The Metadata Facility for Java is a specification for Java that defines an API for annotating fields, methods, and classes as having particular attributes that indicate they should be processed in specific ways by development tools, deployment tools, or run-time libraries.

The specification was developed under the Java Community Process as JSR 175, and was released as a part of J2SE 5.0 (Tiger).

External links

  • A Metadata Facility for the Java Programming Language
  • Common Annotations (defines common Java SE and Java EE annotations)
  • Pluggable Annotation Processing API (defines a pluggable interface for developing build-time annotation processors)