It seems batch processing is moving more and more into the realm of the Java developer. In recognition of this fact, JBatch (aka Java Batch, JSR 352, Batch Applications for the Java Platform) was added to Java EE 7. In a recent article JBatch specification lead Chris Vignola of IBM provides a high level overview of the API. He discusses the core concepts/motivation, the Job Specification Language, the reader-processor-writer pattern, job operator, job repository, chunking, packaging, partitions, split/flow and the like.

You can also check out the official specification yourself or try things out with the newly released Java EE 7 SDK.