JPA 2.0 update from JavaONE - important improvements

Some new features of JPA 2.0:

JPA 2.0 Spec will be decoupled from EJB 3.0
Better support for embaddable classes
Better validation support (private @Length(5), @Max(2), @Required - perhaps in align with JSR-303)
Support of collections of basic types Set<String>
Support for Mapped Superclasses for Embeddables (so the state of a super Embeddable can be subclassed)
Support for ordered lists - the order of the items should remain persistent
The access strategy will be extended so in one entity several access types can be used. For this purpose a new Annotation e.g. @AccessType(PROPERTY|FIELD) might be used.
@OneToMany mapping is going to be extended, so that the natural way of modelling FKs in the target table will be mandatory (in JPA 1.0 it is optional).
Expanded support for O/R Mapping - Table per concrete class strategy is going to be mandatory
In JPA 1.0 all queries are polymorphic, in JPA 2.0 there will be a restriction in place
JPA 2.0 will support criterias - instead of string concatenation there will be a more fluent way to define queries
The HashMap like hints (e.g. logging, caching) are going to be standardized
Standardization of the Unfetched State (now it is undefined what happens)
EntityManager could be joined to an existing transaction (e.g. with a method joinTransaction())

JPA 2.0 is scheduled together with JavaEE 6.