ModeShape adds a lot of new features and capabilities. It introduced an initial RESTful server that makes JCR repositories accessible over HTTP to clients. The JCR implementation was enhanced to support more features, including the ability to define and register node types using the Compact Node Definition (CND) format. A new configuration system was added, making it very easy to configure and manage the ModeShape JCR engine. An observation framework was added to the graph API. The federation connector was rewritten to improve performance and correct several issues. And quite a few issues were fixed.

What's next for ModeShape? Passing all of the JCR API compatibility tests for Level 1 and Level 2, plus some of the optional features, is the primary focus for the next release. Of course, there are a handful of improvements we'd like to make under the covers, and a few outstanding issues that we'll address. Farther out on our roadmap are the development of additional connectors and sequencers, some Eclipse tooling for publishing artifacts to a repository, and quite a few other interesting features.

We're always looking for suggestions and contributors. If you'd like to get involved on ModeShape, the first step is joining the mailing lists or hopping into our chat room on IRC (at irc.freenode.net#jbossmodeshape). You can also download the code and get it building, and start looking for simple issues or bugs in our JIRA issue management system.

But if nothing else, please contact us and let us know how you're using ModeShape and what we can do to make it even better.

And, if you haven't already, check out our Getting Started guide, which has examples that you can build and run to see ModeShape in action.