Release Notes for ModeShape 3.0.0.Alpha4

The ModeShape 3.0.0.Alpha4 release is the first release of our new architecture, and is suitable only for testing and previewing features. APIs and storage formats are still subject to change.

What's new

There is a lot that's changed since ModeShape 2.8.x, including:

• ModeShape now uses Infinispan for all caching and storage, giving a powerful and flexible foundation for creating JCR repositories that are fast, scalable, and highly available. Infinispan offers a great deal of storage options (via cache loaders), but can also be used as a distributed, mulit-site, in-memory data grid.
• Improved performance. ModeShape 3 is just plain seriously fast, and performance is all-around faster than 2.x - most operations are at least one if not several orders of magnitude faster! We'll publish performance and benchmarking results closer to the final release.
• Improved scalability. ModeShape 3 has been designed to store and access the content so that a node can have hundreds of thousands of nodes (even with same-name-siblings) yet still be incredibly fast. Additionally, repositories can scale to millions of nodes and be deployed across many processes. (Clustering is not yet supported in this release.)
• Improved configuration. There is no more global configuration of the engine; instead, each repository is configured with a separate JSON file, which must conform to a JSON Schema and can be validated by ModeShape prior to use. Repository configurations can even be changed while the repository is running (some restrictions apply), making it possible to add/change/remove sequencers, authorization providers, and many other configuration options while the repository is in use.
• Each repository can be deployed, started, stopped, and undeployed while the engine and other repositories are still in use.
• Sessions now immediately see all changes persisted/committed by other sessions, although transient changes of the session always take precedence.
• New monitoring API that allows accessing the history for over a dozen metrics.
• New sequencing API, so sequencers now use the JCR API to get at the content being processed and create/update the derived content. Sequencers can also dynamically register namespaces and node types. Now it's easy to create custom sequencers.
• Simplified API for implementing custom MIME type detectors. ModeShape still has built-in detectors that use the filename extensions and the binary content.
• Improved storage of binary values of all sizes, with a separate facility for storing these on the file system. Storage of binary values in Infinispan and DBMSes will be added in upcoming releases.
• API interfaces and methods that were deprecated in 2.7.0.Final (or later) have been removed. There weren't many of these; most of the ModeShape API remains the same.
• Integration with JBoss AS 7.1. ModeShape runs as an integrated subsystem within AS7, and the AS7 tooling can be used to define and manage repositories independently of each other while the server is running.
• Many bug fixes and minor improvements

There are also several major new features that are planned (but not yet available in this release):

• JTA support is not yet working in this release but will be soon. It will allow JCR Sessions to participate in XA and container-managed transactions.
• Map-reduce based operations for performing reporting and custom read-only operations in parallel against the entire content of a repository. ModeShape will use this to enable validation of repository content against the current set or a proposed set of node types, as well as optimizing the storage format/layout of each node.

Features

Most of the JCR features previously supported in 2.x are working and ready for testing. If any issues are found, please log a bug report in our JIRA.

Accessing the Repository

• RepositoryFactory access
• JNDI registration of Repository
• JAAS Authentication
• Custom Authentication

Namespaces

• Session Remapping
• Permanent Addition/Deletion

Reading Repository Content

• Traversal Access
• Direct Access
• Same-Name Siblings
• Multi-Value Properties
• All Property Types Supported
• Property Type Conversion

Writing Repository Content

• Create/Update/Delete Nodes
• Create/Update/Delete Properties (Through Parent Nodes)
• Moving, Copying, Cloning
• Adding/Removing Mixins
• Referential integrity enforcement

Query / Search

• XPath
• JCR-SQL
• JCR-SQL2
• JCR-QOM

Importing/Exporting Repository Content

• System View Import/Export
• Document View Import/Export

Node Types

• Inheritance Among Node Types
• Discovering available Node Types
• Discovering the Node Types of a Node
• Discovering the Definition of a Node Type
• Property Constraints
• Automatic Item Creation
• Predefined standard Node Types
• Custom Node Type Registration (CND-Based and and JCR 2.0 API Template-Based)

Repository Metadata under System Node

• Permanent Namespace Mappings
• Node Types (Built-In and User-Registered)
• Active Locks

Other JCR Optional Features

• Observation
• Locking
• Versioning

ModeShape Storage Options

• In-memory
• BerkleyDB
• Relational databases (via JDBC), including in-memory, file-based, or remote
• File system
• Cassandra
• Cloud storage (e.g., Amazon's S3, Rackspace's Cloudfiles, or any other provider supported by JClouds)
• Remote Infinispan
• Separate large binary storage on file system

ModeShape Sequencers

• Compact Node Definition (CND) Sequencer
• DDL Sequencer
• Image Sequencer
• Java Source Sequencer
• Java Class Sequencer
• MP3 Sequencer
• MS Office Sequencer
• Text Sequencers (Delimited and Fixed Width)
• XML Sequencer
• XML Schema Document (XSD) Sequencer
• Web Service Definition Lanaguage (WSDL) 1.1 Sequencer
• Zip File Sequencer (also WARs, JARs, and EARs)

ModeShape Deployment/Access Models

• JNDI-Based Deployment
• Deploy as a subsystem in JBoss AS7, with RHQ/JON monitoring
• Access through RESTful Service
• JDBC driver for accessing ModeShape content through JDBC API and JCR-SQL2 queries
• Embedded (in Server or JEE Archive) Deployment
• OSGi-Compatible Archives

Other ModeShape features

• Automatic MIME type detection of binary content
• Asynchronous sequencing operations, within completion notified via events

However, a number of features are not yet implemented. Please do not use these features or report problems; many will be implemented and ready for testing in the next release.

Query / Search

• Full-Text Search

Other JCR Optional Features

• Shareable Nodes

ModeShape Storage Options

• Federate and access content in external systems (e.g., file system, SVN, JDBC, JCR, etc.)
• Separate large binary storage in Infinispan and DBMS

ModeShape Sequencers

• Teiid Relational Model Sequencer
• Teiid VDB Sequencer

ModeShape Deployment/Access Models

• Clustering and grids
• Access through WebDAV Service
• JTA support, allowing Sessions to participate in XA and container-managed transactions

Bug Fixes, Features, and other Issues

The following are the bugs, features and other issues that have been fixed in this release:

Bug

• MODE-1473 - Second property is ignored in org.modeshape.jcr.query.qom.JcrQueryObjectModelFactory.equiJoinCondition(String, String, String, String)
• MODE-1466 - The current user should be set on the sequencer thread
• MODE-1464 - XSD Sequencer issue with Unsigned Longs
• MODE-1479 - Applying changes to repository sequencer configs causes NPE
• MODE-1408 - Namespace changes do not trigger repository events
• MODE-1480 - Clustering cannot be configured in ModeShape subsystem for AS7
• MODE-1410 - Workspace.move does not trigger cache events
• MODE-1361 - Sequencers path expressions missmatch
• MODE-1442 - Admin user does not have admin role in JBoss AS kit
• MODE-1431 - Unable to locate the Log bundle
• MODE-1423 - org.infinispan.marshall.NotSerializableException: org.infinispan.schematic.internal.SchematicEntryLiteral

Component Upgrade

• MODE-1478 - Upgrade to Hibernate Search 4.1.1.Final

Task

• MODE-1449 - Rename internal Binary interface to BinaryValue
• MODE-1437 - AS7 subsystem should provide and specify ChannelProvider and CacheManagerLookup classes
• MODE-1440 - Improve AS7 subsystem configuration
• MODE-1472 - Remove SLF4J from the modeshape-client jar
• MODE-1435 - Improved and working ModeShape AS7 subsystem