Joshua Allen, the PM for the original .NET XML API's,
confirmed my suspicions that Java has been playing catch-up and will probably be leapfrogged when Whidbey comes out. (Look at comment near the end of the post.)
MSDN has posted a Dino Esposito article introducing ObjectSpaces.This is the best article I have found since the Scott Bellware posting on 15 Seconds.
My personal focus: How do I design my DAL today to take advantage of ObjectSpaces when it is released? And of course the question: Do I want to? I also have a keen interest in the mapping schemas. I'm looking at how these can be appended or extended with a more wholistic metadata schema. Has anyone else looked into this?