eXo JCR 1.12 is out

This week we have released a next step of eXoJCR evolution.

What is new and major in version 1.12?

First of all eXoJCR it's an open-source implementation of JCR specification (JSR-170) and now it's under LGPL license (was AGPL). LGPL means freedom for use in closed (commercial, private etc) projects. Doing this step we want to get more feedback about JCR technology in real world usecases. At other hand lesser license opens us an opportunity to work with many JBoss teams and especially with Portal guys. GateIn portal it's a web face of a Content Repositories actually... as well as many other tasty features :).

But eXoJCR 1.12 is very interesting technically also.

Our new, big and #1 feature today - clustering.

It's not a very new option and we had a replication in 1.11. But it was designed for data synchronization between sites over Internet in on-line peer-to-peer mode (available since version 1.10). And then used by several our customers for a clustering in Intranet solutions. We gathered lot of feedback and real usecases and decided to re-implement it from the scratch in 1.12.

The new clustering goals mean intensively loaded Repository work in corporate network or a cloud. At same time a main look made on read operations scalability what is general for Web applications.
Technically the new cluster uses the same JGroups transport well known to us by 1.11 replication (and still used in asynchronous replication). But now the clustering work fully based on JBossCache. We rely on JBoss experience in this field. And we have implemented not trivial task - hierarchical JCR data caching over the JBossCache keeping a compatibility with existing persistence. We also reimplemented JCR indexer and locks support on JBossCache.
A complex work done and we're on a next iteration there.

Other main features of eXoJCR 1.12.0-GA since 1.11.2
- Lazy-load option for child nodes and properties read, improved items
dataflow for read/write operations
- Alternative data container optimized for read operations (consuming
less database queries). It's enabled by default.
- Support of Java6 and Java5 runtimes and JDK
- Database dialect can be autodetected (if not pointed in the configuration)
- Support for Values large of 2GiB
- Portal container configuration supports default definitions,
links and externally loaded parameters
- Support of MySQL/InnoDB database for multilingual content
- Concurrency improvements for Session registry and Values storage
- Concurrency improvements for XA transactions support (Repository
login and logout are faster now)
- Improved search based on Lucene 2.4
- Standalone container can use configuration stored in JBoss application server
configuration directory by default
- WebDAV server update-policy can be configured to different
versioning behaviour
- Two new REST services introduced:
* HTTP (RESTful) Backup agent with console client
* HTTP (RESTful) Repository management service

More info about inherited features from the previous versions 1.11.2 here.

eXoJCR 1.12 was tested on databases/JDBC drivers:
MySQL 5.1 MYSQL Connector/J 5.1.8
Oracle DB 10g (10.2.0.1) Oracle 10g (10.2.0.1)
PostgresSQL 8.3.7 JDBC4 Driver, Version 8.3-605
DB2 9,7 IBM Data Server Driver for JDBC and SQLJ (JCC Driver)
Version: 9.1 (fixpack 3a)
MS SQL Server 2005 SP3 JDBC Driver 2.0
MS SQL Server 2008 SP1 JDBC Driver 2.0
Sybase 15.0.2 JConnect v6.0.5 (Build 26564 / 11 Jun 2009)

Downloads of a standalone eXoJCR bundles available now.
Tomcat or EAR provides a network ready content server with several plain samples. It provides WebDAV and FTP (port 2121) services on the board.

eXoJCR 1.12.0-GA jars are on JBoss maven2 repo also.
There are short intro how to setup dev environment for eXoJCR 1.12.

Where you can see eXoJCR in action (soon):
eXoJCR 1.12 is a database of GateIn portal.
eXoJCR 1.12 also used in xCMIS - eXo's CMIS implementation.
And our services...

Lot of stuff... stay connected. Details more interesting.