EJB 3.1 New features

Reza Rehman, my co-author of EJB 3 in Action has authored an article on EJB 3.1 new features.

To summarize the major changes that are planned in EJB 3.1 are:

• Singleton Beans. Using a new @Singleton annotation will support
  this.
• Optional interfaces similar to web services. Container will generate
  the interface for you. Anyway IMHO it’s always good practice to build an
  interface your bean
• Stateful Web services using stateful session beans
  EJB
• Timers to include cron timers. Just to note that OC4J already supports cron
  timer as an extension.
  

Note that Java Persistence API is now worked under a completely new specification.

You can read the article at http://www.theserverside.com/tt/articles/article.tss?l=NewFeaturesinEJB3-1.