The XAware project uses an Agile Software methodology built around Scrum and 2 week iterations or code sprints. Our development community works off of a backlog of stories (features, bugs, small bits of functionality, documents, interoperability tests, etc) with a goal of keeping the system as close to fully functional as possible at all times.

Tested software is classified as either Stable, Beta, or GA. Stable builds include many passing unit and system tests but are feature deficient and not exhaustibly tested. Beta builds are features complete, document complete, and undergoing additional system level and field testing. GA software is fully tested, documented, and released for use in production environments.

Iteration Planning: Please take a look at the Development Forum to view and participate in discussions about the next iteration.

XAware 5.2 is GA

• A new way to create Data Services, called "data-first design" has been introduced, using the Eclipse Data Source Explorer (DSE) as the starting point.  This flow is most useful for users that don't have a specific XML format they are trying to conform to, but just want to expose data as XML.
• The Data Source Explorer supports building BizDocuments from connection profiles and BizComponents from connection profiles or individual database tables.
• Existing XAware BizDrivers are imported into the DSE, letting you connect to and view database catalogs and tables.
• To make the learning process go quickly, we've implemented a new service view wizard – available at startup – to make it easy to build and test a simple service using your own database or one of ours.
• A new Outline view has been added to show predicted results for components, making it easier to predict the data to be returned without having to run the BizView. See a quick video of this feature here .
• The tree view (in the Design tab) now supports search functions, which is especially useful in long documents.
• Users can limit the number of records returned from a request at run-time in Designer. See a quick video tip here .
• Results for HTTP put and delete actions now appear in the Test tab of the Package Assembly Tool.
• Designer now starts with 1GB memory.
• The supporting help system now includes an index, a feedback option, and improved look and feel along with updated supporting content for all new features.

Released August 5, 2008 - SVN Build 5.1.491

This release includes the following improved and new features:

• Support for implicit result sets and cursors has been added to the MySQL and DB2 Stored Procedure feature, including the ability to describe and order the parameters returned from a database even when result sets are not indicated.
• Namespace manipulation is now supported in the XML tree, including the ability to add, modify, or delete namespace declarations on any element or remove the declaration from the JDOM structure.
• Daily builds have been implemented, so you can get a new, updated build anytime. An automatic install check has also been implemented to let you know when new updates are available (Stable and GA release). The options can be controlled by selecting Windows|Preferences).
• The BizDocument wizard now includes new features allowing you to speed quickly through the steps to create a service and then validate input XML against a defined schema. Plus, you can now designate the execution status of BizDocuments using a new script instruction called xa:set_result (not backward compatible). See the XAware Script Reference in the Help for more information.
• Header awareness has been added to File BizComponents, along with the ability to 'shred' inbound XML or delimited files into multiple target files. Also, the wizard now automatically detects the number of fields and separator character.
• To speed service development, Designer now saves the history of parameter definitions so they can be reused across files and sessions. You can customize the number of saved definitions by selecting Window|Preferences.
• JMS support for text messages has been improved to escape special characters and allow for more message types (map, text, or XML).
• The Engine logging has been improved to ensure the highest possible performance, and to add support for managing and monitoring deployed BizView services using JMX.
• The wiki has been updated with new use cases, instructions to send log messages to databases, a connector reference, and more.
• The examples have been updated with a new starter project, schema validation examples, examples demonstrating the handling nested and repeated elements in XML Mapping BizComponents, and more.
• The tutorials have been improved to add voice and include more detail.

Released March 19^th, 2008  SVN Build 5.0.965
 
In addition to some background work to support upcoming features this release includes the following:

• The XML Mapping BizComponent wizards now support target namespaces and nested maps, which means you can map multiple sets of repeating child elements into new XML structures. (Sourceforge feature request  891515) New examples demonstrate nested maps (select File|New|BizComponents|XML Mapping examples). In addition, the mappings under elements with and without xa:map now follow the correct usage of the xa-results:: axis and ensure that the name of the element identified in the xa:map_match (or the root element of the source if there is no xa:map) is not included. This resulted in incorrect mappings, which had to be manually edited by the user.
• The JMS BizComponent wizard was updated to repair some defects (1911154) with clicking Next and switching between selected BizDrivers.
• Namespaces now appear in the tree views in the Designer.  
• The use of triple-click or a slow double click to edit element and attribute values is improved with the addition of a single click with a press of F2. You can now edit node values using this method as well.
• Currently, we have 78 open and 215 closed closed defects.

• Starter project insert (fix checked in for next build)
• HTTP BizComponent with xa:encode (defect reported)
• PreProcess (fix checked in for next build)
• Transaction management's explicit transactions (working fix now)

XAware 5.1.335 Stable
Released June 10^th 2008 - SVN Build 5.1.335

A change was made to bring the xa:classname instruction into naming compliance as xa:class_name within the Java BizComponent. This change is not backward compatible, so if you have implemented Java BizComponents, please make this update.
The initial implementation of header-aware File BizComponents is delivered, and additional customer-requested improvements will be coming soon.


Some fixes to the logging on the Engine have been implemented. To get the best performance out of logging, you can try one of these options:

• if you don't care to see any errors, you can set all xa:Activated attributes to "false" in the engine.home/conf.LogHandlersConfig.xml file
• if you do want severe errors logged to a file, set the log level to SEVERE and leave the logging to a file option activated in the engine.home/conf.LogHandlersConfig.xml file

XAware 5.1.189 Stable
Released April 30^st 2008 - SVN Build 5.1.189

The Salesforce BizComponent is now delivered as an XAware add-on. For all-in-one installers, this means you will use the Eclipse update manager to download and install this separate plug-in; for XAware plug-in installers, you can get the updated XAware plug-in and add the Salesforce add-on at the same time. Instructions to install the add-on are the same as installing a plug-in.
 
A new JMX BizComponent has been added as a template to the XAware Designer. This BizComponent lets you implement management interfaces for Java applications. It will be used as part of our soon-to-be-released commercial application to manage and monitor the XAware Engine that services client requests with deployed web services.
Some new examples demonstrating features not previously described have been added in this iteration, including:

•   pruning nodes to minimize the memory footprint during execution
•   implementing an XML-based lookup translation table (the XAware wiki is also updated with the instructions to implement an XML lookup table)
•   converting multi-formatted data records to in-memory XML using the new xa:source_type attribute in the Multi-Format BizComponent.

XAware 5.1.153 Stable
Released April 15th, 2008 - SVN build 5.1.153
 
This stable release is focused on more background work to support upcoming features like wizard extension points and a new Management Console with SNMP monitoring. Loads of bugs were fixed in this iteration for a grand total of 91 open and 179 fixed. In addition check out these features:
 

• JMX console statistics were implemented to show statistics on deployed BizDocuments, BizComponent, and connectors.
• Stored procedure BizComponents were tested with MySQL and DB2 stored procedures and performed very well (try those when you have a minute).

XAware 5.1.126 Stable
Released April 1^st (no foolin') 2008 - SVN Build 5.1.126

This stable release is primarily focused on improvements to existing features and background work (which you won't see yet) to support future development. Specifically, this release includes:

• Enhancements to the Stored Procedure BizComponent for some reported defects
• New samples supporting nested and repeating elements in XML Mapping BizComponents
• New File BizComponent tutorial was added to xaware.org to demonstrate working with flat files
• Currently, there are 84 open and 168 closed defects

XAware 5.0 GA (General Availability) - Build # 5.0.938
Released February 15^th, 2008  SVN Build 5.0.938
 
While our last iteration of development has been focused on regression testing, the following summarizes the updates included in this release. 

• A new Salesforce BizComponent to perform create, read, update, and delete operations
• A JUnit test suite is not delivered to support user smoke tests, which invokes test suites that run outside the XAware network
• Support for HTTP put and delete operations
• New examples for XPath, functoids with escaped characters, SQL update requests (a unique XAware feature!) and HTTP put operations
• Information on how to contribute to the project has been added to the wiki

  Daily builds are now supported from our downloads page.

The next iteration starts on 2/20 and will complete 2/29. See Roadmap
for a list of activities.

XAware 5.0 RC3 - Build # 5.0.935
Released February 11th, 2008 - SVN 5.0.935

As we push strongly toward a GA release, the focus of this 1-week iteration was bug fixing prior to freezing development for regression testing next week. This build of XAware 5.0 includes the following updates:

• The result of all our bug-fixing is that we have fixed 15 bugs, and 12 new bugs have been reported. We'll be working on the list again next week.
• We've incorporated some changes to the web site in response to feedback from our Beta program as well.
• We've incorporated new SOAP tests into the automated suite and completed the HTTP put and delete request testing.
• The Salesforce BizComponent is now fully supported with context-sensitive help, XAware Script Reference updates, and instructions. If you are using, or will use, this BizComponent, please use the help system for information.

XAware 5.0 RC2 - Build # 5.0.916
Released February 4th, 2008 - SVN 5.0.# 5.0.916
 
This build of XAware 5.0 includes the following updates:
A Salesforce BizComponent that can perform basic CRUD (create, read, update, and delete) operations on Salesforce databases has been implemented. The new feature includes a wizard for building the BizComponents, and server support for deployed applications. Examples are also included for your review with expected results, and a Salesforce tutorial can be found here.
A JUnit test suite is now delivered as a smoke test for users. The suite invokes other test suites known to be safe to run outside the XAware network.
Loads of testing has been completed in this iteration with the result that 39 bugs have been fixed and 31 new bugs have been reported.
New examples have been added for XPath, functoids with escaped characters, and HTTP put operations.
Our Beta program is now in full swing, with users contributing their feedback and test cases in the Beta Program Forum. Head on over there, and check it out!
This release is designated our second Release Candidate and after this we will freeze enhancements and start regression testing. The source has been branched to isolate it from the continued development on the main trunk.

Release Candidate 1 – Build 5.0.871
Released January 18^th, 2008 - SVN Build 5.0.871

Release Candidate 1 includes updates to the Multi-Format BizComponent to support regular expressions and the ability to ignore unmatched records, which means that your Multi-Format BizComponents can now more precisely target the fields you want to convert to XML without having to convert all fields. BizDrivers, and their wizards, now support the use of input XML, input parameters (including parameterized values to allow a run-time connection to the database), and functoids. Enhancements to functoids now include the ability to edit functoids and the ability to apply functoids to substrings in fields. When necessary, you can also escape characters in your functoids to ensure accurate processing. Functionality for additional HTTP Verbs in support of REST is being prototyped in the HTTP BizComponents and should be available very soon. The instructions to deploy the XAware WAR and EAR on various web and application servers have been removed from the PDF documentation set and are now available in the wikis. Finally, 13 new bugs were opened and 22 were fixed and closed.

Beta 2 – Build 5.0.818
Released December 21st, 2007, SVN Build 5.0.818

Beta 2 includes the ability to specify that child BizDocs and child BizComps should be run in separate threads, additional Bug Fixing, documentation of how to obtain and configure Eclipse with our plugin resulting in a download option around 200 Mb and enhanced documentation for ways to get started using XAware and a feature list of functionality in XAware 5. QA reports that 7 bugs were opened and 14 have closed and all other known issues are in the SourceForge Tracker.

Beta 5.0
Released December 12th, 2007. SVN Build 5.0.797

Beta 5.0 includes the addition of the FTP BizComponent. The JMS BizComponent has been updated to handle send and receive actions in the same document. Default error handlers were updated to provide additional stack information. New example use cases have been added and documented. Performance has also been improved in many areas including the SQL BizComponent. QA retested all external Doc/Lit SOAP tests and the namespace issue has been resolved. Since the last Stable build, 30 bugs have been opened and 38 have been closed. All known issues are open in SourceForge Tracker.

Stable build 5.0.759
Released November 26th, 2007. SVN Build 5.0.759

We expect the official Release 5 beta to be ready mid-Decemember. QA reports 1121 system level automated tests passed as well as hundreds of unit tests and manual regression tests. Several important SOAP bugs were fixed, so if you are generating or consuming web services over SOAP, we strongly recommend upgrading. Besides 31 closed defects, this release includes support for LDAP BizComponent and SMTP BizComponent.

XAware 5.0.722 Stable is now available
Released on November 7th, 2007. SVN Build 5.0.722

XAware 5.0.722 is an important release for this project. It is reflects the completion of our current iteration and the delivery of important functionality including JMS, SOAP, JTA transactions, HTTP, several processing instructions, and numerous updates to the help system and the examples. Please see the tracker on the forge for bug reports. There are several issues on the SOAP BizComponent in particular that are being addressed at a top priority. Overall, this release is more about feature delivery than rock solid stability. Over the next month the development community will shift focus from new feature development to bug fixing and performance optimization.

XAware 5.0.714 Stable is now available
Released on November 5, 2007. SVN Build 5.0.714

Finally the project is open! The development community will finish the current iteration on 11/6 and post the next stable build today or tomorrow. As of last night the QA guys have over 1000 automated system tests running successfully and we have run through almost a week of end to end use case-based testing. The bug tracker is currently being migrated to a new platform. It should be ready on 11/6.