets your current and future needs.

EclipseLink is currently available directly from the EclipseLink project web site and is also included within the GlassFish and Spring Framework distributions. Going forward, the Oracle TopLink product releases within the Oracle WebLogic Server will also include EclipseLink as its strategic persistence provider.

At present the project has committers from Oracle and Sun but we also have a growing community of users and developers contributing back enhancements. We are eager to expand this community on all fronts to establish the EclipseLink project as the leading persistence solution across Java EE, Java SE, and OSGi.

Oracle Workshop for WebLogic 10g R3 is celebrating independence day.   This year, I'm personally celebrating a long awaited declaration:  that this upcoming release introduces a complete freedom from pricing, licensing and registration of any kind.  Complete freedom for using your favorite dev/test server.  All features of the Workshop for WebLogic IDE will be freely available on all supported platforms, including websphere, weblogic, tomcat, jboss, jetty and resin.

In addition, JDeveloper and ADF / TopLink runtime users will be supported on Oracle WebLogic Server 10g R3, allowing ADF driven application to extend farther into new supported platforms.

Oracle WebLogic Server 10g R3 developers who use Eclipse will find updated Workshop plug-ins for developing Java/EE and JAX-WS web services that are bundled with the server.  Some of the major highlights of this release include:

 Support for new industry standards

• IDE based on Eclipse 3.3 & WTP 2.0
• Support for JDK 6
• Windows Vista support
• XMLBeans 2.3 support

New Web Services Support

• JAX-WS tooling for Weblogic Server 10.3
• Design/Build/Deploy Support
• Start from Java or from WSDL
• JAX-B support with new JAX-B Wizard
• Create JAX-B types from schema
• Generate ant snippets
• New ClientGen Wizard
• Create Web Service Clients from JAX-RPC & JAX-WS Web Services
• Generate ClientGen ant snippets
• Updated JAX-RPC support for Weblogic 10.3

Support for EE5 Standards

• New EE5 Project Creation
• Create EE5 EAR and EJB Projects
• Create Web Applications based on new standards
• Servlet 2.5
• Full support for new Servlet spec, including optional web.xml
• JSP 2.1, JSF 1.2, JSTL 1.2
• Updated wizards and tag support for new standards (SunRI and Apache myFaces)
• WYSIWYG and AppXRay support for Universal Expression Language

 New WebLogic Server Value Add

• Support for new WebLogic Fast Swap (Java Class Redefinition)
• Full Deploy/Debugging support for WLS 10.3
• Continued backward compatibility for WLS 8.1, 9.2, 10.0
• Remote Deployment that supports WLS 9.2, 10.0, and 10.3
• New Editors and Wizards for WebLogic Server Deployment Descriptors
• Application upgrade tools for older versions of WebLogic

The OTN Fusion Developer Day is coming to Detroit, Seattle and Toronto in the next three weeks.
You can register here : http://www.oracle.com/technology/events/otn-developer-day/index.html

In these events JDeveloper product managers show you how Oracle JDeveloper 11g and Oracle ADF simplify enterprise Java application development.
The events give a good introduction to the layers of the ADF framework and specifically drill into using the ADF Faces Rich Client Components for building Ajax enabled Web 2.0 User interfaces, Using ADF Business Components to simplify database interaction, and using ADF Model to bind UI and business services.

You'll spend the first half day learning from demos and the second half of the day trying it out on your own machine.

The event is free so you can just show up and participate - but we'll be happy if you register ahead of time.

And you also get a chance to win an iPod touch and an OOW SF pass.

We also have events planned for other US cities after Oracle OpenWorld - so check out the schedule.

check out the video.