Practical example of METADATA feature i nJDK1.5

Hi all,

I'm not able to understand MetaData feature. Can you provide practical example and sample code.

thanks

When I write J2EE applications, I often find myself 'annotating' my code in such a way that XDoclet (an open source third party application) can parse my annotations and generate some meaningful output in the given context.

One big annoyance is that XDoclet relies on annotations placed in javadoc comments, which means that at runtime, this information is lost.
It would be nice (and will be nice) when I can reflect upon my annotations at runtime. In order to provide this ability (to reflect at runtime), a language change had to be made (or I guess a third-party could implement some kind of pre-processor).
This is one that application that immediately springs to mind; I'm sure if I thought hard enough, I could come up with more.