I'm happy to announce the 7th alpha release of our IronJacamar 1.1 series.

Full release notes are here.

datasources:1.1

This release adds support for the datasources-1_1.xsd schema, which adds the

<pool>
  ...
  <allow-multiple-users/>
</pool>

element, which tells the pool implementation to switch to an implementation that accounts for multiple users accessing the datasource instance through the datasource.getConnection(user, password) method.

We have updated the datasources subsystem in JBoss Application Server 7 to support this new schema too.

Arquillian and friends

This release also features Arquillian 1.0.0.Final and its friends making the foundation for our embedded testing environment.

A congrats to our friends in the Arquillian community for their first stable release !

Other changes

Worth to mention is also

• Updates to our code generator
• New security inflow module
• Bug fixes

Be sure to check that out too.

The Road Ahead

We still have a number of outstanding features before we can release, so the race is on :) Of course we will keep an eye out for issues popping up with JBoss Application Server 7, and our upcoming JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6.0 release.

And, if you didn't sign up for JUDCon/Boston yet do it now. I'll open the show with my The Bird and the Cheetah - A Tale from the Depths of JBoss Application Server talk where we will take a deep dive into why Java EE Connector Architecture is so important for an application server, and how to configure your deployments.

For Those About to Rock, We Salute You !

[WebSite] [Download] [Documentation] [JIRA] [Forum]

I'm happy to announce the 6th alpha release of our IronJacamar 1.1 series.

Full release notes are here.

Lazy connection manager

This release marks one of the first new major features of the IronJacamar 1.1 series over the stable release used in JBoss Application Server 7.1 namely the first commit of our lazy connection manager.

So what is a lazy connection manager and why should you care ?

The lazy connection manager is an optional part of the Java EE Connector Architecture 1.6 specification and is divided into two parts

• LazyAssociatableConnectionManager
• LazyEnlistableConnectionManager

Our first commit is in the associatable part, which will allow the JCA container to reassign physical connections to other logical connection handles.

Eh, what ? You may say... Ok, lets say you have an application which uses connections to an Enterprise Information System (EIS):

Connection c1 = myEIS.getConnection();

// Do work with c1

Connection c2 = myEIS.getConnection();

// Do work with c2

c1.close();
c2.close();

But what happens if there is only one physical connection to the EIS available ? The c2 will get a timeout on the creation call, since all connections are controlled by the JCA container.

This is where the associatable part comes into the picture; IronJacamar will detect that the application is asking for another connection, but there aren't any available in the pool. IronJacamar will then ask the EIS resource adapter to dissociate the physical connection for c1 and attach it to c2. Whenever either c1 or c2 is used it is up to the resource adapter to make sure that the physical connection handle is valid against the logical one.

This basically allows you to multiplex connection handles on fewer physical connections; say 1000 to 100, and thereby saving system resources in the EIS layer.

Just to give you an idea of how a resource adapter could look we have added a HelloWorld/Lazy example to our documentation.

And you can disable the functionality - if your resource adapter supports it - by setting the sharable attribute to false.

A note to the hard-core group of the JCA community; we have extended the specification API with the following methods:

   /**
    * Associate a managed connection to a logical connection
    *
    * @param connection The connection
    * @param mcf The managed connection factory
    * @param cri The connection request information
    * @return The managed connection
    * @exception ResourceException Thrown if an error occurs
    */
   public ManagedConnection associateManagedConnection(Object connection, ManagedConnectionFactory mcf,
                                                       ConnectionRequestInfo cri)
      throws ResourceException;

   /**
    * Dissociate a managed connection from a logical connection. The return value
    * of this method will indicate if the managed connection has more connections
    * attached (false), or if it was return to the pool (true).
    *
    * If the managed connection is return to the pool its <code>cleanup</code> method
    * will be called
    *
    * @param connection The connection
    * @param mc The managed connection
    * @param mcf The managed connection factory
    * @return True if the managed connection was freed; otherwise false
    * @exception ResourceException Thrown if an error occurs
    */
   public boolean dissociateManagedConnection(Object connection, ManagedConnection mc, ManagedConnectionFactory mcf)
      throws ResourceException;

The first method will help you, if you doesn't have an easy link between the connection and the managed connection; the associateConnection callback will still happen - keep that in mind.

The second method will allow you to dissociate the managed connection when you know you aren't going to use it for a while. Thereby making it easier for the JCA container to hand it out to other callers. This use-case isn't part of the existing JCA specification. Yummi stuff.

This is only the first step, but we are on our way now :)

Other changes

The other changes in this release are mostly around fixing bugs found during our testing with JBoss Application Server and our upcoming JBoss Enterprise Application Platform release.

There is a nice update to our code generator though, which should give you a better starting point for your development.

The Road Ahead

Testing continues, and we have more cool stuff in the pipeline, so be sure to check back, or give us a shout in our forums.

For Those About to Rock, We Salute You !

[WebSite] [Download] [Documentation] [JIRA] [Forum]

I have released Tattletale 1.2.0.Beta2 to the community for testing.

Full release notes are here.

Bug fixes

The release mainly contains bug fixes for the issues found by the community. Over 1200 downloads of Beta1 is quite impressive, so keep the feedback coming !

This release should work better on that other OS too...

JBoss Application Server 7

The JBoss Application Server 7 plugin has been updated to the JBoss Application Server 7.1.0.Final release, so that should get your applications up and running on that release faster :)

Community

There are still ideas that we are working on, so if you are interested in helping out with Tattletale development feel free to drop by our forums and fork the code from GitHub.

For Those About to Rock, We Salute you !

[WebSite] [Download] [Documentation] [Forum] [JIRA]

I'm happy to announce the 5th developer snapshot of the IronJacamar 1.1 container, which implements the Java EE Connector Architecture 1.6 specification.

Full release notes are here.

Bugs, what bugs ?

This release mainly contains bug fixes that we have found during our testing with IronJacamar inside JBoss Application Server 7.1.

The fixes has of course been included in the upcoming JBoss Application Server 7.1.0.Final release.

Spring cleaning

We have begone our spring cleaning of the project to provide the foundation of the upcoming features of the 1.1 series, which we should start to see really soon now.

If you look at our code repository you should at least get one hint ;)

But more on that later...

JBoss Application Server 7.1.0.CR1b

The JBoss Application Server 7.1.0.CR1b release is out featuring IronJacamar 1.0.7.Final, so give that release a good run and report any issues that you may find. Be sure to check the forums for possible answers first though.

We have fixed additional issues post that release, so feel free to try a nightly snapshot too.

The Road Ahead

We are pushing to get all the remaining JCA and datasources issues fixed before JBoss AS goes Final, so your help is highly valued one way or the other.

For Those About to Rock, We Salute You !

[WebSite] [Download] [Documentation] [JIRA] [Forum]

I'm happy to announce the 4th developer snapshot of the IronJacamar 1.1 series.

Full release notes are here.

Resource adapter information tool

This release adds a resource adapter information tool, that can provide the important information about the resource adapter and a sample deployment descriptor.

The information about the resource adapter is generated using the following command:

./rar-info.sh myeis.rar

where the report will be located in myeis-report.txt. The tool can take an optional -classpath parameter such that additional external dependencies can be resolved against the resource adapter.

The report will contain information about

• The name of the resource adapter
• The Java EE Connector Architecture specification version
• The type of the resource adapter
• If the resource adapter supports reauthentication
• If the resource adapter is compliant (see the validator tool)
• If the resource adapter contains native libraries
• Overview of the resource adapter class
• Overview of the managed connection factory classes
• Overview of the admin object classes
• Overview of the activation specification classes
• A sample deployment descriptor

The tool (rar-info.sh) is located in the doc/as/ directory of the distribution. Try it out and send us your thoughts :)

JBoss Application Server 7.1.0.Beta1

The JBoss Application Server 7.1.0.Beta1 release is out featuring IronJacamar 1.0.5.Final, so give that release a good run and report any issues that you may find. Be sure to check the forums for possible answers first though.

As seen by the 1.1.0.Alpha4 release notes we have found some more bugs - the fixes should make their way into JBoss AS7 soon.

The Road Ahead

We will keep pushing to make JBoss Application Server 7.1.0.CR1 the best application server out there to deploy resource, adapters on, so we value any feedback that you will send.

For Those About to Rock, We Salute You !

[WebSite] [Download] [Documentation] [JIRA] [Forum]