JEP 320: Remove CORBA and Selected Java EE Modules from Java SE

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This proposal puts forth the idea of actually removing from Java SE and the JDK a variety of modules associated with CORBA and Java EE. It should be noted that in Java 9, these modules have been marked for removal and require the --add-modules switch to run. Per this JEP, when they are removed from Java SE and the JDK, they will no longer be available even by use of --add-modules.

CORBA, an acronym for Common Object Request Broker Architecture, was in the 1990s and early 2000s the principal way to locate and execute objects on remote systems. Although CORBA is heavy as an archi¬tecture, CORBA implementations were performant and widely adopted in some industries, particularly for real-time applications. However, over the years, other tech-nologies displaced it, and it is now so rarely used that it no longer need be included as part of the standard Java SE distribution. Once CORBA is removed from Java SE, it will still be available in Java EE implementations, such as Glassfish, but it will not be maintained by the Java SE team.

Among the Java EE packages marked for removal from Java SE are javax.activity, a CORBA-related package, as well as several packages such as java.xml .ws.annotation and java.transaction, which exist in Java EE and will no longer be duplicated in Java SE (sometimes in slightly modified form) nor maintained by the Java SE team.

All current and former JEPs can be found on the Oracle Open JDK site.