I’ve started playing with WebSphere Application Sever 7.0 (the latest and greatest) and to my surprise discovered that it still “uses Jython/Python 2.1”:http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v7r0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.websphere.soafep.multiplatform.doc/info/ae/ae/cxml_jython.html as a scripting language for its wsadmin tool.
Jython 2.2 has been around for quite a while and, from my experience, is very stable. So it’s odd that IBM choose not to upgrade it. The difference between 2.1 and 2.2 is quite significant, the biggest selling point of 2.2 is “new style classes”:http://docs.python.org/reference/datamodel.html#newstyle with a unified type model. Python 2.2 also supports properties. I don’t believe there is closures support in 2.1 either.
Why is it important? Well, using Java for WAS administration is hard; the API is obscure and poorly documented. This makes Jython the only game in town (with JACL deprecated some time back). So being able to use a modern version of Jython is highly desirable.
I’m still hoping that IBM might upgrade jython as part of one the minor upgrades; WAS 8.0 is probably a long time away.