The Seam project released the first major version of its Java EE 5 framework, aiming to create a unified programming model across enterprise application tiers. At the 2006 JavaOne conference, Artima asked Seam project founder Gavin King to briefly explain how Seam makes the Java 5 experience more seamless:

One of the core problems Seam is trying solve is the question of deep integration of the EE 5 platform from the programming model point of view. The EE platform has these very powerful individual features, and it's great that [those features] work together inside a single environment. The JCP is very well adapted to producing very powerful individual pieces that solve individual problems, but what it hasn't done so well in the past is to provide a totally seamless end-to-end programming model: the seamless experience of using one programming model—one framework—to solve your problems, rather than [having to] use five different things to solve [those] problems.

What we want to do is go beyond the idea of integration meaning that these things can run together in the same environment, and onto what I call deep integration, or meaningful integration. The idea [is] that there is a single component model, a single programming model [that] incorporates the features of all these pieces [of an enterprise app].

To begin with, the things we're trying integrate very deeply is JSF and EJB 3, providing a unified programming model of JSF and EJB 3. [In addition, we also provide] orchestration with jBPM. The EE platform has lacked any kind of first-class construct for orchestration of user interactions or business process management. jBPM, which is an open-source project, provides that. And we also integrate an AJAX framework, a component remoting framework.

What do you think of Seam's approach to unifying the programming model across application tiers?