Michael Keith <MICHAEL.KEITH@oracle.com> wrote on 12/23/2008 07:23:30 PM:
> Learning a whole new way of writing XML is an ease of use issue.
> If you don't know the rules then this new style of XML is definitely
> confusing.
> Is it a better way going forward? Probably, but if web beans is
> being advertised
> as a layer of services over existing Java EE technologies then one
> would assume
> that it will be specified in a way that is natural and easily
> understood by the users
> of those technologies. That "naturalness" is worth more than what is
> gained by a
> slightly improved XML style that is limited to one specific area.
>
> Of course, consistency can be achieved from either direction, and
> the alternative to
> web beans adopting the style of those technologies is for the
> technologies to adopt
> the web beans style of XML. As I mentioned, for that direction to
> change there must
> be a platform-level directive.

I agree with Mike.

While I agree that the schema syntax of the DDs is a bit crufty, it
is what it is.  It's one of the things I'd like to fix across the
platform at some point, but I don't think we could absorb it for
EE 6 unless the schedules get extended and given that a new schema
syntax doesn't really add much additional value, it's lower priority
than the other stuff that needs work.  I think it will get fixed
eventually, but who knows exactly what it will look like.

In the meantime, consistency with the platform is the right thing
to do.  It means that IDE developers don't have to split the way
they deal with EE artifacts.  It means developers don't have to learn
multiple ways dealing with metadata that looks arbitrarily different
(that's just frustrating).

EE 6 is supposedly carrying on the Ease of use / development theme.
If we were starting from scratch and everything used the new schema
style, then it might be simpler, but I just can't see this being
simple when integrated with the rest of the platform.  Right now,
it's just different and arbitrarily different means more complex
than it should be when we look at the platform as a whole.

Thanks,
Jim Knutson
WebSphere J2EE Architect