XML Mapping Files

Abstract

After the release of Java SE 5, there was a quiet, and sometimes not-so-quiet, debate about whether annotations were better or worse than XML. The defenders of annotations vigorously proclaimed how annotations were so much simpler and provide in-lined metadata that is co-located with the code that it is describing. The claim was that this avoids the need to replicate the information that is inherent in the source code context of where the metadata applies. The XML proponents then retorted that annotations unnecessarily couple the metadata to the code, and that changes to metadata should not require changes to the source code.