Support of BeanShell, a lightweight Java scripting language, is eyed as a feature for Dolphin.

More acceleration of performance and graphics also is expected in Dolphin, as are improvements in monitoring and management. Beans binding, in which a JavaBean property change is propogated to another JavaBean, is planned for Dolphin as well.

"We're hoping to launch the JSR for Dolphin later this year," Hamilton said.

For Java EE, the enterprise-level version of Java, improvements are being pondered such as capabilities to support composite applications, portlets, high availability and clustering, according to Bill Shannon, the Java EE specification lead at Sun.

More support for scripting and JSP pages also are possibilities. Other improvements may be done in the areas of Web and application hosting and WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) support. WebDAV would make it easier for lower-end applications to work with Java EE, Shannon said.