I believe that the main reason why Java has been and continues to be a great platform is its community. Here is another challenge to this community: we need your help to refine JAXB 2.0 and JAX-RPC 2.0 so they will meet the needs of your fellow Java developers. In the next few days we are going to release this Early Access implementation to Java.Net, and we hope that will encourage exploration of the spec and feedback.

The Expert Groups now have fairly complete early drafts, and the implementation is tracking those drafts. The latest JAXB 2.0 is Early Draft Review 2, from March 23rd. The latest published JAX-RPC 2.0 is Early Draft Review 2, but the version to read is an ED3 that is in the JCP publishing queue and that should be out in a couple of days.

An up-to-date implementation makes it much easier to explore the specification, so we truly hope that the EA will encourage your feedback. As usual, the EGs still have material that it has not been incorporated into the drafts, but don't let that stop you: the Early Drafts are quite complete and, from now on, the EA will be tracking changes in a transparent, continuous manner, so you will be able to track the spec as it reacts to the EG and the community.

The Early Access release will be available at the usual Java.Net projects: JAXB and JAX-RPC. If no last minute problems arise, they will both be out this week, and we will send a further announcement then.

Please provide feedback on the 2.0 specs through the forum that was set up for this. The forum has been pretty active but most of the (very positive) feedback has been on JAXB 2.0 and we specially need additional feedback on the JAX-RPC 2.0 spec. Please provide feedback, the Java developers of years to come will thank you.