What is 'JAXB'?

JAXB is the Java Architecture for XML Binding.

This technology enables you to transfer data from Java objects to XML, and vice versa, much more easily than is possible with "traditional" approaches, such as accessing an in-memory DOM document directly.

With JAXB, you first write an XML schema to define the shape of the XML documents that you want to work with. You pass this to a JAXB compiler, which produces Java source files. These files contain classes that create Java objects from XML documents conforming to the schema or create an XML document from such Java objects. The source files can be integrated into your project and compiled as with any other Java source code.

JAXB is really a specification, meaning that there can be many conforming implementations. At the time of writing, I am aware of two implementations: Sun's reference implementation and the open source implementation from Apache, called JAX-ME.

Visit Sun's site for more information on JAX-B.

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