A few hours with Michael Keith, EJB 3.0 co-Spec lead

This week I was in San Diego attending JavaPro Live! 2005. I found the conference cozy (small :-)), informative, and for the most part useful. One of the highlights of my trip (aside from attending with a client of mine, Mr. John Dougherty, another very bright Architect) was being able to spend a few “off” hours with Michael Keith, the co-specification lead for the EJB 3.0 JSR (220). I found Mike to be thoughtful, articulate, and quite knowledgable of the persistence space. His background was with TopLink and JDO and he brings a lot of credibility to the JSR 220 working group. Unlike some members of other JSRs I’ve talke with in the past, he was not arrogant and didn’t believe that his little corner of the universe knew everything there was to know. I’ve not been a big fan of EJB 1.x through 2.x for many technical reasons and its lack of simplicity but now that I’ve worked with the EJB 3.0 draft (writing real code) for almost 6 months I find it quite usable and a great alternative to other distributed object programming models. And, after meeting Mike Keith, I think the spec is in very good hands and I have very hopes for EJB 3.0 when it hits the streets.