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]

I'm happy to announce the 3rd developer snapshot of the IronJacamar 1.1 series.

Full release notes are here

Converter

This release saw the introduction of our new converter tool, which can convert the old JBoss Application Server -ds.xml format to the formats used in JBoss Application Server 7.

The tool is run by:

./converter.sh -ra old-ds.xml new-ra.xml

where old-ds.xml is your old resource adapter deployment and new-ra.xml is the XML snippet you can use in the resource-adapters subsystem in JBoss AS7.

Almost the same for datasources:

./converter.sh -ds old-ds.xml new-ds.xml

so, copy the content of new-ds.xml to the datasources subsystem and change it to fit your requirements.

Note, that the tool does a best effort so changes are most likely needed. Feedback is of course welcomed in our forum.

Other stuff

We have fixed a number of bugs too in this release, especially a bug around handling of native libraries inside resource adapter archives.

We have added a new sample that shows a basic resource adapter using a native library to our documentation.

The Road Ahead

Most of the bug fixes will be available in the upcoming JBoss Application Server 7.1.0.Beta1 release, and the rest will follow in a future release of the server. We are also working on a nice new JCA subsystem that should make it easier to integrate JCA with other technologies - did somebody say Spring ?!?

For Those About to Rock, We Salute You !

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

I'm happy to announce the release of Tattletale 1.2.0.Beta1 - the tool that will betray your project's naughty little secrets.

Full release notes are here.

Enterprise support

The first beta release of Tattletale 1.2 adds support for enterprise archive formats, namely

• Web ARchives (WAR)
• Enterprise ARchives (EAR)

which makes it easier to scan EE applications without extracting/moving bits around. Hopefully the next beta will support even more of the EE formats.

Some of reports already have support for those new archive formats, but we need help to finish the rest.

JBoss Application Server 7 support

A JBossAS7 report was added to the growing list of reports that Tattletale features.

This report will allow you to easy identify the jboss-deployment-structure.xml file you will need to include in your application in order to take advantage of the JBoss Modules project used in JBoss Application Server 7.

Pretty cool stuff.

Community

Most of the work done in this release was done by Navin Surtani - you may know the last name - who really came through for the community and implemented the new main features. Navin, you rock ! I salute you !

Now, we need feedback on the release, finish up the reports and fix whatever we may find. So fork the project and send me your GitHub pull requests :)

For Those About to Rock, We Salute you !

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

The second developer snapshot of the IronJacamar 1.1 container have been released.

The full release notes are here.

Enhanced Arquillian support

We have started to integrate the newer versions of the Arquillian framework, and have enhanced our embedded environment with the possibility to inject IronJacamar objects into your test case by

import org.jboss.jca.core.spi.mdr.MetadataRepository;
import org.jboss.jca.embedded.arquillian.Inject;

@RunWith(Arquillian.class)
public class MyTestCase

   @Inject(name = "MDR")
   private MetadataRepository mdr;

Of course this is considered advanced usage, but can help you verify your deployment state within the container repositories. It also helps us write test cases faster and easier :)

The main thing is the integration of the ShrinkWrap/Descriptors 1.2 series which will give you access to write your ra.xml's with Java using the

org.jboss.shrinkwrap.descriptor.api.connector15
org.jboss.shrinkwrap.descriptor.api.connector16

packages. Ralf - of ShrinkWrap/Descriptors fame - is working on getting connector10 and IronJacamar's specific descriptors into our distribution too. Hopefully soon XML on disk will be a thing of the past for resource adapter test cases :)

Other goodies

Our AS7 upgrader tool now supports Maven snapshots, so it is easier to try out a hot-fix from us.

The deployer chain saw some updates too in order to give better feedback on invalid configurations. Hopefully that will help people getting started quicker. Remember, we have a user guide with a description of the XSDs ;)

And we found a nasty bug too...

The Road Ahead

Our main focus is still on the AS 7.1 series, so keep the reports coming. We enjoy the feedback !

For Those About to Rock, We Salute You !

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