What Is JAF (JavaBeans Activation Framework)?

JavaBeans Activation Framework (JAF) is a standard extension to the Java platform that lets you take advantage of standard services to: determine the type of an arbitrary piece of data; encapsulate access to it; discover the operations available on it; and instantiate the appropriate bean to perform the operation(s).

For example, if a browser obtained a JPEG image, this framework would enable the browser to identify that stream of data as an JPEG image, and from that type, the browser could locate and instantiate an object that could manipulate, or view that image.

The JAF API is based on the JAF specification as defined in "JSR 925: JavaBeans Activation Framework". The latest version of the specification was JAF 1.1 released on June 27, 2005.

Sun has provided several releases of the JAF implementation and named it as activation.jar:

JAF 1.2     2017-09-06    javax.activation-1.2.0.jar 
JAF 1.1.1                 Included in JDK 6 to 8
JAF 1.1.1   17-Oct-2007   activation.jar (in jaf-1_1_1.zip)
JAF 1.1     19-Apr-2006   activation.jar
JAF 1.0.2   07-May-2005   activation.jar (in jaf-1_0_2-upd2.zip)
JAF 1.0.1                 activaiton.jar
JAF 1.0                   activation.jar

For additional information, visit

⇒ Test Program on java.activation.DataSource

⇐ Downloading activation.jar - JavaBeans Activation Framework

⇑ Downloading activation.jar - JavaBeans Activation Framework

⇑⇑ activation.jar - JAF (JavaBeans Activation Framework)