Sun today announced the availability of new features in the next edition of its Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE), Java EE 5. With these additions, Java EE 5 will bring ease of development and increased productivity for the Java community.

Key features in Java EE 5 will include:

   * Making the power and robustness of Java EE more readily accessible through ease of development features such as annotations, simplified common coding scenarios, streamlined deployment and new utility classes and helpers;

   * Eagerly anticipated new APIs and services such as a JSP standard tag library, StAX, Web Services Metadata, JAXB, easy web applications with JavaServer Faces, Common Annotations and a new persistence API;

   * Significant enhancements to existing interfaces offering simplified and expanded web services support, greatly simplified EJB development, extended management and deployment and updated JavaServer Pages;

   * Coordinated efforts across new and existing APIs to further advance the Java EE platform as the preeminent environment for building and deploying Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs).

Additionally, Sun has open sourced the Sun Java System Application Server Platform Edition 9.0 (AS PE 9.0), based on the Java EE 5 reference implementation and included within the Solaris 10 platform. Available on java.net, this is the next step in Sun's strategy to provide broader community participation in Java technology development and to empower customers with a low-cost, high-value business computing platform.