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16 December 2008, 18:04

JSR310 in danger of missing Java 7

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A posting by the spec lead for JSR310, Stephen Colbourne, says there is a danger that the specification will not be complete in time for Java 7. JSR310 is a Date and Time API for Java, designed to fix the numerous problems Java developers have with the date and time classes. It needs to be a complete specification, well before other components in Java 7 are implemented, because dates and times are fundamental to libraries such as JDBC and NIO2. Colbourne is only able to dedicate three hours a week to working on JSR310 and is looking for community assistance to get the specification ready.

When Java was launched, date and time handling were managed by some simple classes, which did not allow for anything but a single long variable to represent time. In 1999, Java got a new date and time system, from IBM, which, although it attempted to address every kind of calendar and time format, was cumbersome to use. As the years passed, more and more issues were found with the date and time classes in Java, and in 2005, Stephen Colbourne created the Joda Time library as a response to these problems. Joda Time became the basis of Colbourne's 2007 submission to the Java Community Process, and in time became JSR310. Because of the current pain of using date and time classes in Java, many developers were expecting JSR310 to be in Java 7, but the time constraints on Colbourne could mean Java developers are stuck with the, by then, ten year old IBM contribution.

The JSR310 project pages contain links to the related mailing lists and code resources that currently exist.

(djwm)

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