Persistent problems in the persistence layer

Not long ago, two big pieces of news made their way around the Java developer
 community. The first concerned the forthcoming enterprise version 
 of Java 1.5 (J2EE 1.5), which would be designed to make development easier. The second 
 was the outcome of a vote on extending the JDO specification. See
 The big players oppose JDO

These two announcements sparked, or at least fanned, a debate over extending 
 the J2EE specification to cover the persistence layer. On one side is EJB, a comprehensive 
 but fairly complex technology that’s either unsuitable or too cumbersome for certain
 problems. The existence of the JDO specification and the widespread use 
 of other object-relational frameworks like Hibernate are clear evidence of that.

Enterprise Java is at a crossroads. It can listen and respond
 to calls for a persistence layer in the form of JDO, or brush them off
 and go the EJB 3.0 route.

Geir Magnusson and Jeremy Boynes give their own views
 on the crossroads Java is at and which way it should go 
 in the article Persisting Problems