It's just mid-February and a great number of achievements is already behind us this year. More to come. The first big item of news this week is the release of the final version of JBoss AS 7.1.

Thunder follows lightning (closely, as always)

You've seen the lightning, now hear the thunder. It may be just a minor version change, but by no means this is a minor event: JBoss AS 7.1.0.Final "Thunder" is out, one of the largest releases in JBoss history. The new release brings in a whole slew of features and stability fixes, the most significant being a certified full Java EE 6 profile, which adds support for a number of new specifications on top of the already certified Java EE 6 Web Profile available as of the release of JBoss AS 7.0.0.Final "Lightning". No less than 1465 issues have been fixed since JBoss AS 7.0.2.Final, and they account for the new features added as well as improvements in areas such as security, management and clustering.

What do you need to know:

• The fully certified Java EE6 profile brings support for a number of specifications - including EJB 3.1 asynchronous and remote invocation, timers and message-driven beans,
• The security model is more strict, with remote access points (except web applications) being secured by default;
• Management capabilities have been enhanced - through an improved management API, CLI and administration console - on the latter, more details are outlined here by Heiko Braun;
• Remote connectivity capabilities have been enhanched - not only for EJB access but also in the area of distributed transactions;
• Clustering support includes web and EJB replication, and  experimental CDI replication as well.

You can learn all the details in the release notes, while downloading the new release!

JBoss EAP 5.1 Common Criteria certified

We usually write about the bleeding edge of Java EE technology and community projects. It is, sometimes, interesting to learn about latest developments regarding JBoss commercial products, like the news shared by Anil Saldhana - that JBoss EAP 5.1.0 and JBoss EAP 5.1.1 have just received their Common Criteria certification at EAL4+ level. What does this mean? In short, it has been audited and found to fulfill the highest requirements for security-sensitive environments (like government customers).

J is for Java

Following last week's post, Mark Little provides a more detailed perspective on his vision about the future of Java as a suitable platform in the age of polyglot software development: Java continues to be the foundation and powerhouse of the JBoss enterprise platform, while developers will be able to use their language of choice, owing to approaches such as TorqueBox or Immutant.

The Trailblazer SIG is born!

Help creating better JBoss developer resources such as examples, tutorials or screencasts by participating in the newly created Trailblazer SIG!  We already have a number of initiatives in place, and that's just the start - with your participation it could be much, much more! Stay at the forefront of Java EE innovation, join us now!

Infinispan: how would you like your cross-data center replication?

If you are interested in of cross-datacenter replication - Mircea Markus is asking on the behalf of the Infinispan team for suggestions and feedback on the design of this functionality, eyeing for its implementation in 5.2.0.

New releases

With its 4.1.0 version, which has been released last week, Hibernate Core gets a name which will, hopefully improve the clarity of its purpose: Hibernate ORM. In the announcement blog post, Steve Ebersole is explaining why, as well as what you can find in the new release.

Hibernate ORM is not the only member of the family that gets a new release - while announcing Hibernate Search 4.1.0.Beta2, Sanne Grinovero discusses an important new feature: the ability of specifying the indexing path for embedded entities, thus allowing better control over what exactly gets indexed in a complex structure. Worth trying! To me, however, the lesson about the importance of community feedback in framework design is equally interesting - another reason to read Sanne's post.

Errai continues its race towards building a better rich web experience for Java developers with the completion of its 2.0.Beta1 version. Jonathan Fuerth is providing a comprehensive overview of the release as well as the upcoming roadmap.

If you are looking for deeper integration between Spring and JBoss, Snowdrop 2.0.2.Final is out, with a number of fixes related to Spring 3.1 support.

Teiid 8.0.0 alpha 2 has been released as well.

Sightings

If you happen to be in Brno, make sure that you are not missing the Fedora Conference this weekend (17-18 February) - a lot of JBoss tracks - see the schedule here.

A JBPM 5 webinar is scheduled next week on 22 February.

This is all for this week, join us again in a week's time for latest and freshest in the ever-evolving world of JBoss.