I'm very pleased to announce that the 1st candidate release for the new JBoss Application Server 4.2.x series is available for download at sourceforge.

JBoss 4.2 is a stepping stone from JBoss 4.0 to JBoss 5.0. It combines a lot (but not all) of the exciting new features of JBoss 5, but based on the stable 4.x MicroKernel architecture.

Some of the cool new stuff includes:

• The latest version of JBoss EJB3 that is now bundled by default in the .zip distro (no separate installation step), since JBossAS 4.2.x requires a jdk5 runtime.
• The JBoss Web container, based on apache tomcat that includes the Apache Portable Runtime (APR) and optional native technologies for achieving truly stellar performance matching and exceeding that of the apache http server.
• JBoss Transactions, being the default transaction manager for JBossAS. JBoss Transactions is founded on industry proven technology and 18 year history as a leader in distributed transactions.
• Latest versions of Hibernate/JBossWS/JGroups/JBossCache.
• and more...

Check out the release notes for more details.

Please note that at this point only the .zip distro is released; an installer will come with the final release. Something else to be aware of is that JBossAS will now bind to localhost by default, instead of binding to all available interfaces. This was done because of concerns of users deploying jboss instances without securing them properly.

There will be a stabilization period of about a month before the final release. You are encouraged to test drive the latest and greatest JBossAS and communicate your findings to the JBoss User Forums.

Enjoy

Dimitris Andreadis
JBoss AS Project Lead