The Apache Software Foundation

The Felix team is pleased to announce the release of Felix Karaf version 1.0.0

This release along with the associated release notes and change log are available from
 http://felix.apache.org/site/karaf-100.html

Apache Felix Karaf is a small OSGi based runtime which provides a lightweight container onto which various components and applications can be deployed.

Karaf features:

  *  Hot deployment: Karaf supports hot deployment of OSGi bundles by monitoring jar files inside the [home]/deploy directory. Each time a jar is copied in this folder, it will be installed inside the runtime. You can then update or delete it and changes will be handled automatically. In addition, the Karaf also supports exploded bundles and custom deployers (blueprint and spring ones are included by
default).

  * Dynamic configuration: Services are usually configured through the ConfigurationAdmin OSGi service. Such configuration can be defined in Karaf using property files inside the [home]/etc directory. These configurations are monitored and changes on the properties files will be propagated to the services.

  * Logging System: using a centralized logging back end supported by Log4J, Karaf supports a number of different APIs (JDK 1.4, JCL, SLF4J, Avalon, Tomcat, OSGi)

  * Provisioning: Provisioning of libraries or applications can be done through a number of different ways, by which they will be downloaded locally, installed and started.

  * Native OS integration: Karaf can be integrated into your own Operating System as a service so that the lifecycle will be bound to your Operating System.

  * Extensible Shell console: Karaf features a nice text console where you can manage the services, install new applications or libraries and manage their state. This shell is easily extensible by
deploying new commands dynamically along with new features or applications.

  * Remote access: use any SSH client to connect to Karaf and issue commands in the console

  * Security framework based on JAAS

  * Managing instances: Karaf provides simple commands for managing multiple instances. You can easily create, delete, start and stop instances of Karaf through the console.

  * Supports the latest OSGi 4.2 containers: Apache Felix Framework 2.0.0 and Eclipse Equinox 3.5

Enjoy!

-The Felix team

The Apache POI team is pleased to announce the availability of POI 3.5.

 Apache POI is well-known in the Java field as a library for reading and writing Microsoft Office file formats, such as Excel, PowerPoint, Visio and Word. With POI 3.5, it supports the new OOXML (Office Open XML) formats introduced in Office 2007. See http://poi.apache.org/ for more details

Release Highlights:

 POI-SS - Java API To Access Microsoft Excel Format Files
 * This common interface allows access to HSSF (binary file format, .xls) and XSSF (ooxml file format, .xlsx) in the same way

 POI-XSSF - Java API To Access Microsoft Excel 2007 OOXML Format Files
 * full implementation of high level POI-SS interface
 * text and embedded data extraction supported
 * low level, low memory parsing supported
 * full support for formula evaluation

 POI-XWPF - Java API To Access Microsoft Word 2007 OOXML File Formats
 * text and embedded data  extraction supported
 * partial implementation of high level usermodel API
 * partial support for custom XML mappings

 POI-XSLF - Java API To Access Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 OOXML Format Files
 * text and embedded data  extraction supported

In addition, POI 3.5 includes many new features, bug fixes and optimizations over POI 3.2.
 You can find the full list of changes here: http://poi.apache.org/changes.html

 The source and binaries can be downloaded from your local mirror:
 http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/poi/release/

 The release is also available from the central Maven repository under Group ID "org.apache.poi" and Version "3.5-FINAL".

 For the Apache POI Team
 Yegor Kozlov

The Empire-db team is pleased to announce the release of Apache Empire-db version 2.0.5.

Apache Empire-db is a lightweight data access and persistence component for relational databases based on JDBC.
http://incubator.apache.org/empire-db/

The most important improvement over our previous 2.0.4 release is the shift to Maven project management.
Hence Empire-db is now available from the Maven repository using the following group and artifact ids:
groupId:        org.apache.empire-db
artifacts:      empire-db, empire-db-struts2
version:        2.0.5-incubating

Further improvements include:
- New database handlers for Apache Derby, H2, PostgreSQL
- New Examples showing WebService integration using Apache CXF
- Struts2 extensions upgraded to work with Struts 2.1.6.

To download Apache Empire-db 2.0.5. please visit our download page on:
http://incubator.apache.org/empire-db/downloads/latest.htm

The following list provides a complete list of issues resolved in this release:

The issues are categorized as follows:
[{C=Core}|{S=Struts Extensions}|{E=Examples}|{O=Other}
/{N=New Feature}|{B=Bug fix}|{I=Improvement}]

Issues resolved:
EMPIREDB-49 - [C/B]: The generation of table, view and query aliases now uses thread-safe counters
EMPIREDB-46 - [C/B]: datetime-phrase issue in DBDatabaseDriverDerby
EMPIREDB-45 - [S/I]: Update struts extentions to accomodate latest struts release
EMPIREDB-44 - [C/B]: error using apache derby and CLOB datatype
EMPIREDB-42 - [C/I]: Extend DBReader to provide query results in a hash set

EMPIREDB-41 - [C/I]: Deal with databases differences regarding SQL reverse function
EMPIREDB-40 - [C/B]: Postgresql cast problem
EMPIREDB-37 - [C/N]: PostgreSQL "BLOB" type not exist but is possible to create a "bytea" column
EMPIREDB-36 - [E/N]: New WebServices integration example using Apache CXF
EMPIREDB-34 - [C/I]: Add support for stmt.executeUpdate with Statement.RETURN_GENERATED_KEYS instead of getPostInsertAutoIncValue()
EMPIREDB-33 - [S/B]: BeanRecordProxy isFieldReadOnly wrong for new records
EMPIREDB-32 - [C/N]: Unit tests
EMPIREDB-31 - [E/B]: Advanced sample throws SQLException (wrong db user)
EMPIREDB-30 - [C/N]: Support for PostgeSQL
EMPIREDB-29 - [O/N]: Switch to Maven project management
EMPIREDB-28 - [E/B]: SampleConfig in the demo application has invalid user
EMPIREDB-27 - [C/B]: HSQLDB driver doesn't support conversion of value to DOUBLE
EMPIREDB-26 - [S/I]: Extend HTMLTagDictionary to allow default cssClass for all input types
EMPIREDB-25 - [C/I]: Implement getAttribute and setAttribute on BeanProperty class
EMPIREDB-24 - [S/I]: Allow textarea to handle keypress and keyup events in order to check the maximum length of input
EMPIREDB-23 - [C/B]: Maximum size is not passed to error message handler for DBErrors.FieldValueTooLong in DBTableColumn::checkValue
EMPIREDB-22 - [C/B]: deleteReferenceRecords() does not sort the depending records by id
EMPIREDB-21 - [S/I]: Allow empty record item parameter: The function getRecordKeyFromString should return null if the item string consists of the new item flag only.
EMPIREDB-20 - [C/B]: Convert to char doesn't work for hsqldb
EMPIREDB-19 - [S/B]: The form tag's "target" attribute is not rendered in HTML code
EMPIREDB-18 - [C/B]: DBRecord.setModified(column, isModified) doesn't set the record state back from modified to valid
EMPIREDB-17 - [S/B]: Checked attribute does not work on radio button tag.
EMPIREDB-16 - [S/I]: Tag library definition does not allow java expressions for the cssClass attribute
EMPIREDB-15 - [C/B]: Record fields are not cleared properly by createRecord.

EMPIREDB-14 - [S/I]: Allow javascript code on anchors

For further information about issues see
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/EMPIREDB

The Apache PhotArk team is pleased to announce the release of Apache PhotArk M1-incubating.

Apache PhotArk will be a complete open source photo gallery application including a content repository for the images, a display piece, an access control layer, and upload capabilities. The idea is to have a rigid design for the content repository with a very flexible display piece. The images in the content repository will be protected with granular access control.

PhotArk gallery currently allows you define a set of albums hosted locally, and also allows you to aggregate external albums exposed as feeds (e.g from Flickr or Picassa web) and provides a default web UI for album navigation.

For full details about the release and to download the distributions please go to:

http://incubator.apache.org/photark/downloads.html

Apache PhotArk welcomes your help. Any contribution, including code, testing, contributions to the documentation, or bug reporting is always appreciated. For more information on how to get involved in
Apache PhotArk visit the website at:

http://incubator.apache.org/photark/

Thank you for your interest in Apache PhotArk!

The Apache PhotArk Team.

--
Luciano Resende
http://people.apache.org/~lresende
http://lresende.blogspot.com/

As you know, the ASF turned 10 this year — our celebrations kicked off with cake at ApacheCon Europe this past March. We were thrilled to receive birthday wishes from so many members from the Apache community from across the world.

Our festivities will continue at ApacheCon US (Oakland, California), where we will be holding the Big Feather Birthday Bash and related community events during the conference. We anticipate seeing many of you there!

Some of you are unable to join us in person, but we don't want you to miss out on the fun. As such, we're inviting our global community to "Raise a Glass to Apache" and celebrate this landmark event at your own local gathering. Recognizing Apache developers and users as part of the ASF's 10th Anniversary is very important to us. We want you to join the fun, meet other Apache enthusiasts, make new friends, put faces to the names behind those emails, and, of course, engage in all things Apache.

We understand that communities have their own local culture and preferences: you are welcome to host the type of event best suited to your needs. Preferably, this will take place during the week of ApacheCon (2-6 November, 2009; the Big Feather Birthday Bash is on Wednesday, 4 November) —  your event can be held on any day of that week, at any time of the day or night that is most convenient for you. Events include but are not limited to:

- Social Gatherings – getting together over coffee, lunch, drinks, or dinner
- Tech Talks – individual or industry presentations given about ASF projects and actvities
- Product Demos – showcasing how Apache technologies are powering creative and robust solutions
- Hackathon – collaborating on Apache code bases with ASF Committers
- MeetUps or GetTogethers – featuring talks or presentations on a specific Apache Project or activity
- Networking and Job Match – connecting developers with users, employers with potential hires, clients with contractors/consultants, etc.

Can't wait until ApacheCon? That's OK: we're always up for a celebration, so feel free to get started as soon as you'd like — you can Raise a Glass to Apache at an upcoming conference such as the OpenWorld Forum (Paris), SpringOne 2GX (New Orleans), CPOSC 2009 (Harrisburg, PA), FOSS4G 2009 (Sydney), NLUUG Open Web (Amsterdam), UTOSC 2009 (Sandy, UT), and OSMC 2009 (Nürnberg), among others.

So let's get started! There are three steps to make your event happen:

Step 1: Organize. Decide who will be the host(s)/main point(s) of contact, where the event will be held, the day and time, the format, and any costs.

Step 2: Publicize. Spread the word to your coworkers, the press, and your friends. Post details on your event on blogs, mailing lists, event listings, etc. Drive enthusiasm by discussing the event details to the media and on podcasts. Ask people who will be there to invite other groups who may be interested.

Step 3: Apprise. Share your goodwill with the Apache community. Wish the ASF a happy anniversary on the Foundation blog;  post photos of your event online; and submit a "MyApache" video tribute (can be one or more of the following -- 1-2 minutes describing why you love Apache; 1-2 minutes of your group Raising a Glass to Apache/singing Happy Birthday; 2-5 minutes describing the cool ways you use ASF technologies ... be sure to mention which Apache projects you use as well as your results.)

The important thing is to have fun! Get inspired by checking out the ASF's YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/TheApacheFoundation. "MyApache" submissions received by 2 October (midnight US Pacific time/GMT-8) will receive priority consideration to be featured in the ASF's ApacheWay channel and at the Big Feather Birthday Bash!

A schedule of all confirmed events will be posted on the ApacheCon site. To be included in the list, please send a copy of your invitation (including the date, time, and location) to sk@apache.org. I will send you information on how to add your event in the ApacheCon network, how to submit your "MyApache" tributes, as well as suggestions on how to organize and publicize your event.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. We look forward to hearing from you!

- Sally