WSO2 WSAS 3.0-beta2 Released

The WSO2 WSAS & WSO2 Carbon team is pleased to announce the release of version 3.0-beta2 of the Open Source WSO2 Web Services Application Server (WSAS).

This release is available for download at [1]. WSAS is based on revolutionary the WSO2 Carbon [2] framework, Middleware a la carte'. Now you can adopt the middleware to suite your enterprise architecture. All the major features have been developed as pluggable Carbon components.

New Features
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1. Based on the OSGi based WSO2 Carbon architecture. This is a unification of all Java based products from WSO2. Now you can have features from the lightweight super-fast WSO2 ESB & the super-cool WSO2 MashupServer, running on your WSAS instance. You can mix and match the functionality you require according to requirements of your enterprise. The middleware can be adopted to your architecture. You could even extend the middleware by developing your own middleware components.

2. Enhanced admin UI
3. Extensible server admin framework
4. Separable frontend & backend - a single frontend server can be used
to administer several backend servers simultaneously
5. Various bug fixes and enhancements.

The full feature list is available at
http://wso2.org/projects/wsas/java/features

How to Run
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1. Extract the downloaded zip
2. Go to the bin directory in the extracted folder
3. Run the wso2server.sh or wso2server.bat as appropriate
4. Point you browser to the URL https://localhost:9443/carbon/
5. Use "admin", "admin" as the username and password.
6. If you need to start the OSGi console with the server use the property -DosgiConsole when starting the server

Known issues
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1. Data Services definition wizard is not available


All known issues have been filed here [3]. Please report any issues you find as JIRA entries.

Thanks
WSO2 Carbon & WSO2 WSAS team

1. http://wso2.org/downloads/wsas
2. http://wso2.org/projects/carbon
3. https://wso2.org/jira/browse/CARBON

WSO2 WSAS 3.0 - Coming Soon!

Expect the WSAS 3.0 release in mid December this year. The most significant feature in this release is going to be the fully componentized architecture. This new release is going to be based on WSO2 Carbon, which is the base platform for all future Java products from WSO2. WSO2 Carbon is based on OSGi. All the major features have been bundled into Carbon components which are in fact OSGi bundles. All major middleware vendors, including WSO2, have recognized the power of OSGi and are migrating their products towards an OSGi based architecture.

What is the value & benefit this is going to give the WSAS users & in general the Carbon users? Well, there are several.

Pick & Choose
1. Ability to select only the bare minimum functionality needed. You can simply remove unnecessary functionality
2. Ability to extend the server's functionality. For example, if you have a running WSAS instance, and need some service mediation capabilities enabled or BPEL capabilities, you simply need to drop in the relevant Carbon components into the Carbon plugins directory. You do not need to restart the server.

In short, you can mix & match whatever the functionality you desire.

Improved Availability - Server Restarting Minimized
Let's say you have enabled data services support through the Carbon Data Services component, and that your server is running in a production system. You need to deploy a data service which talks to a MS-SQL Server RDBMS, but have not included the JDBC driver in the WSAS instances classpath. In a traditional deployment, you'd need to drop the JDBC driver jar file into the classpath & restart the server, thereby impacting the availability. With the Carbon based approach, restarting is no longer required. Carbon takes care of wiring in the new MS-SQL Server JDBC driver.

Extend the server's functionality through custom components
The users can write their own components & extend the functionality of a Carbon based server.

What are the benefits this approach gives to the middleware vendor? The greatest benefit is having the ability to go from concept to solution in the minimum possible time period. For example, the BPEL Carbon was developed within 3 weeks! We did not have to rethink how to secure the BPEL processes & provide other enterprise features. These were already available as Carbon components. This benefit is also directly passed on to the Carbon user since they can expect to get new functionality within the shortest possible period.