Although this latest release of JBoss Remoting does not have an interesting code name, like “Wasabi” or “Blade”, it does have some interesting new features. For example, a multiplex transport has been added which supports multiple streams of communication over a single pair of sockets. This allows servers to send callbacks to a client on a network connection initiated by the client, thus by-passing the headaches that can be involved when clients are running in unknown or restrictive environments.

Another big change is the use of the Apache Tomcat connectors for the http transport implementation, to provide full HTTP 1.1 support. Therefore, most any configuration allowed for Tomcat can be configured for the remoting HTTP server invoker. This includes being able to swap out the Tomcat protocol implementations being used, so can use the default Java protocol implementation or the native protocol implementation based on the Apache Portable Runtime.

JBoss Remoting also now allows for plugging in of custom serialization implementations. By default, the standard Java serialization is used, but can easily be configured to use JBoss Serialization. JBoss Serialization is a new project under development to provide a more performant implementation of object serialization. One of the main benefits of using JBoss Serialization, besides being faster, is allows for sending of non-serializable objects over the network.

Please check out the JBoss Remoting user guide for more information on features and configuration options as well as the samples guide for some examples of how easy it is to use JBoss Remoting.