Java has annotations and that is good. However, some developers feel that it is best to annotate code with metadata using xml files - others prefer annotations but would use metadata to override annotations in source code.

I am writing a Java framework that uses annotations. The question is: is there a standard way to define and parse metadata from xml files. I think this is something every framework that uses annotations could benefit from but I can seem to find something like this on the Internet.

Must I roll my own xml parsing/validation or has someone already done something like this?