Today’s the big day. Having grown from a mere foal into a handsome mare, all while being driven hard during a marathon race lasting just over two years, today Java SE 6 gallops at full speed past the cameras at the finish line and out into the real world. Her name has changed but she still carries herself with a measured pride and more than a hint of her native wild grace.

This time around I had the pleasure of leading the team of trainers who shaped this fine animal. I’d like to thank the members of the expert group for JSR 270, the Java SE 6 “umbrella” platform specification, for their wisdom:

Geir	Magnusson	Apache
Andy	Piper	BEA
Steve	Jones	Capgemini
Neal	Gafter	Google
Steve	Schaniel	HP
Steve	Poole	IBM
Daniel	Leuck	Ikayzo
Wayne	Carr	Intel
Scott	Stark	JBoss
Wayne	Young	Metasolv
Michel	Trudeau	Oracle
Michael	Bechauf	SAP
Keith	Holdaway	SAS Institute
David	Bock	(self)
Doug	Lea	(self)
Michael	Santos	(self)
Sam	Pullara	(self)
Paul	Hammant	ThoughtWorks

JSR 270 defines the feature list for the release; most of the deep technical work was done by the spec leads and expert groups for the component JSRs, who also deserve thanks:

Sean Anthony	Mullan Nadalin	105: XML Digital-Signature APIs
Larry Thorick	Cable Chow	173: Streaming API for XML (StAX)
Stuart Brian	Edmondston Zotter	181: Web-Services Metadata
Peter	von der Ahé	199: Java Compiler API
Gilad	Bracha	202: Java Class-File Specification Update
Lance	Andersen	221: JDBC 4.0
Kohsuke	Kawaguchi	222: Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB) 2.0
Mike	Grogan	223: Scripting for the Java Platform
Arun Doug	Gupta Kohlert	224: Java API for XML-Based Web Services (JAX-WS) 2.0
Rajiv	Mordani	250: Common Annotations
Joseph	Darcy	269: Pluggable Annotation-Processing API

With that I now hand the lead trainer’s cap to Danny Coward for the next running of the Java SE marathon steeplechase. Good luck, Danny!