Stephen Colebourne has announced JSR 310, a new Date and Time API, to be based on Joda-Time and hopefully shipping in Java 7. As the JSR reads, the goal is to provide a more advanced and comprehensive model for date and time than those found in the Date and Calendar APIs.
Colebourne is the Project Lead for Joda-Time, and he states that while the JSR will be influenced by Joda-Time, it will not be a rubber stamp of it. Alex Miller lists some of the problems of the current API, from the perspective of working with JDBC drivers.
Colebourne has solicited input in a thread on JavaLobby. Some of the feedback that has already come in includes:
- simplifying the API, at least for basic cases
- lightweight and high performance (Calendar is slow)
- integration with JDBC
The question of compatibility with existing Date and Calendar classes has also come up, with some saying it is necessary and others saying that at the most there should be a helper class for conversions.