Featured Blogs

In my last post I discussed how to make a Spring MVC controller method asynchronous by returning a Callable which is then invoked in a separate thread by Spring MVC. But what if async processing depended on receiving an external event that will take place in a thread outside the control of the current request Read more...

In previous posts I introduced the Servlet 3, async support feature in Spring MVC 3.2 M1 and provided background on techniques for real-time updates. In today's post I'll turn to the technical details of the new Spring MVC feature and its impact on various aspects of the Spring MVC request lifecycle. To make any existing Read more...

You've no doubt read Jennifer Hickey's amazing blog posts introducing Cloud Foundry workers, their application in setting up Ruby Resque background jobs, and today's post introducing the Spring support. Key Takeaways for Spring Developers You need to update your version of vmc with gem update vmc. Cloud Foundry workers let you run public static void Read more...

In my last post I introduced the new Servlet 3, async support feature in Spring MVC 3.2 M1 in the context of long-running requests. A second very important motivation for async processing is the need for browsers to receive real-time updates. Examples include chatting in a browser, stock quotes, status updates, live sports results, and Read more...

Overview Spring MVC 3.2 M1 will introduce asynchronous request processing support based on Servlet 3.0. This is the first of several blog posts covering the new feature, providing along the way sufficient background and context to understand how and why you might want to take advantage of it. A major goal of any milestone release Read more...

With the Apache Tomcat 7.0.27 release, the Apache Tomcat team introduced a WebSocket implementation. In a previous post, we took a look at what the WebSocket implementation means, including what benefits and limitations they present. Today, we will discuss specifically how WebSocket is implemented in Apache Tomcat 7.

Since WebSocket is a protocol sent over TCP after an initial HTTP handshake, you could effectively implement WebSocket using Tomcat’s Comet implementation. There is a back port to Tomcat 6 suggested that does exactly that with very minor changes.

The Apache Tomcat team however decided to go with a more substantial implementation with changes to the core of Tomcat’s network and protocol implementation. The reason for this was memory and scalability based. If Tomcat can recycle the HttpServletRequest/Response objects after the initial handshake, each WebSocket connection will take up less memory in the Java heap. It also opens up the Tomcat container for other future protocols that utilize the HTTP Upgrade feature.

The WebSocket implementation from an API standpoint is fairly straightforward. You really can only do two things:

1. Send messages
2. Receive messages

read more

Earlier this year, VMware announced a new product called vFabric Application Director. Application Director is a new product that runs atop VMware vCenter Director that helps application architects visually plan, build and deploy applications to cloud infrastructure. Today, Eitan Gayor, a VMware engineer, published a new video that shows a very simplified version of how he can build a plan and deploy a single server, including the VMware vFabric Application Performance Manager (APM) agent. APM is a new offering that combines Hyperic, Spring Insight and a new product called AppInsight together to provide a single pane of glass for application administrators that automatically keeps pace with application changes, makes it easy to interpret application-level performance and provides direct access to fix problems.

Gayor further describes Application Director and its key concepts as:

The key purpose for Application Director is to automate the provisioning of infrastructure and applications so it happens faster, with fewer errors, and with less headache. If you’ve ever used a standard catalog of parts, you’ll get the idea immediately because Application Director stores information in a visual representation called a blueprint.  What’s in a blueprint? Basically, a blueprint includes everything you would use to build, configure, and deploy a server or group of servers to build out your application.  Blueprints define all the components like the operating system, virtual machine templates, web server, application server, database server, monitoring software, packaged software, EAR, SQL, or WAR, etc.  All these components are available to drag and drop onto your blueprint’s canvas from a standard catalog. Once the core building blocks are in place on your blueprint, you can further tailor your application build plan by including dependencies, policies, and configurations.

About the Demo

The SlideRocket demo illustrates three important parts of building an application using Application Director:

1. Building the blueprint is intuitive and quick using drag and drop capabilities.
2. Incorporating management capabilities, such as the vFabric Application Performance Manager (APM) agent takes just seconds using the pre-populated catalog service.
3. Deploying the blueprint to be provisioned on your target server is as fast as just one click.

 

To deploy another server,  just re-use the blueprint, add the new server, add any dependencies, and redeploy the improved application infrastructure.

About Application Performance Monitoring

VMware vFabric Application Performance Manager provides vFabric Hyperic customers with real-time visibility on their applications performance from a users point-of-view to help better manage SLAs in the cloud. Driven by VMware vFabric AppInsight, and fused with the metric data and control of vFabric Hyperic, you now have a next-generation application operations dashboard that automatically models transactions across all application tiers, providing a critical real-time perspective on the true performance of dynamically scaling applications.

Upgrade before June 30, 2012 to vFabric Application Performance Manager for just $99. See offer for more details.

With the 7.0.27 release the Apache Tomcat team introduced a WebSocket implementation. WebSocket has received a lot of hype, and has been much anticipated by Tomcat users. Let’s take a quick look at what web sockets are, what benefits and limitations they have and how they are implemented in Apache Tomcat 7.

What is a WebSocket?

WebSocket is considered the next step in evolution of web communication. Over time, communication has evolved in steps to reduce the time and data throughput for the application to update a user’s browser. The evolution has looked a little like this:

• Entire page reloads
• Component reloads using AJAX Processing
• Comet communication
  • Long poll– similar to AJAX, but not holding a thread on the server
  • Bi directional- two way communication over the same TCP

Each of these steps had their benefits and challenges. Apache Tomcat 6 implements bi-directional communication over HTTP using its Comet Processor. This implementation allowed for asynchronous event driven request processing as well as bi-directional communication. This implementation had a few limitations.

read more

Just days ago, SpringSource Tool Suite™ (STS) 2.9.1 was released. Besides many new features, it provides several features that are especially exciting for Spring Integration users. First of all, the latest STS release adds support for Spring Integration 2.1 and improves the visualization capabilities for Spring Integration flows. STS supports now all recently added Spring Read more...

As part of the Core-Spring course, we have a lab application that we use to show how to integrate Spring and JPA/Hibernate together. We have just upgraded it to Spring 3.1 / Hibernate 4.1, and thought we should share a few tips. 1) Maven Dependencies The configuration sample below is based on Maven (but you Read more...

The Apache Tomcat team announces the immediate availability of Apache Tomcat 7.0.27

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This release is includes significant new features as well as a number of bug fixes compared to version 7.0.26. The notable changes include:

• Support for the WebSocket protocol (RFC6455). Both streaming and message based APIs are provided and the implementation currently fully passes the Autobahn test suite. Also included are several examples.
• A number of fixes to the HTTP NIO connector, particularly when using Comet.
• Improve the memory leak prevention and detection code so that it works well with JVMs from IBM.

Please refer to the change log for the complete list of changes:
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/changelog.html

Note that this version has 4 zip binaries: a generic one and three bundled with Tomcat native binaries for Windows operating systems running on different CPU architectures.

read more

Introduction The Grails Framework provides a lot of tools and techniques to web application developers to simplify solving common application development challenges. Among those are a number of things which simplify the complicated and tedious problems often associated with data binding. In general, data binding is made very simple by Grails as it offers several Read more...

Working software is the primary measure of progress for software development teams. This is one of the principles of the Agile Manifesto and has led agile software teams to focus on implementing the most important features of a system early and efficiently. These teams usually provide frequent deployments of the software in order to receive feature validation from the business and to show project progress. The benefits are quick and frequent feedback for the developers and congruous applications for the business.

The practice of automated continuous deployment ensures that the latest checked in code is deployed, running, and accessible to various roles within an organization. Project managers can have a place to check on project progress, testers have a view into the latest builds, developers can see the their modules working with the modules from other team members, and stakeholders can see how their requirements have been translated into working software. As some of the most popular application servers to deploy agile applications on, Apache Tomcat and tc Sserver easily integrate with continuous integration servers to allow agile teams to realize continuous deployment while utilizing a lean application server (another practice of agile teams).

You can start practicing continuous deployment very quickly using Apache Tomcat or VMware vFabric tc Server, Jenkins, and your source control system of choice. For this article, since another tenet of agile development is to instrument the application early for better manageability, in addition to outlining how to set up continuous deployment with Tomcat, we will include alternative instructions for tc Server which has built-in monitoring from VMware vFabric Hyperic.

read more

Wanna use the SpringSource Tool Suite on the latest Eclipse Juno (4.2) milestone builds? Here you go:  How to install Download and install the latest: Eclipse Juno JEE milestone build Download the bookmarks.xml and import that to your list of update sites (Preferences -> Install/Update -> Available Update Sites -> Import). Go to "Install New Software" and Read more...

Introduction The Spring Integration team is happy to announce the first milestone release (1.0.0.M1) of the Spring Integration Scala DSL – one of the newest additions to Spring Integration portfolio. What is the Spring Integration Scala DSL? The Spring Integration Scala DSL is a Domain Specific Language written in Scala with the goals of: providing Read more...

 

 

 

read more

I am happy to announce that the first milestone release (1.0.0.M1) for Spring for Apache Hadoop project is available and talk about some of the work we have been doing over the last few months. Part of the Spring Data umbrella, Spring for Apache Hadoop provides support for developing applications based on Apache Hadoop technologies Read more...

The Apache Tomcat team announces the immediate availability of Apache Tomcat 7.0.26

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This release is primarily a bug fix release and includes numerous bug fixes compared to version 7.0.25. The notable bug fixes include:

• Improved @HandlesTypes processing which no longer loads all classes on web application start.
• Ensure that POST bodies are available for reply after FORM authentication when using the AJP connectors
• Corrected a regression that broke annotation scanning for many use cases including web applications packaged as WARs and many embedded scenarios.

Please refer to the change log for the complete list of changes:
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/changelog.html

Note that this version has 4 zip binaries: a generic one and three bundled with Tomcat native binaries for Windows operating systems running on different CPU architectures.

read more

The Spring Roo team is pleased to announce the availability 1.2.1.RELEASE.  This is the first maintenance release for 1.2 and includes fixes for a number of issues in multi-module Maven support and JSF/PrimeFaces.  It also has  performance enhancements and has been updated to support the recent release of PrimeFaces 3.1 and Google App Engine 1.6.2. Read more...

We are proud to announce that the former Hyperic Forums have been successfully migrated to a new Hyperic VMware Community. As stated in a blog late last year, this is an important milestone for Hyperic users worldwide. This marks the final step in the transition of the customer experience into the larger family of products and support offered by VMware that help to dramatically simplify IT and reduce operational expenses.

Benefits are substantial for Hyperic users. As mentioned in a post earlier this year, they include:

• Single place to get help and collaborate on issues involving systems management, software development and virtualization.
• With over 1.2 million community members, including VMware product, support and field teams, this is the largest technology community leading the market on bringing the enterprise to the cloud.
• The largest resource knowledge base for VMware products, users can find sample code, SDKs, and APIs to help with all their development needs.

The new Hyperic VMware Community retains all of the former forum category organization, as well as the complete history of all announcements, messages and threads. Each thread from the former Forums will now be redirected to the new VMware Communities to aid in search or if users have bookmarked popular topics.

User history has been attached based on email address. If a user’s email address did not exist in the VMware Community, a new account was created for them and the user was notified to register now. All reward points have been transferred and users now gain credit under the VMware Communities rewards program.

Got questions? For questions on the migration, please check out the Hyperic VMware Communities Migration FAQ or, for general questions on how the VMware Communities work, see the VMware Communities FAQ.

Haven’t used the VMware Communities yet? All Hyperic users, including open source and enterprise users, are welcome to join. To join, go to the VMware Communities login and click Register.