JSR315 goes into controversial public review

JSR315, the Java Servlet 3.0 Specification, billed as an update to Servlet 2.5, has gone into public review, with a ballot on the specification due to begin on the 6th of January. But already, Greg Wilkins, main developer of the Jetty web server and servlet container, has posted an entry on his blog about the failings of the new specification and of the process involved in developing that specification.

As a member of the expert group behind JSR315, the Wilkin's critique is detailed, concluding "I believe significant errors are being made in the current PR and that the flaws in the process have been enough to prevent the application of due diligence, sufficiently for these flaws to become self evident". Issues that Wilkins identifies are a lack of working prototype of the new Servlet API, a failure to collect community requirements and ambiguous language in the specification. He then goes on to detail what he feels are major flaws in the implementation of new features in JSR315 and compares draft and public review versions of the specification.

Wilkins appeals to the community to push for another round of public review after a beta reference implementation is available. Wilkins himself comes in for criticism from the JSR315 specification lead, Rajiv Mordani, who expresses surprise at the posting and points to an implementation of JSR315 in the Glassfish repository.

The discussion, spanning the multiple blogs, continues, as the specification goes through the public review process.

(djwm)