Object-Relational mapping invades the Container
On the Java side of the fence, heavyweight containers (EJB, JBoss) are cozying up with Object-Relational Mapping vendors (JDO, Hibernate) to support OR Mapping inside the container. A wise move.
My good friend Robert Greene, VP of Product Strategy for Versant, has an article on how Entity Java Beans 3.0 compares to JDO 2.0. His basic premise is that with current technology (JDO 1.0 and 2.0) you can preview now what the new EJB 3.0 spec might look like in the future.
Now, I'm a .NET developer through and through but I have learned over the years that you can often see the future of .NET by looking at what is going on in the Java world now. Many of the best ideas on .NET came from the Java world and this continues to be the case. On the .NET side take a look at OR Mappers like Versant and NHibernate to see what the future of object persistence might look like.