I also believe there is a JSR that is looking at I/O improvement to future java releases. We should get someone from Derby involved in that.
This looks like it could be the JSR you're thinking of: http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=203 JSR 203 was planned to be part of JDK 1.6 but has moved to JDK 1.7 thanks, bryan
