Thursday, November 27, 2008

Roma Meta Framework: plug-ins management

Starting from release 1.0.0 Roma allows to be updated by using the new wizard commands:
  • check
  • install
  • update
If you've downloaded the 1.0.0 from SourceForge type:

> roma check

* admin... version 1.0.1 (25-11-2008)
* core... version 1.0.1 (25-11-2008)
* persistence-jpox... version 1.0.1 (25-11-2008)
  project-web... updated
* project-webready... version 1.0.1 (26-11-2008)
  scheduler-quartz... updated
* users... version 1.0.1 (25-11-2008)
* view-echo2... version 1.0.2 (26-11-2008)
  web-jetty... updated


You can install the new module you want just typing:

> roma install core

core... Installing version 1.0.1
Extracting directory: lib/
Extracting: lib/roma-core.jar
Module core installed correctly: version 1.0.1 (25-11-2008)


To know new plug-ins released by the community type:

> roma check new

To update the installed module ('core' in example above) to your project use:

> roma update core

That's all folks. No more pain with roma upgrade ;-)

Monday, November 10, 2008

Finally the official release 1.0 of Roma Framework is up

I'm tired out but happy! :-)

After about
one year I've released the official release 1.0 of Roma Meta Framework in Source Forge.

So many news from the last 1.0rc4 version: several new plug-ins, thirdy parties contributions, the free PDF manual, better module management and performance improvements.

Download the last release of Roma Meta Framework

Below the main changes:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VERSION 1.0.0 (November, 10th 2008)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Main addictions and improvements:

CORE module:
- New modules management. Now you can check for new modules, new releases of them and install it over the air. Dependencies are well considered
- New Logging aspect to abstract logging and to use logging facilities such as @LoggingAction() to log any POJO action
- Support for new View Aspect that works with XHTML 1.0, CSS2 and JSP
- Support for new Semantic Aspect available via Romulus project using Open Source Jena framework

CHART-JFREECHART module:
- New module to create graphs using the popular JGraph library

ETL-XPATH module:
- Strong refactoring of the engine
- New JDBC Extractor and Importer modules
- New Wizard to let to the user the importing phase

PERSISTENCE-DATANUCLEUS module:
- New Persistence Aspect implementation using the new DataNucleus technology. Supports JDO 2.1 and JPA 1.0

PERSISTENCE-JPOX module:
- Default like operator works like before, but it considers the presence of the special character "*". If found treats it as the "%" of SQL like syntax. This allow to execute searches with wildcards
- New "optimistic" transaction mode

SCHEDULER-QUARTZ module:
- New UI
- New wizard to build simple expression without the knowledge of CRON syntax

USERS module:
- Deep changes to the USERS module: new realm entity to group accounts, profiles, infocategory and other entities in a common "realm". New "Anonymous" profile to allow to profile for the non-authenticated user
- BaseAccount and BaseProfile now extends the common AbstractAccount abstract class in order to reference accounts or profile in the same manner just declaring as reference type the AbstractAccount

SCHEDULER-QUARTZ module:
- Calendar view

SCRIPTING-JAVA6 module:
- New module implementing the Scripting facilities of Java6. By separating all scripting features in Roma in only this module we have gained the Java5 compliance for all but this module, obviously

SERVICE-CXF module:
- New module to expose a POJO as a Web Service using Apache CXF framework

VIEW-ECHO2 module:
- Strong refactoring of components. Now ComponentFactory is obsolete and now anything is responsability of the Rendering implementation
- Management of multiple Echo2 stylesheets
- Sensible faster execution

WORKFLOW-TEVERE module:
- New Workflow module with transactional engine and Web GUI. It covers most common workflow patterns

WIZARDS:
- New 'check' wizard to check for new modules or new version of installed modules
- New 'install' wizard to install new modules or new version of installed modules
- New 'update' wizard to update Roma user projects with new version of modules installed
- CRUD now generates the Repository classes for each entity.
- Support for environment variables like "author". You can set/get variables in Roma. Set the "author" variable to have all generated sources with you as author

TEST-PRESENTATION app:
- Changed layout of Test Presentation application

OTHERS:
- Resolved a lot of issues (see SourceForge tracker)
- Tons of minor improvements.