EclipseLink 2.5.0 offers JPA 2.1 reference implementation

The developers behind the EclipseLink persistence libraries have now delivered a reference implementation of JPA (Java Persistence API) 2.1, JSR338, in the form of the newly released EclipseLink 2.5.0. The JPA 2.1 support means that EclipseLink now supports performing bulk updates using the Criteria API with the addition of CriteriaUpdate and CriteriaDelete classes.

Stored procedure calls and named stored procedures are also supported as part of JPA 2.1. The Java Persistence Query Language was extended to allow SQL functions not covered by the JPA specification to be called using a FUNCTION() keyword. Entity Listeners can now inject objects into Java EE containers through the Contexts and Dependency Injection (CDI) API. There's also JPA 2.1's support for attribute converters, standardised DDL generation, named queries and entity graph metadata model support. Documentation for the JPA 2.1 related enhancements has been published.

Beyond JPA 2.1, the MOXy JSON provider has been enhanced to allow for subsets of attributes to be marshalled and unmarshalled and there have been improvements in the JAX-RS JSON and XML mapping support. There's also new database support for HANA and pervasive databases.

New releases of EclipseLink, starting from this release, will now be available through the SonaType OSS Nexus instance on Maven Central; older releases will remain on the legacy Maven 2 server. The EPL 1.0 and EDL 1.0 licensed source and binary distributions of EclipseLink 2.5.0 are available to download from the Eclipse web site.

(djwm)