It is time for another update from the JBoss Community and we are finishing the month in style.  We have news, new releases, conference updates and good, solid technical posts.

JBoss AS "Tesla" Beta is out

The JBoss AS team have been hard at work and, only two months after having released JBoss AS 7.0.2 "Arc", have announced the first beta of JBoss AS 7.1.0 "Tesla".  This is a significant step towards support of the EE full profile and includes many new additions, not least of which is support for EJB 2.x and remote client invocations.

There are many more improvements and additions so don't take my word for it!  Read the announcement, download the server and take it for a spin.

JBoss Tools, as you would expect, has support for the new version but there is one issue which requires a small change to the startup configuration before they can be used together.  Max has written a good post describing the issue and walks you through the simple process of updating your server configuration.

Ceylon continues at pace

Two weeks ago the Ceylon team unveiled the Ceylon website and provided access to a pre-release version of the IDE.  As if to prove that nothing within the community ever stands still, they have now released an updated pre-release version of the IDE.  Emmanuel has posted an update describing some of the things that have happened over the last two weeks and the some of the reasons for the update.

If you are in Mexico City on the 17th of December, and are looking for something to do, then try and catch Gavin's talk about Ceylon.  It will be the first time he has given the talk in Spanish!

Seam and future directions

Shane has written an extensive post about the next step in the future of Seam, discussing many of the concerns that have so far been raised. 

If you have any interest in Seam then it is a must-read, helping to shed light on the reasons for the changes that are currently underway.

Part of his posting also talks about the Apache DeltaSpike project, the proposal for which has now been submitted to the Apache Incubator.  This is going to be a very interesting project to watch especially as it combines three very active communities under one umbrella.

All these changes have involved a great deal of time and effort, from people on all sides, to get everything to this point; time and effort that are recognised by everyone including Mark Little.  There are going to be more exciting announcements over the coming months so watch this space for further details.

Arquillian updates

Arquillian is a JBoss project that should be part of everyone's testing toolbox, greatly simplifying the test logic involved in integration testing.  If you are not already using it then take a look at the presentation from Devoxx 2011 and ask yourself "why not?".

The Arquillian team have recently released updates to a number of their sub projects

• Arquillian Core 1.0.0.CR6, the core of the Arquillian toolkit.
• Arquillian Drone 1.0.0.CR3, with upgraded Selenium, improved WebDrvier configuration and fixes to the cleanup of method scoped browsers.
• OpenWebBeans Container 1.0.0.CR2, including support for OpenWebBeans 1.1 and WebArchive deployments
• Jacoco 1.0.0.Alpha2, now including support for coverage of classes within nested archives.

Dan has also been working on an Arquillian Extensions Plugin for JBoss Forge, making a rough cut of it available through the github project.

JUDCon 2012: India

The deadline for submitting papers has now passed and the selection process has begun.  We will soon know the content and schedule for the conference but, rest assured, whatever is chosen will be of a high quality and aimed at the Developer audience.

If you are intending to go to the conference, held on January 24th and 25th, then make sure you apply for your ticket before the Very Early Bird Fee expires at midnight on the 3rd of December!

Conference Roundup & Travel

Two weeks ago was a very busy week, with lots of JBoss developers and Community members presenting at a number of conferences.  We now have some more posts to share with you including

• the slide deck from the Portal presentation at JUDCon
• Dimitris' recap of Devoxx 2011
• Mircea's summary of Infinispan@Devoxx
• Andrew's description of his month long tour, alongside Lincoln and Dan

and don't forget the Arquillian slides from above

More JBoss Releases

As if all that wasn't enough, take a look at some of the other release which were made this week

• Teiid 7.6 Final was announced, adding numerous improvements to this, already impressive, Data Virtualisation System
• Hibernate Core 4.0.0 CR7 has been released, focussing on performance and bugs
• RichFaces 4.1.0 CR1 is out, another stepping stone on the way towards 4.1.0 Final
• GateIn Portal 3.2.0 Beta01, the first view of the upcoming 3.2.0 release
• IronJacamar 1.1.0.Alpha4, the 4th snapshot of the IronJacamar 1.1 series.

Plenty to choose from, regardless of your interests

Technical Posts from around JBoss

There have been numerous postings written this week but there are four, in particular, that are worth mentioning.

• Wesley has written a good post describing why he feels that it is sometimes necessary to go an extra step when converting existing web applications to run in a mobile environment
• Mircea has written a good post describing the new use1PcForAutoCommitTransactions capability introduced in Infinispan 5.1.CR1
• Brian has written another post in his CDK series, this time discussing how to wrap the JQuery UI Tabs plugin with the RichFaces CDK
• Jonathan would like to set the record straight on GWT, discussing what is and what isn't included in GWT.

Well that's it for another week and, indeed, another month.  Stay tuned for more updates from the Weekly Editorial.

Update: Fixed deadline for JUDCon India "Very Early Bird Fee"