Next is what ?

Wednesday Oct 28, 2009

Sailfin roadmap on the eve of the release of Sailfin v2

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Sailfin hits Hard Code Freeze

Tuesday Sep 08, 2009

The Hard Code Freeze for Sailfin v2.0  development has been reached. What this means is that we stop adding code and fix issues which are a must-fix . Most issues that fall into this category are those which result from Stress test issues and regressions in functionality and boo-boos ( end of the day we are all humans :-) )

The last 6 weeks has seen some hectic activity in testing as well bug fixes. Here is a list of issues that have been fixed and integrated since Soft Code Freeze.  In addition the Application Server has also been subjected to Stress Tests lasting upto 169 hours. These tests include tests for testing the behaviour of a clustered setup with Session Replication enabled in the event of a failure.

You can download the Hard Code Freeze build of Sailfin here .

Sailfin session at Community One today !

Monday Jun 01, 2009

My session at CommunityOne ( S304781 ) , titled "Sailfin:Open Possiblities in Communications" is scheduled to start at 10:50 AM at the Esplanade 301.

I will be talking briefly about the value proposition of Java EE and SIP Servlets in developing applications and services for the Telco service providers and then explaining how Sailfin is a fits in this space

Milestone 6 and JSR 289 TCK.

Monday Nov 10, 2008

Raison d'etre for Milestone 6 ...

SailFin 1.0 reached another milestone when we passed the JSR289 TCK with build 59. This build is available as the Milestone 6 build and can be downloaded here .

In addition to passing the JSR 289 TCK, there have been additional fixes in the following areas :
• Sip Session Replication
• Converged Load Balancer
• Administration
• Sip Container
• Annotation support

We fixed around 141 issues between Oct 6th and Nov10. Thats quite a number and a big reason why you should try out this Milestone.

In case you want to test Sailfin in a pre-production scenario, this would be a good time, since we have fixed issues that cropped up during longevity runs.

We just crossed Milestone 5

Monday Oct 13, 2008

Wikipedia defines Milestone as not only a sign a of distance traveled but also as an indication of the direction being taken.

So , what's the point ?
Sailfin is headed for a General Availability release around 15th of December, and as a step in the direction we have completed adding the additional features needed by JSR289 which were not present in Sailfin 1.0 Alpha.

The API now refers to the Final Release of the JSR 289 . The additional work includes support for
• IWR ( Invalidate when Ready) mechanism for Sip Sessions
• Support for RFC 3891 and RFC 3911
• Support for Application Router Provider mechanism.
• Support for annotations defined by JSR289 ( @SipApplication, @SipApplicationKey, @SipServlet and @SipListener)
• Support for RFC 4474 as defined in the JSR289.
&bull and more ...

Apart from the updates on the JSR289 what's now new and improved is :
• an access log for SIP Messages is now available, which can be configured from the domain.xml (under sip-service)
• SIP and HTTP Session replication , which now moves to a beta quality state, from an alpha quality that it was in August and CLB ( Converged Load Balancer)
• support for a 6 instance cluster using a 32 bit JVM. New improved Shoal bits.

Where can one get all these and more ?
Milestone 5 !!
Sailfin 1.0 b54 is the build that signifies that we have reached another Milestone and that would be Milestone 5 following our numbering convention so far ...

Download MS5
Try it
Find Issues ? File Issues !!
Questions and Feedback ? dev@sailfin.dev.java.net is the address to direct all of these.

SailFin 1.0 Alpha is here !!

Wednesday Aug 13, 2008

We are releasing SailFin 1.0 Alpha today !
Why Alpha and why now ?
They say that an open source project is in a perpetual beta. Agreed ! Sailfin crossed MS4 early this year in April, where most of the features that we expect to support in 1.0 was in. However there was a need to start testing the Application Server more thoroughly , so that users/developers could use it more reliably to prototype their applications and evaluate the capabilities of Sailfin. The last few months have been spent on testing and stabilizing Sailfin in a cluster setup and also fixing key issues across all modules . Hence this may be a good time to expose this tested binary to all the developers for evaluation and feedback.

What constitutes this Alpha release ?
This release has all the features that were there in the MS4. These features have been tested functionally and key issues have been fixed. In addition tests have been run on Sailfin in a multi-instance cluster setup for a 7 days in a row and issues uncovered were fixed.

In short, modules like
• Administration
• Deployment
• Monitoring
• SIP Network Manager
• SIP Container

are more robust and stable now. The focus on the SIP Network Manager has been on the TCP side.

JSR 289 was approved a month ago and we are working on making the SIP Servlet Container compliant with JSR289. Its still work in progress and the work is happening as I type !

Other features which are available but are of an Alpha quality are
• High Availability ( SIP and HTTP Session Replication )
• Converged Load Balancer
• Application Router ( With a facility to deploy a custom Application Router)
• OverLoadProtection for SIP Container

It would be good to have your feedback and / or issues on all these features and Sailfin in general. BTW, we have a new look for the download page as well !

SailFin @ Milestone4 moves towards Beta !

Monday Apr 21, 2008

Sailfin hit MS4 early in April ! We could have called it the "Spring Milestone" after the last milestone was released in "Winter" around Christmas. We called it MS4 instead following the convention.

Yes its been a while since we put up a milestone, however there is a reason for that happening that way !

The main additions in this Milestone can be found here

In terms of features, this milestone was more of a top-up . However there has been a significant value add in terms of testing, both functional as well as system testing. While the product has still not undergone all the stress that we expect to subject it to , its looking better than ever before on that front.

We had planned for a beta , around this time frame , however while we were planning for the beta , the JSR 289 Specification was in the Public Release stage and there were couple of open issues that the EG was trying to sort out in the spec.  Of course the EG has made
rapid strides in the last four weeks and now the spec. is in the PFD2 stage.

Given that and some quaility issues that we saw in the product, it made a lot of sense to put out a milestone release now and have a beta later on.We are now planning for a beta in Summer and we will keep the community posted !

Looking forward to the testing , feedback and inputs from the community!

SailFin blogs has had quite a few entries around CLB, Application Router and DNS .

SailFin also features at Java One this year - there is a HandOn Lab that showcase how a converged application can be developed using NetBeans and SailFin and there is a technical session that talks about the architecture of SailFin. There is also another HandsOn Lab that
talks about performance tuning !

Project Sailfin crosses Milestone 3

Sunday Dec 23, 2007

Project Sailfin is expected to deliver its first release of the Communications Application Server , in June of 2008. The schedule is based on a milestone model wherein, each milestone corresponds to a set of features added. This helps dividing up the dependencies to be satisfied first in the earlier milestone, and also helps in planning of resources.

We hit Milestone 3 on Dec 10th 2007, and a certified binary corresponding to the Milestone 3 features has been made available since Dec 22nd.

So what does a certified binary mean ?
Typically a certified binary has has series of regression tests, sanity tests run. These tests validate the basic container level features such as that of the SIP Container, EJB Container, Web Container. In addition that the Java EE TCKs are run to make sure that the Application Server remains compliant to the  Java EE spec. In case of the Milestone builds of Sailfin, key functional tests corresponding to the new features are also used to certify the builds. This helps us isolate the known issues in these new features and also to propose workarounds.

What's new in MS3 ?
The main features that got delivered in this Milestone are in the areas of Deployment, Administration and Monitoring of the SIP Container, CLB (Converged Load Balancer), Security .There were also features in Session replication that are available now, but the plan is that Session Replication is expected to be completed only by Jan 21st 2007. Here is a list of features with some details.

Support for Annotations in JSR289 Annotations like SipSessionListener, SipApplicationKey, SipApplication, SipSessionAttributeListener, SipServletListener, Administration for SIP Container Support in the CLI for creating trust entities, managing sip-service elements Support in the GUI for creating trust entities, managing sip-service elements Support in the CLI and GUI for creating loadbalancer configuration Monitoring of the SIP Container The monitored parameters are mentioned here CLI support for manipulating the monitoring levels Security Support for Run-As functionality for SIP Servlets Support for providing p-asserted identity as a method authentication Trusted domains can be configured in the central repository and can be configured via the CLI Converged LoadBalancer Support for ConsistentHash Algorithm for HTTP and SIP requests Support for round robin algorithm for HTTP requests. Session replication Replication of the following SIP artifacts SipApplicationSessions, SipSessions, ServletTimers, DialogFragments In addition to this HTTP Session and SFSB replication is also supported.

What's next ?
Our next milestone is on Jan 21st 2008 which is the feature freeze date for all modules including Session Replication and JSR289 based SIP Container. There is a small caveat as far as JSR289 based container goes, since the spec. has not gone final yet, one can never say that the code has been frozen till the spec is final. Hence the plan for JSR289 based container is to get the code as close to the JSR289 PR draft as possible.

The feature freeze on January 21st would be the freeze for the beta release of Sailfin, due in March of 2008. We are looking to stabilize the features that have come in , between now and Jan 21st. Any and every feedback that comes would contribute towards the quality of the product. The detailed schedule is available here

Getting the binary
The Milestone3 binary can be obtained from here.
One can also navigate through the download link on the Sailfin site to the download page, where
Nightly Builds ( unstable , built every night )
Promoted Builds ( stable , built every week )
Milestone Builds ( stable and certified )
can be downloaded.
Bugs are expected and we welcome them and they can be filed at IssueTracker

Presence of Sailfin @ IMSAA 2007

Monday Dec 10, 2007

I attended a conference ( IMSAA 2007 ) on IMS Architectures and Applications in Bangalore last week. Here is a brief trip report !

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