April 12th: a JBoss day in Northern Italy

Next week is going to be a hot one for those interested in learning more about JBoss technologies in Italy!

JBug Milan next meeting is scheduled for April 12th: Stefano Maestri and Sanne Grinovero are presenting on the JBoss Application Server 7 and Hibernate Search & Lucene. The meeting is going to be hosted by InfoCamere in Padua.

Just few hours later, the 47th meeting of the Milan Java User Group is also scheduled, at Veespo in Milan city center. There I'm presenting on the JBossWS project, with a special focus on the webservice functionality the project brings to JBoss Application Server 7.

If you happen to be around, definitely consider joining us!

JBoss Application Server 7.1.0

Last week marked one of the largest releases in JBoss history: JBoss AS 7.1.0.Final "Thunder" is finally out. You can read about the shiny features and achievements that come with the release in any of the multiple posts that have been published these days [1][2][3][4], AS 7.1.0.Final really deserves being tried, you'll love it ;-)

Here I'd just like to stress the relevance of having achieved JavaEE 6 Full Profile compliance. JBoss AS 7.1.0 satisfies all JavaEE compatibility requirements, allowing for real portability of nowadays enterprise Java applications. Regardless of that, AS 7.1.0.Final is still faster, smaller and more manageable than any previous JBoss AS release.

From a webservice point of view, officially achieving JavaEE Full Profile compatibility is the result of more then an year of hard working with TCKs (even before AS 7 actual development start!), given the ws related test groups are among the biggest ones in there.

Finally, I believe this is a great result / milestone also for the Apache CXF project, as JBossWS 4.0.1 installed on JBoss AS 7.1.0 relies on Apache CXF 2.4.6 for serving any JAX-WS functionality.

Time to try JBoss AS 7.1 ! http://www.jboss.org/jbossas/downloads

JBossWS 4.0.1 release

JBoss AS 7.1.0.Final is coming soon, so here we are with the last minute updates in the webservices area with another JBossWS release ;-)

JBossWS 4.0.1 includes important bug fixes and covers some application server integration changes for improving management. Besides that Apache CXF has been upgraded to the 2.4.6 release which also comes with many improvements and bug fixes.

Have a look at the release notes for further details [1][2]! Feedback is welcome as always.

Christmas releases!

It's Xmas time and here we are with many great releases!

Few hours ago, JBoss Application Server 7.1.0 CR1 has been released: it comes with over 370 jira resolved, numerous management and clustering improvements and the EE6 Full Profile support is feature complete.

Speaking of web services, one of the AS 7.1.0.CR1 updated components is JBossWS 4.0.0.GA, which has been released yesterday and is available for download starting from today.

The first final version of the JBossWS 4 series solves few minor issues over the previously announced and described CR1 version. Have a look at the release notes and documentation for further details!

Finally, I've also released the 1.1.0.GA version of the JBoss JAX-WS Maven Plugin, which basically introduces support for the new JBossWS 4 stacks and fixes an important bug for those leveraging the Maven War Plugin too in their maven project. The artifacts are available as usual on the maven repository.

Definitely a lot of stuff to play with during the Christmas vacations ;-) Enjoy!

Web Services Resource Access specifications are recommendations

After years of work, the Web Services Resource Access specifications have finally been promoted to W3C recommendations! The new WS-RA standards are:

• Web Services Enumeration (WS-Enumeration)
• Web Services Eventing (WS-Eventing)
• Web Services Transfer (WS-Transfer)
• Web Services Metadata Exchange (WS-MetadataExchange)
• Web Services Fragment (WS-Fragment)
• Web Services Event Descriptions (WS-EventDescriptions)
• Web Services SOAP Assertions (WS-SOAPAssertions)

I'd like to congratulate again the working group on this major achievement and thank Red Hat (as one of the members participating the group) for having allowed me to take part in the group and join the discussions that led to the standards definition.

Time to try JBossWS 4.0.0.CR1 !

JBossWS 4.0.0.CR1 has been released at the end of last week and is currently available for download in binary and source distributions. The release covers both Native and Apache CXF integration stacks and comes with a huge number of improvements, new features and fixes compared to the previous 3.4.1 final release. Have a look at the news page and the release notes [1][2] for further details.

The release is mainly meant for JBoss Application Server 7 and has been tested against AS 7.0.0, 7.0.1, 7.0.2 and the current 7.1.0 snapshot. JBoss AS 6 support is still included, but might be removed by the time JBossWS 4.0.0 goes final (hopefully soon).

This is really the right time for giving JBossWS 4 a try before it goes final! Any feedback is welcome and might turn into last minute fixes for major issues, if any ;-)

Meanwhile we're working on passing webservices-related tests of the full JavaEE certification testsuite using JBoss AS 7; JBossWS 4.0.0 final is going to be shipped in the final AS 7.1.0 release.

Upcoming JBoss AS 7 event in Lugano (JUG)

Java User Group Lugano is organizing its 20th meeting at USI on November, 30th 2011. The event will be completely dedicated to JBoss Application Server 7.
I've been proposed to present there and I'm going to have two sessions, introducing JBoss AS 7 and providing some insights on its webservices subsystem.

More details available at http://www.juglugano.ch/events/meeting_20.html .