Java & XML Data Binding

Alternate Implementations

While you shouldn’t expect to see a lot of change between the early-access release of JAXB and its final version, the other data binding implementations detailed in this book most likely will undergo significant changes in the coming months. Any time Sun releases a specification (like JAXB), hordes of programmers begin to write applications to these specifications. As a result, alternate data binding implementations will probably move toward this same specification, allowing interoperability and easy migration for JAXB-based applications. Additionally, it is easier to add functionality to existing bases, like the JAXB specification, than to try to compete with a completely different approach toward data binding.

JAXB Conformance

First, expect a movement in alternate data binding implementations toward the JAXB specification. This isn’t as likely a case of suddenly seeing javax.bind packages in open source projects as it is of movement toward the JAXB-defined binding schema. Keep in mind that hundreds of programmers will not touch data binding until JAXB goes into a 1.0 final version, and that within months of that version, there will be literally thousands of binding schemas floating around on programmers’ desktops. At this point, enough effort will have been put into those schemas that reworking them for another implementation would be close to impossible.

The result is that developers who want to try another implementation will have a high cost of entry. ...