[ Dimitris Andreadis ] [Permalink]
The second bug fixing release of the JBoss Application Server v4.2 series is available for download.
Read more about it here.
Posted on Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:00 by Dimitris Andreadis ( day(s) old)
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[ Dimitris Andreadis ] [Permalink]
I'm pleased to announce that JBoss Application Server 4.2.1.GA has been released on July 16th and is available on Sourceforge for downloading.
This is the first bug fixing release of the JBoss Application Server v4.2 series. The aim of this release is to fix the most important bugs reported by the community against JBossAS v4.2.0.GA. There are a few minor components upgrades (Hibernate, JacORB, JBoss TS, JBoss Remoting and Sun JSF) but we have taken extra care for any changes to be fully backwards compatible, so you should be able to switch from 4.2.0 to 4.2.1 without problems.
Detailed release notes can be viewed here.
Enjoy
Dimitris Andreadis
AS Project Lead
Posted on Wed, 18 Jul 2007 06:28 by Dimitris Andreadis ( day(s) old)
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[ Dimitris Andreadis ] [Permalink]
The second candidate release for the new
JBoss Application Server 4.2.x series is available for
download at sourceforge.
We would like to thank the community for the valuable input we received from test driving the first candidate release. It helped a lot to stabilize the new feature set, that includes:
- The latest version of JBoss EJB3 that is now bundled by default in the .zip distro (no separate installation step).
- The JBoss Web container, based on apache tomcat that includes the Apache Portable Runtime (APR) and optional native plug-ins for truly stellar performance.
- JBoss Transactions, that is now the default transaction manager for JBossAS.
- Latest versions of Hibernate/JBossWS/JGroups/JBossCache.
- and more...
Check out the release notes for more details, download JBoss AS 4.2.0.CR2, try it out, and help us produce the most stable jboss release the world has known :).
Don't forget to drop in by the JBoss User Forums to tell us what you think.
Thanks again.
Dimitris Andreadis
Posted on Wed, 18 Apr 2007 14:23 by Dimitris Andreadis ( day(s) old)
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[ Dimitris Andreadis ] [Permalink]
I'm very pleased to announce that the 1st candidate release for the new
JBoss Application Server
4.2.x series is available for
download at sourceforge.
JBoss 4.2 is a stepping stone from JBoss 4.0 to JBoss 5.0. It combines a lot
(but not all) of the exciting new features of JBoss 5, but based on the stable
4.x MicroKernel architecture.
Some of the cool new stuff includes:
- The latest version of
JBoss EJB3 that is now bundled by default in the .zip distro (no
separate installation step), since JBossAS 4.2.x requires a jdk5 runtime.
- The JBoss Web
container, based on apache tomcat that includes the Apache Portable Runtime
(APR) and optional native technologies for achieving truly stellar
performance matching and exceeding that of the apache http server.
- JBoss Transactions,
being the default transaction manager for JBossAS. JBoss Transactions is
founded on industry proven technology and 18 year history as a leader in
distributed transactions.
- Latest versions of Hibernate/JBossWS/JGroups/JBossCache.
- and more...
Check out the
release notes for more details.
Please note that at this point only the .zip distro is released; an installer
will come with the final release. Something else to be aware of is that JBossAS
will now bind to localhost by default, instead of binding to all available
interfaces. This was done because of concerns of users deploying jboss instances
without securing
them properly.
There will be a stabilization period of about a month before the final release.
You are encouraged to test drive the latest and greatest JBossAS and communicate
your findings to the JBoss
User Forums.
Enjoy
Dimitris Andreadis
JBoss AS Project Lead
Posted on Tue, 6 Mar 2007 18:12 by Dimitris Andreadis ( day(s) old)
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[ Dimitris Andreadis ] [Permalink]
Another succesful event organized by the Java Hellenic User Group (JHUG).
It was very interesting to learn the latest developments about the
NetBeans platform by R.Strobl &
G.Wielengal, active members of the NetBeans community.
The JBoss presentation was essentially a preview in
JBoss 5 and some of its advanced features, like the new
JBoss Messaging service.

Big thanks to Tim Fox for
letting me use his slides on JBM.
Until the next time...
Cheers
dimitris@jboss
Posted on Tue, 5 Dec 2006 05:22 by Dimitris Andreadis ( day(s) old)
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[ Dimitris Andreadis ] [Permalink]
JBoss-4.0.5 was released last week and is available for
download.
If you are looking for the installer bundle, that includes JBossAS-4.0.5.GA,
EJB3 CR9 and Portal 2.4 GA, start
here.
This new point release includes more than 90 bug fixes and introduces some
interesting features, including support for scalable
Buddy Replication for http sessions and updates to many important subsystems
(hibernate, tomcat, jbossws, etc.). In addition, this is the first release QA'ed
against multiple platforms (Linux, Solaris, Windows) and JDKs (both Sun and BEA
JRockit). More information about the release can be found in the detailed
release notes.
Note that the initial jboss-4.0.5.GA distribution (binary and sources) posted on
sourceforge.org included a version of the JBoss.org End User License
Agreement (EULA) that was subsequently fine-tuned after internal discussions
inside JBoss. Please make sure you have downloaded the
latest distribution, by comparing the published checksums. The updated EULA can
be found here.
We do appreciate your online feedback for this new release in the JBoss
User Forums.
If you can make it, JBossWorld
in Berlin will be an excellent opportunity to meet with the development team,
discuss what you like or not, learn from other people's experiences with JBoss, and
of course, have fun!
Enjoy the new JBossAS & hope to see you in Berlin!
dimitris@jboss
Posted on Fri, 27 Oct 2006 13:00 by Dimitris Andreadis ( day(s) old)
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[ Dimitris Andreadis ] [Permalink]
The 1st
Candidate Release
(CR1) for the JBoss Application Server 4.0.5 went out on the 31st of August and
it is available for
download.
This is a point release with more than 60 bug fixes and a couple of interesting
new features, including support for scalable
Buddy Replication for http sessions. You are welcome to have a go and tell
us what you think.
More information for the release can be found in the related forum
announcement
and the release notes.
Cheers
dimitris@jboss
Posted on Fri, 8 Sep 2006 05:09 by Dimitris Andreadis ( day(s) old)
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[ Dimitris Andreadis ] [Permalink]
So far in JBoss, the standard and
easy way to deploy a service as a Highly Available (HA) Singleton (meaning
it will run only on the master node) is to copy it on all nodes of the cluster,
in the ./deploy-hasingleton directory. The way it works, is that a special
service (hint: look in ./deploy/deploy-hasingleton-service.xml) will essentially
deploy whatever is under ./deploy-hasingleton, on the master node only. This is
actually how HA-JMS will run in a clustered setup.
Since JBoss 4.0.4/3.2.8 there is an alternative way to do this. You can
deploy your service as you would normally do by copying it to ./deploy or ./farm,
but remember to add a dependency on:
jboss.ha:service=HASingletonDeployer,type=Barrier
The service will be deployed normally on all nodes, up to the create step,
but will only be started on the master node! The advantage comparing to the
previous method is that you can use farming, i.e. automatic distribution of the
deployment through the ./farm directory. Or do a normal deployment (copy to
./deploy) on all nodes or just the few ones that will potentially run the
singleton service. Note that in both cases you get hot-redeployment (which you
don't get with the standard approach).
On the other hand, a disadvantage, or better a difference is that the
singleton service is actually deployed (up to the create step) on all the
non-master nodes, whereas with the ./deploy-hasingleton approach, it's not
deployed at all. So any singleton logic will have to be coded in the
start()/stop() methods of the
singleton
service.
If you want to find out more details of how this is implemented, take a look
here.
Cheers
dimitris@jboss
Posted on Tue, 30 May 2006 06:46 by Dimitris Andreadis ( day(s) old)
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[ Dimitris Andreadis ] [Permalink]
The 2nd Java Tech Day in Athens, organized by the Java Hellenic User Group (JHUG), had it all:
- A balanced agenda
- Interesting speakers&topics
- Sponsorship (& great catering, too!).
- A big audience (100+)

I particularly enjoyed Dr. Heinz Kabutz's talk on Essential Java Performance Tuning,
with interesting tales from the field where the expert is called to save the day
and reduce the average response time of a crawling application.
(Heinz is the author of the
famous
Java Specialists'
Newsletter). We'll be probably see more of Dr. Kabutz here due to his great
idea for combining Java
Courses & Holidays on the island of Crete.

The tech day was a great opportunity to meet with the Java development community
and the many JBoss users out there. It was a also a good chance for
promoting the very first
Advanced JBoss Training in Athens, at the end of September (if you are
around, don't miss it :).
Again, kudos to the JHUG team for organizing this (more pics
here).
Cheers
dimitris@jboss
Posted on Mon, 22 May 2006 10:35 by Dimitris Andreadis ( day(s) old)
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[ Dimitris Andreadis ] [Permalink]
I'm very pleased to announce that the long awaited final
(GA)
release of the JBoss Application Server 4.0.4 is now available for
download!!!
This is really a gargantuan release considering the number of bug fixes
(290) and minor new features (70) that were incorporated, as well as other
tasks (180) that were dealt with. Just have a look at the length of the
Release Notes.
The
.zip distro is the good and old canonical jboss server distribution
with the three configurations that everyone is familiar with: minimal, default and all.
Just unzip and you are all set. The
installer version (which can now run headless, too) can be used to produce customized configurations and
previews to latest technologies, like an EJB3 RC7+ preview that matches the
current EJB3 draft standard.
A lot of interesting features come through updates to the various independent
JBoss projects integrated under the JBossAS umbrella, the most prominent being
the replacement of the axis-based jboss-ws4ee stack with the first official
release of the all-new JBoss Web Services stack.
This is developed using jdk5 and retrofitted for jdk1.4 JVMs using
JBossRetro.
Tomcat is updated to version
5.5.17 and JBossCache
now supports AOP-based, http field-level session
replication. There are also updates to
JBossAOP,
Hibernate,
JBossRemoting,
JBossSerialization and more. (Even my
pet project
got a very interesting
contribution). As usual, we expect your online feedback in the JBoss
User Forums.
If you can make it, JBossWorld in
Vegas will be an excellent opportunity to meet with the development team,
discuss what you like or not, share experiences and learn about
innovative uses
of JBoss, while getting insights into current and future JBoss technologies and
roadmaps (the conference agenda is loaded, take a look
here).
A really big thank you to everyone that worked on this release and to the JBoss community
as a whole for providing valuable feedback during the two CR stages we went
through.
Enjoy & hope to see you soon!
dimitris@jboss
Posted on Mon, 15 May 2006 06:28 by Dimitris Andreadis ( day(s) old)
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[ Dimitris Andreadis ] [Permalink]
It started as a humble idea: to get together with 30-40 people participating
in the Java Hellenic User Group (JHUG)
and/or Greek JBoss User Group (GR-JBUG)
to talk about technology. We ended up setting up a half-day mini conference with
4 speakers and almost 130 attendants, on a nice Saturday morning in
Athens/Greece!

The place was packed with standing people in the back rows and the
speakers trying to speak up so everyone could hear. It was absolutely fantastic
for me to present in my native language, although embarrassing at times, trying
to translate on-the-fly some word you've used a thousand times in English.
My "condition" (working remotely for JBoss from home) often reminds me of that
joke, with the guy that he, and a gorgeous lady being the only survivors on a
deserted island. After the initial "honeymoon" period, he became so depressed:
he was all alone on that little island with that magnificent woman, but there
was nobody else to talk about it :)
I had 2 talks, one on the current JBoss status, history, products and
professional OpenSource model, and another one on the advanced clustering
infrastructure of JBoss. I hope I made my point clear that OpenSource is an
undisputable trend with far-reaching and deep impact in the IT industry, and
that JBoss and Professional OpenSource is one of the best proofs for that.

I enjoyed also the other 2 talks on JDO (G.Kostaras) and Practical
Iterative Development (K.Flokos). I got to meet very interesting people and
a Tapestry developer.
Again, congrats to the JHUG guys (P.Apostolopoulos/P.Konstantinides) for
organizing this.
There are already plans for the next meeting in May, with speakers from abroad
this time. If anyone, company or individual is interested in
presenting/sponsoring let me know.
Cheers
dimitris@jboss
Posted on Sun, 16 Apr 2006 06:27 by Dimitris Andreadis ( day(s) old)
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[ Dimitris Andreadis ] [Permalink]
The 2nd Candidate Release
(CR2) for the JBoss Application Server 4.0.4 went out on the 31st of March and
it is available for download.
This release comes with 120+ bug fixes and incorporates new features, mostly
through updates to the various independent JBoss projects integrated under the
JBossAS umbrella.
For those interested in the latest EJB3 developments, the
installer version contains the EJB3 RC5+ preview that matches the current
EJB3 draft standard.
We have the latest version (CR6) of the all-new JBoss Web Services stack (JBossWS)
that replaces the axis-based jboss-ws4ee stack. This is developed using jdk5 and
retrofitted for jdk1.4 JVMs using
JBossRetro.
We have Tomcat updated to version
5.5.16 and JBossCache
updated to 1.2.4.SP2 with support for AOP-based http field-level session
replication. There are also updates to
Hibernate,
JBossRemoting,
JBossSerialization and more.
Based on Your input a stabilization and bug fixing period (couple of
weeks) will follow before the final GA release. As usual, you can track the
progress in our JIRA
roadmap.
More information for the release can be found in the related forum
announcement
and the linked release notes.
Cheers
dimitris@jboss
Posted on Sun, 2 Apr 2006 14:24 by Dimitris Andreadis ( day(s) old)
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[ Dimitris Andreadis ] [Permalink]
JBossAS 3.2.8 has been out since the beginning of February and this ServicePack1 release
came out on the 3rd/March to fix a couple of important bugs, as well as to increase the
interoperability with 4.0.2+ jboss versions.
Collectively the 2 releases include a significant amount of fixes (130+) that accumulated
since 3.2.7 and a number of features backported from the 4.0.x series,
so 3.2.8.SP1 is an important milestone for those that need to stick with the 3.2.x branch.
Users however are encouraged to migrate to our current 4.0.x series, since development of
major new features has stopped for the 3.2.x branch.
Also note the extra 'dot' in the release name, according to our new
product versioning rules.
More information for the release can be found in the related forum announcements (
3.2.8.SP1 and
3.2.8)
and the linked release notes.
Cheers
dimitris@jboss
Posted on Mon, 13 Mar 2006 05:37 by admin ( day(s) old)
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[ Dimitris Andreadis ] [Permalink]
JBoss v4.0.3 released last week bundles a couple of new monitoring features
(still in a experimental state, so they are disabled by default).
There is an Active Alarm Table
that can be fed with notifications, either ordinary ones, or special ones that
carry severity and state. I've introduced this notion that an alarm can be either
stateless (e.g. security violation) or stateful (e.g. free memory low). The
difference really is that stateful alarms can clear themselves out (so free
memory is back to normal). If we manage to update the alarm table with relevant
information (i.e. alarms) it can represent the current fault state of a system.
Any mbean could feed the table, but there are also a couple of mbean services
that produce org.jboss.monitor.alarm.AlarmNotification notifications:
- JMXNotificationAppender,
a simple log4j appender that transforms logging events to JMX notifications,
so we can tap into logging information and treat, for example, WARN and ERROR
messages as alarms.
- MemoryMonitor,
a simple free memory monitor service that shows how stateful alarms should work.
- ScriptingListener,
a scripting facility that can be used, for example, to map existing notifications to alarms.
This is quite generic, meaning, you can execute a script in any scripting language
supported by BSF, to react to an
incoming notification.
There is also a very simple page in the JBoss web-console that shows
the alarm table and allows acknowledgement of alarm. You can read about it
here.
Comments and suggestions
are welcome.
See you at JBoss World, Barcelona!
Cheers
dimitris@jboss
Posted on Sat, 8 Oct 2005 07:18 by admin ( day(s) old)
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[ Dimitris Andreadis ] [Permalink]
James Wilson contributed to the JBoss World of MBeans a simple but very useful service for monitoring
mbean attributes and logging the results to files. After being on the JBoss wiki for a couple of months with people already using it, I finally got the time to integrate it with the JBoss codebase so it becomes part of the next jboss release, i.e. JBoss v4.0.3.
You can read about this nifty little service here.
Cheers
dimitris@jboss
Posted on Sun, 7 Aug 2005 09:44 by admin ( day(s) old)
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