AS 7.0.0.Alpha1 released!

As AS6 has been getting closer to CR, we have recently started working on our new next generation application server. Last week, we just released an early alpha of this work, 7.0.0.Alpha1, code named Halloween.

I am putting links first, in case you don't feel like reading my long post:

You can download the release in the usual place here:

http://jboss.org/jbossas/downloads

There is some basic user instructions here:

http://community.jboss.org/wiki/JBossAS7UserGuide

Also, Brian, one of our core devs hacked together a quick late-night (yet very nice) demo covering the new powerful management capabilities:

As you can see, the biggest change in AS7 is that we are treating administrators with the same love that we have always shown developers. In particular, we have been doing a lot of thinking about how to make their lives easier when it comes to managing small to very large environments. This is a very important part of a bigger effort you may have heard us reference called "Andiamo", a major focus on improving the usability of JBoss projects and products.

In AS7, configuration is now centralized and presented in a user-friendly manner. So instead of searching for one of our beans.xml files to change some settings for a specific subsystem, you now know exactly where to look. Also the configuration can now describe an entire domain. This means any number of servers, and groupings thereof can be controlled in one place.

For those that don't want to run in a more complex domain topology, we have a simpler more traditional mode you can run JBoss AS in called standalone. The configuration is largely the same, but is slightly simplified, so you still benefit from user-friendly configuration all in one place.

AS7 isn't just about administrators, we are also aiming to make life better for developers as well. One big change we are making is moving to a "pure" modular class-loading environment that will allow us to finally hide our implementation classes from application deployments. In other words, if we decide to use foobar.jar, version 1.1, your application won't see those classes, so it can happily use foobar 2.2.

Another big change on the developer front is that the AS7 service container is fully concurrent, which takes advantage of modern cpus. This among other changes leads to a much improved boot time.

Note that this release just offers a glimpse into the management model and server environment we are working on. EE capabilities will be added as they are developed in subsequent releases.

If you are interested in contributing, check out our Hacking on AS7 page.

Thanks!

Created: 08. Nov 2010, 23:27 CET (Jason Greene)

Last Modified: 09. Nov 2010, 22:22 CET (Jason Greene)

14 comments:

09. Nov 2010, 21:49 CET | Link

Arbi Sookazian

The video is not visible in the OP via FF or IE.

I downloaded the AS7 and it doesn't start in Windows.

09. Nov 2010, 22:10 CET | Link

Arbi Sookazian

Now it starts (needed to change the JAVA_HOME and JBOSS_HOME envmt variables) but when I navigate to http://localhost:8080 I see a blank white screen.

C:\java\jboss-7.0.0.Alpha1\bin>standalone.bat
Config file not found C:\java\jboss-7.0.0.Alpha1\bin\standalone.conf.bat
===============================================================================

  JBoss Bootstrap Environment

  JBOSS_HOME: C:\java\jboss-7.0.0.Alpha1

  JAVA: C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_20\bin\java

  JAVA_OPTS: -Dprogram.name=standalone.bat  -server

===============================================================================

13:02:57,342 INFO  [modules] JBoss Modules version 1.0.0.Beta11
13:03:07,920 INFO  [server] Starting standalone server
13:03:08,966 INFO  [server] Activating core services
13:03:09,466 INFO  [threads] Activating Threading Extension
13:03:09,466 INFO  [txn] Activating Transactions Extension
13:03:09,466 INFO  [web] Activating Web Extension
13:03:09,654 INFO  [naming] Activating Naming Subsystem
13:03:11,920 INFO  [osgi] Activating OSGi Subsystem
13:03:14,888 INFO  [logging] Removing bootstrap log handlers
13:03:21,029 INFO  [org.jboss.remoting] (pool-1-thread-2) JBoss Remoting version
 3.1.0.Beta2
13:03:21,873 INFO  [org.jboss.as.jmx.JMXConnectorService] (pool-1-thread-1) Star
ting remote JMX connector
13:03:28,779 INFO  [org.hornetq.core.server.impl.HornetQServerImpl] (pool-1-thre
ad-2) live server is starting..
13:03:29,357 WARNING [org.hornetq.core.server.impl.HornetQServerImpl] (pool-1-th
read-2) Security risk! It has been detected that the cluster admin user and pass
word have not been changed from the installation default. Please see the HornetQ
 user guide, cluster chapter, for instructions on how to do this.
13:03:31,044 INFO  [org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol] (pool-1-thread-1) S
tarting Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-8080
13:03:31,138 INFO  [org.jboss.as.connector] (pool-1-thread-1) Starting JCA Subsy
stem (JBoss IronJacamar 1.0.0.Beta3)
13:03:31,341 INFO  [org.hornetq.core.remoting.impl.netty.NettyAcceptor] (pool-1-
thread-2) Started Netty Acceptor version 3.2.1.Final-r2319 localhost:5455 for CO
RE protocol
13:03:31,372 INFO  [org.hornetq.core.remoting.impl.netty.NettyAcceptor] (pool-1-
thread-2) Started Netty Acceptor version 3.2.1.Final-r2319 localhost:5445 for CO
RE protocol
13:03:31,388 INFO  [org.hornetq.core.server.impl.HornetQServerImpl] (pool-1-thre
ad-2) HornetQ Server version 2.1.2.Final (Colmeia, 120) started
13:03:31,826 INFO  [org.jboss.as.deployment] (pool-1-thread-1) Started FileSyste
mDeploymentService for directory C:\java\jboss-7.0.0.Alpha1\standalone\deploymen
ts
13:03:31,857 INFO  [org.jboss.as.server] (pool-1-thread-2) JBoss AS 7.0.0.Alpha1
 "Halloween" started in 36359ms. - Services [Total: 150, On-demand: 7. Started:
143]

09. Nov 2010, 22:24 CET | Link

Jason Greene | jason.greene(AT)redhat.com

Arbi Sookazian wrote on Nov 09, 2010 16:10:
Now it starts (needed to change the JAVA_HOME and JBOSS_HOME envmt variables) but when I navigate to http://localhost:8080 I see a blank white screen.

We don't have a splash page, which is why you see the white page. You could deploy a simple war though and it should work.

09. Nov 2010, 22:24 CET | Link

Jason Greene | jason.greene(AT)redhat.com

Arbi Sookazian wrote on Nov 09, 2010 15:49:
The video is not visible in the OP via FF or IE.

OP?

09. Nov 2010, 22:59 CET | Link

Jason Greene | jason.greene(AT)redhat.com

Also your startup time is unusually bad. For example on my system its 1.6 seconds. Do you have some kind of DNS issue?

09. Nov 2010, 23:36 CET | Link

Brian Stansberry

OP means Original Post.

The videos are on youtube at:

Part 1

Part 2

09. Nov 2010, 23:43 CET | Link

Ara

What about JSF 2.0 and el 2.2 support?

10. Nov 2010, 00:40 CET | Link

Arbi

Jason Greene wrote on Nov 09, 2010 16:24:

Arbi Sookazian wrote on Nov 09, 2010 16:10:
Now it starts (needed to change the JAVA_HOME and JBOSS_HOME envmt variables) but when I navigate to http://localhost:8080 I see a blank white screen.
We don't have a splash page, which is why you see the white page. You could deploy a simple war though and it should work.

I was expecting to view the admin page...

10. Nov 2010, 00:41 CET | Link

Arbi

Why is the download size so small? What is the purpose of this Alpha1 release of 7?

10. Nov 2010, 01:35 CET | Link

Jason Greene | jason.greene(AT)redhat.com

Arbi wrote on Nov 09, 2010 18:41:
Why is the download size so small?

A combination of several factors:

AS 7 is not feature complete; it's an early alpha
We no longer duplicate libraries, which was a side-effect of the previous file-system layout
We have less dependencies this time around (at least so far), and that is by design

Your second question:

What is the purpose of this Alpha1 release of 7?

To let the community know what we are working on, and to open the door for developers that have an interest in this technology space and would like to get involved (contribute).

Or as I put it in the blog entry:

Note that this release just offers a glimpse into the management model and server environment we are working on. EE capabilities will be added as they are developed in subsequent releases

10. Nov 2010, 07:56 CET | Link

Nicklas Karlsson | nickarls(AT)gmail.com

Also your startup time is unusually bad. For example on my system its 1.6 seconds. Do you have some kind of DNS issue?

The startup time is quite impressive but I suspect it's a bit optimistic as I get started in 2049ms with a wall clock time of about 6 secs. ;-)

10. Nov 2010, 15:38 CET | Link

Jason Greene | jason.greene(AT)redhat.com

Nicklas Karlsson wrote on Nov 10, 2010 01:56:

Also your startup time is unusually bad. For example on my system its 1.6 seconds. Do you have some kind of DNS issue?
The startup time is quite impressive but I suspect it's a bit optimistic as I get started in 2049ms with a wall clock time of about 6 secs. ;-)

The time calculation is a wall clock measurement from the time the very first JBoss class is loaded to the time that all services have started (with the exception of on-demand services, which is currently just OSGi). This is actually way more accurate than previous AS releases, which do not include bootstrap time (measurement began right before services were started).

This is where we measure start:

https://github.com/jbossas/jboss-modules/blob/master/src/main/java/org/jboss/modules/Main.java#L41

https://github.com/jbossas/jboss-modules/blob/master/src/main/java/org/jboss/modules/StartTimeHolder.java#L25

And here is where we print the started message:

https://github.com/jbossas/jboss-as/blob/master/server/src/main/java/org/jboss/as/server/ServerStartupListener.java#L130

https://github.com/jbossas/jboss-as/blob/master/server/src/main/java/org/jboss/as/server/ServerStartTask.java#L283