Dear JBoss Community:

In June 2007 Red Hat announced the IcedTea project, which aims to make OpenJDK usable without requiring any other software that isn’t free. I’m excited to say that now, thanks to IcedTea and the efforts of the broader Open Java community, Java is truly open. As Rich Sharples wrote, “The latest OpenJDK binary included in Fedora 9 passes the rigorous Java Test Compatibility Kit (TCK). This means that it provides all the required Java APIs and behaves like any other Java SE 6 implementation”.

This is big news in the Java world. But what does it mean for Red Hat and Java? Fundamentally, it means a significant increase in Red Hat’s ability to support JBoss Enterprise Middleware platforms running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We’ll also now be able to look forward to improved Java for virtualized, hosted environments and improved scalability and performance of JBoss Enterprise Middleware.

The most popular open source middleware stack optimized for the most popular open source Java virtual machine optimized for the most popular open source operating system–imagine that. Java is finally free and open, and my congratulations go to all on the IcedTea project.

After rigorous testing and performance checks, JBoss Application Server (AS) 5.0 RC1 has now been released. It’s the first release that gives you the ability to cleanly separate the three essential application server layers: the base runtime, the core middleware services, and the programming model/API and language layers. That means your core architecture won’t be dependent on any particular component model. JBoss AS5 will instead have an architecture that allows for the component model to be pluggable, allowing both compatibility with old code bases and inclusion of improved component models in future.

Read my blog to gain more insight into how the JBoss Microcontainer abstracts us from the runtime environment. In the end, it’s all about focusing on customer choice. RC2 will be following very soon. Read the Q&A on Jboss AS 5.0 with project lead Dimitris Andreadis to get more information on the many new features in JBoss AS 5.0.

Upcoming webinars
If you are responsible for SOA planning, development or execution, then you might be interested hearing Pierre Fricke, JBoss’s Director of Product Line Management, speak in the joint webinar with Active Endpoints and JBoss on July 24th.

If you’re frustrated by rising prices from a vendor you’re locked in to, Aaron Darcy and Nick Hopman will be presenting the “Migrate to JBoss. Lower your TCO.” webinar on July 23. Learn what to do when your organization is considering strategic alternatives to proprietary application servers.

JBoss Messaging
JBoss Messaging (JBM) enables high-performance, scalable, clustered messaging for Java, and the recent release of JBM 2.0 alpha is a technology preview of our next-generation messaging system. So far, the performance measurements and test results are looking extremely impressive.

JBM’s developers have done a lot of work to ensure a simple architecture that is 100% POJO-based, allowing embeddable messaging in any product. With a new, high-performance transport based on Apache MINA, JBM also boasts an intelligent journal that can automatically flip into using pure Java NIO or Linux asynchronous IO (via a thin native layer) depending on whether AIO is available on the system. This results in amazing persist rates, even on commodity hardware. JBM lead developer Tim Fox tells me, “The journal is written in 95% Java, deliberately keeping the native layer to a minimum, making it far simpler to manage and port to other operating systems in the future.” Well done to the Messaging team and all its contributors.

JBoss Cache
If you’re running JBoss at scale, you probably already know that JBoss Cache is one of the more important components of JBoss Middleware. Hibernate, the Application Server, and Portal Server all rely on it to improve performance and scalability. The JBoss Cache team is getting ready for the Alpha release of 3.0.0. One of the major features will dramatically improve performance of read-mostly applications–MVCC (Multi Version Concurrency Control). Learn more on the JBoss Cache Blog.

Finally, the solution architects amongst you may be interested to know that more than 100 Italian Chambers of Commerce now rely on JBoss and Red Hat solutions for their mission-critical systems, including 300 of their local offices. I’d also like to congratualate JBoss for being chosen through its partner Atos Origins’ Java-based Games Management System for the Beijing Olympic Games as part of the Organizing Committee’s special High-tech Olympics initiative.

Onward,

Sacha

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