Hi Sanjiva, Thanks for the interesting link.
Having had a look at the "commons attributes", they do look somewhat similar to "annotations" as specified in JSR-175 (http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=175) in that it specifies a method for augmenting Java language elements with metadata. I suppose both annotations and attributes could be used for similar purposes. However, the attributes do not comply with JSR-175 and are not an extension to the Java programming language (as JSR-175 annotations are). Hence, the attributes require a separate, compiler (which can be invoked as an Ant task). That compiler is not an off-the-shelf compiler and is typically separate from javac. Moreover, processing model, notation and grammar for attributes are different than JSR-175 annotations. There are more differences between annotations and attributes in their implementations, too. Finally, JSR-181 specifies a set of Metadata for Web Services; all metadata definitions in JSR-181 are based on JSR-175 (and comply with the grammar specified therein). They're compiled into the code by any javac from JDK version 1.5 (given the retention policy requires it) and can be accessed through standard Java APIs (again, from JDK 1.5). However, since attributes don't rely on JDK 1.5, they can be used with (almost ;) any JDK version. Cheers, -michael -----Original Message----- From: Sanjiva Weerawarana [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2004 1:19 AM To: Beehive Developers Subject: Fw: [ANNOUNCEMENT] Commons-Attributes 2.1 Released Hi- how does this relate to the proposed JSR181 project here? Sanjiva. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Leo Sutic" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]>; <[email protected]>; <[email protected]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2004 3:20 AM Subject: [ANNOUNCEMENT] Commons-Attributes 2.1 Released > The Jakarta Commons team is happy to announce the release of Commons > Attributes 2.1. This is the first release of the new > Commons-Attributes code. > > For more details, see the Attributes home page: > > http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/attributes/ > > The source and binaries are available for download from the usual > places. Please remember to check the MD5 sum when download from a > mirror. > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
