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  Release Notes

Current GA release version 3.8.1.3 - replaces release version 3.8.0.15

See Bug Fixes and Follow-on Notes below for dot-release version specific information.

New Features

  • Spring Support
    • Added Fabric support for Spring Beans.   The fabric can be used as a Spring remoting architecture, both as a service exporter (publishing Spring bean for access by remote clients) and a proxy generator (using Spring-generated client proxies that use the fabric proprietary transport to get the request to the fabric and invoke the correct service).
  • Better support for Plain Old Java Objects (POJOs).
  • Sharing of common support files and libraries across multiple fabric applications.
  • Easier configuration of the Java Virtual Machine for use in the Fabric.
  • Appistry EAF Community Edition license (five server and/or ten CPU core)
    • Appistry EAF Community Edition license is now included in the installation of the product.  The Fabric no longer requires the installer to deploy the Community Edition license key during installation.
  • Affinity Tasks
    • Fabric support for Affinity provides you control over which worker runs specific task steps in your process flow. For example, some workers may have certain hardware or other resources that are needed by the application for certain steps. Perhaps data has been cached by a previous operation, and you want to direct work back to that box so the processing is closest to the data it requires. The user implements strategies in Affinity task methods, and wires them declaratively into the steps in their process flow XML using new elements introduced into the process flow definition file.
  • Hierarchal Security Model
    • With the introduction of Java components, we made changes to the fabric security model. You can now define a hierarchal security structure at any or all of the following levels: application, process flow, component object, and component object method.
  • Operating Systems Support
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
    • SUSE Enterprise Linux 10
    • Microsoft Windows XP SP2
      • XP SP3 added with 3.8.0.15 update
    • Microsoft Windows Vista 32-bit
    • Microsoft Windows 2003

Key changes

  • Installer
    • Linux installer fixes
    • Linux installer fabric_env script detects Java and configures environment
    • installer file names changed for all operating systems
    • Installer for Microsoft Windows now recognizes Vista
  • Spring Support
    • Added Spring remoting architecture
    • Uses Spring bean definition XML.
    • Allows the developer to define the bean factory
  • FAR Fabric Archive Support
    • Single deployable archive files usable
  • License
    • The EAF Community Edition license is now based on five servers and/or ten logical CPU (cores) in the Fabric. 
    • The License is now included in the installation. 
    • Deploying the Community license is no longer required during installation if the Fabric.
  • Fabric general
    • Performance improvements
    • Backward compatibility between EAF 3.7 and 3.8 tools and fabric improved
    • Fabric deployable upgrades improved
    • Affinity support changes
    • Various bug fixes
  • Fabric Client API
    • Java fabric client API objects can now be configured using Properties
    • .NET fabric client API objects can now be configured using an IDictionary
    • Some minor API changes and additions
  • Fabric Tasks
    • MockTaskRequest objects for .NET and Java provided to support task testing
    • Improved exception reporting from Java and .NET tasks back to user's client code
    • Improved Java classpath management for user's fabric applications
    • Improved LD_LIBRARY_PATH management for user's fabric applications
    • Exclusive task support bug fixes
    • Some minor API changes and additions
  • Client API
    • Improved logic for automatic retries of failed requests.
    • Exposed more properties to control various timeouts
    • Various bug fixes
  • Fabric Accessible Memory (FAM)
    • Many improvements made supporting FAM while the Fabric is "rolling" an update
    • Improvements in both computing and reporting memory available for FAM
    • Process flows can now branch on a task status of "in-doubt" when a FAM operation could not be committed
  • fabric_pkg
    • far packaging and extracting
    • Improved validation and error reporting
    • verbose flag to help with debugging
    • Removed the printing of package contents, unless the -verbose is set.
    • Various bug fixes
  • Fabric utilities
    • Fabric_gac.exe command introduced to manage Fabric .NET assembly in the GAC and registry
    • Fabric_ctl improvements
    • Fabric_ctl bug fixes
    • fabric_pkg bug fixes
    • Fixed issues in log_monitor when formatting non-log_monitor targeted messages

Bug Fixes and Follow-on Notes

  • The following is the list of Bug fixes included in version 3.8.1.3
    • Fixed bug #453: Lost system service when doing rolls of the fabric. We now update system service prior to starting the restart exes if system service isn't running.
    • Fixed bug #447: Windows would get mad and not send data to a socket when the number of bytes needed to send is really large.
    • Fixed bug: When system-service isn't running, and we deploy an upgrade file that contains a newer system-service, we'd end up with a new system-service in staging and the old one in system (since system-service does its own copy) - now we'll try to copy the system-service.
    • Fixed bug: Retry count was not decrementing when we get onDisconnect / onConnectFailed from process service prior to actual using it
    • Fixed bug #439: Unblock sigchld in daemon to be nice to customers that spawn processes from their user code (in TaskService?) that use signal handlers that catch SIGCHLD.
    • Fixed deadlock issue when closing connection inside of onTimeout int the ActiveTaskManager/ActiveTask?.
    • Fixed bug #435: If an onTimeout fired followed by an onDisconnect an access violation could occur, as we are holding onto the connection in the active task, and we access it after it is already closed (either by getting the connection id, or closing it again).
    • Fixed bug #430: Merge from trunk r31888 - fixed so the recovery save volunteer packets go to the right place.
    • Fixed bug #429: Performance/multicast spamming issue with exclusive tasks. Merging these from rdmoore's changes on trunk - r31887, r31891, r31896, r31920.
    • Fixed bug #428: Due to no-fork flag issue...we are setting up the ld library path twice on unix.
    • Fixed bug #421: Windows SDK install does not automatically install assemblies to the GAC.
  • The following is the list of Bug fixes included in version 3.8.0.17
    • Fixed bug #430: Recoveries were only getting saved to one worker (localhost) and not to two different workers
    • Fixed bug #429: Performance issue with exclusive tasks. Process service and other task services were getting bogged down with volunteer requests for exclusive tasks...which caused the exclusive tasks that were running to go slower.
    • Fixed bug #435: Task Service core dump if an exclusive task timed out, and then the network cable to the process service was pulled.
    • Fixed bug #428: fabric_pkg -verbose on Unix was printing an extra LD_LIBRARY_PATH message.
  • The following is the list of Bug fixes included in version 3.8.0.15
    • Fixed bug: removed fabric usage of a hard-coded Java Virtual Machine option that Sun introduced in JDK 1.5.0.7, and prevented users with earlier versions of JDK 1.5 from being able to use the fabric.