Another X'mas present from Infinispan: 4.2.0.FINAL

So Christmas is meant to be full of presents, right?  Yep you heard that right - two releases in one day  :-)  Hot on the heels of Galder's 5.0.0.ALPHA1 release, here's the much-awaited 4.2.0.FINAL.  This is a big release.  Although it only contains a handful of new features - including ISPN-180 and ISPN-609 - it contains a good number of stability and performance improvements over 4.1.0, a complete list of which is available here.  Yes, that is over 75 bugs fixed since 4.1.0!!

This really is thanks to the community, who have worked extremely hard on testing, benchmarking and pushing 4.1.0  - and subsequent betas and release candidates of 4.2 - which has got us here.  This really is helping the project to mature very, very fast.  And of course the core Infinispan dev team who've pulled some incredible feats to get this release to completion.  You know who you are.  :-)

I'd also like to reiterate the availability of Maven Archetypes to jump-start your Infinispan project - read all about that here.

So with that, I'd like to leave you with 4.2.0, Ursus, and say that we are full steam ahead with 5.0 Pagoa now.  :-)  As usual, download 4.2.0 here, read about it here, provide feedback here.

Enjoy, and Happy Holidays!
Manik

Xmas arrives early for Infinispan users! 5.0.0.ALPHA1 is out!

Just in time for Christmas, the first release in the 5.x series called 5.0.0.ALPHA1 is out. This release implements one of the most demanded features which is the ability to store non-Serializable objects into Infinispan data grids! You can now do so thanks to the ability to plug Infinispan with Externalizer implementations that know how to marshall/unmarshall a particular type. To find out more on how to implement this Externalizers and how to plug them, check the following article that explain this in great detail.

A very important benefit of using Infinispan's Externalizer framework is that user classes now benefit from a lightning fast marshalling framework based on JBoss Marshalling. Back in the 4.0.0 days when we switched from JDK serialization to JBoss Marshalling, we saw a performance improvement of around 10-15% and we're confident that 5.x user applications will see a similar performance increase once they start providing Externalizer implementations for their own types.

At this stage, it's very important that Infinispan users have a go at implementing their own Externalizer implementations so that we have enough time to make adjustments based on feedback provided. Your input is crucial!!

Staying with the marshalling topic, another novelty included in this release is the ability to plug Hot Rod clients with portable serialization thanks to Apache Avro. This is not tremendously important right now, but once Hot Rod protocol clients have been written in other languages, they'd be able to seamlessly share data even if they're written in different languages! In case you're not aware, a Python Hot Rod client is already in the making...

Finally, details of all issues fixed can be found here, the download is here, and please report issues here. :-)

Enjoy and Merry Christmas to all :)

Galder

Announcing project Radargun

Hi all,

Radargun is a tool we've developed and used for benchmarking Infinispan's performance both between releases and compared with other similar products. Initially we shipped under the (poorly named) Cache Benchmark Framework.
Due to increase community interest and the fact that this reached a certain maturity (we used it for benchmarking 100+ nodes clusters) we decided to revamp it a little and also come with another name: Radargun.
You can read more about it here. A good start is the 5MinutesTutorial.

Cheers,
Mircea

4.2.0.CR4 is out

Yep, I've just cut Infinispan 4.2.0.CR4.  This is the last release candidate before a final release, so here is your chance to have your say.  :-)  A few stability issues around rehashing and distributed locking/transactions have been resolved, so please do try this out.

Details of issues fixed are here, the download is here, and please report issues here. :-)

Enjoy,
Manik

Maven Archetypes

To help you jump-start a new project using Infinispan, we now have Maven Archetypes you can use.  If you don't know what a Maven Archetype is, you should read this article which explains archetypes in more detail.  Of course, this assumes that you are using Maven as a build tool.

We've created two separate archetypes for Infinispan.  The first sets you up with a clean, new directory structure and sample code for a new Infinispan project, including sample configuration files and skeleton code, as well as a Maven pom.xml descriptor containing all necessary dependencies.

The second archetype is targeted towards people using Infinispan and want to report bugs and contribute tests to the project.  It sets up a new project with a skeleton functional test, including all of Infinispan's test helper utilities to simulate network setup and failure from within a test.  More important, the generated skeleton test is structured such that it can easily be assimilated into Infinispan's core test suite if necessary.

For more information on these archetypes, including a simple step-by-step guide, read http://community.jboss.org/wiki/InfinispanMavenArchetypes

Enjoy

Manik

Infinispan gains another team member

Infinispan's been fortunate enough to have Pete Muir - of Seam, Weld and the JSR-299/CDI spec fame -  join us.  More details are on Pete's blog on the subject.  Pete's work on Seam has been legendary, with particular regard to fostering and encouraging a very active community, while at the same time pushing the boundaries of Java EE.  With Pete's interest in distributed NoSQL databases and in-memory data grids, expect to see the same on Infinspan!

Welcome aboard, Pete - we're all very excited to have you on board! :-)

Cheers
Manik

4.2.0.CR3 released

Another day another release.  :-)  I've just cut 4.2.0.CR3.  This release contains a number of bug fixes and stability improvements, including ISPN-777 and a whole bunch of memcached server fixes thanks to Galder.  In addition, Tristan's CassandraCacheStore now also supports Key2StringMappers just like the JdbcCacheStores, as per ISPN-809.

For a full list of changes, see the release notes.  As always, download, try out and provide feedback!

Onwards to a final release...

Enjoy
Manik

Infinispan and JBoss AS 5.x

A lot of people have asked about being able to use Infinispan as a second level cache for Hibernate within JBoss AS 5.x (and its EAP 5.x cousins).

While Infinispan can be used as a Hibernate second level cache with Hibernate 3.5 onwards, Bill deCoste has written a guide to getting Infinispan to work in older versions of Hibernate, specifically with JBoss AS 5.x.  Hope you find this useful!

Cheers
Manik