[jboss-dev] JBoss 5.0.0.Beta1 Released

[Ryan Campbell]

JBoss 5.0.0.Beta1 has been released:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=22866&package_id=1
6942&release_id=464702

Release Notes

This is the 1st Beta release of the JBoss 5.0.x series for the Java
EE(tm) 5 codebase! For information on the APIs that make up Java EE 5,
see Java EE APIs & Docs. 

    Please note that work on JBoss 5 is ongoing and this Beta release is
by definition an unstable one that demonstrates many of the exciting new
features of the JBoss Application Server.

A sample Java EE 5 application that can be run on top of JBoss
5.0.0.Beta 1 and demonstrates many interesting technologies is the Seam
Booking Application available from SourceForge from the URL above. This
application makes use of the following technologies running on JBoss 5:

    * EJB3
          o Stateful Session Beans
          o Stateless Session Beans
          o JPA (w/ Hibernate validation)
    * JSF
          o Facelets
          o Ajax4JSF
    * Seam

Highlights

JBoss 5 is the next generation of the JBoss Application Server build on
top of the new JBoss Microcontainer. The JBoss Microcontainer is a
lightweight container for managing POJOs, their deployment,
configuration and lifecycle. It is a standalone project that replaces
the famous JBoss JMX Microkernel of the 3.x and 4.x JBoss series. The
Microcontainer integrates nicely with the JBoss framework for Aspect
Oriented Programming, JBoss AOP. Support for JMX in JBoss 5 remains
strong and MBean services written against the old Microkernel are
expected to work.

JBoss5 is designed around the advanced concept of a Virtual Deployment
Framework (VDF), that takes the aspect oriented design of many of the
earlier JBoss containers and applies it to the deployment layer.
Aspectized Deployers operate in a chain over a Virtual File System
(VFS), analyze deployments and produce metadata to be used by the JBoss
Microcontainer, which in turn instantiates and wires together the
various pieces of a deployment, controlling their lifecycle and
dependencies.

Many key features of JBoss 5 are provided by integrating other
standalone JBoss projects:

    * JBoss EJB3 included with JBoss 5 provides the implementation of
the latest revision of the Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) specification.
EJB 3.0 is a deep overhaul and simplification of the EJB specification.
EJB 3.0's goals are to simplify development, facilitate a test driven
approach, and focus more on writing plain old java objects (POJOs)
rather than coding against complex EJB APIs.
    * JBoss Messaging is a high performance JMS provider in the JBoss
Enterprise Middleware Stack (JEMS), included with JBoss 5 as the default
messaging provider. It is also the backbone of the JBoss ESB
infrastructure. JBoss Messaging is a complete rewrite of JBossMQ, which
is the default JMS provider for the JBoss AS 4.x series.
    * JBossCache 2.0 that comes in two flavors. A traditional
tree-structured node-based cache and a PojoCache, an in-memory,
transactional, and replicated cache system that allows users to operate
on simple POJOs transparently without active user management of either
replication or persistency aspects.
    * JBossWS 2 is the web services stack for JBoss 5 providing Java EE
compatible web services, JAXWS-2.0 and JAXB-2.0.
    * JBoss Transactions is the default transaction manager for JBoss 5.
JBoss Transactions is founded on industry proven technology and 18 year
history as a leader in distributed transactions, and is one of the most
interoperable implementations available.
    * JBoss Web is the Web container in JBoss 5, an implementation based
on Apache Tomcat that includes the Apache Portable Runtime (APR) and
Tomcat native technologies to achieve scalability and performance
characteristics that match and exceed the Apache Http server.

JBoss 5 includes numerous features and bug fixes, many of them carried
over upstream from the 4.x codebase. See the Detailed Release Notes
section for the full details.