Published the Roma presentation for the Open Source Italian Conference in Cagliari, Italy

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Roma introduction and concepts

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Finally the official release 1.0 of Roma Framework is up

I'm tired out but happy! :-)

After about one year I've released the official release 1.0 of Roma Meta Framework in Source Forge.

So many news from the last 1.0rc4 version: several new plug-ins, thirdy parties contributions, the free PDF manual, better module management and performance improvements.

Download the last release of Roma Meta Framework

Below the main changes:

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VERSION 1.0.0 (November, 10th 2008)
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Main addictions and improvements:

CORE module:
- New modules management. Now you can check for new modules, new releases of them and install it over the air. Dependencies are well considered
- New Logging aspect to abstract logging and to use logging facilities such as @LoggingAction() to log any POJO action
- Support for new View Aspect that works with XHTML 1.0, CSS2 and JSP
- Support for new Semantic Aspect available via Romulus project using Open Source Jena framework

CHART-JFREECHART module:
- New module to create graphs using the popular JGraph library

ETL-XPATH module:
- Strong refactoring of the engine
- New JDBC Extractor and Importer modules
- New Wizard to let to the user the importing phase

PERSISTENCE-DATANUCLEUS module:
- New Persistence Aspect implementation using the new DataNucleus technology. Supports JDO 2.1 and JPA 1.0

PERSISTENCE-JPOX module:
- Default like operator works like before, but it considers the presence of the special character "*". If found treats it as the "%" of SQL like syntax. This allow to execute searches with wildcards
- New "optimistic" transaction mode

SCHEDULER-QUARTZ module:
- New UI
- New wizard to build simple expression without the knowledge of CRON syntax

USERS module:
- Deep changes to the USERS module: new realm entity to group accounts, profiles, infocategory and other entities in a common "realm". New "Anonymous" profile to allow to profile for the non-authenticated user
- BaseAccount and BaseProfile now extends the common AbstractAccount abstract class in order to reference accounts or profile in the same manner just declaring as reference type the AbstractAccount

SCHEDULER-QUARTZ module:
- Calendar view

SCRIPTING-JAVA6 module:
- New module implementing the Scripting facilities of Java6. By separating all scripting features in Roma in only this module we have gained the Java5 compliance for all but this module, obviously

SERVICE-CXF module:
- New module to expose a POJO as a Web Service using Apache CXF framework

VIEW-ECHO2 module:
- Strong refactoring of components. Now ComponentFactory is obsolete and now anything is responsability of the Rendering implementation
- Management of multiple Echo2 stylesheets
- Sensible faster execution

WORKFLOW-TEVERE module:
- New Workflow module with transactional engine and Web GUI. It covers most common workflow patterns

WIZARDS:
- New 'check' wizard to check for new modules or new version of installed modules
- New 'install' wizard to install new modules or new version of installed modules
- New 'update' wizard to update Roma user projects with new version of modules installed
- CRUD now generates the Repository classes for each entity.
- Support for environment variables like "author". You can set/get variables in Roma. Set the "author" variable to have all generated sources with you as author

TEST-PRESENTATION app:
- Changed layout of Test Presentation application

OTHERS:
- Resolved a lot of issues (see SourceForge tracker)
- Tons of minor improvements.

Will 2008 be the year of the return of the Roman Empire?

Will 2008 be the year of the return of Roman empire?

No, I'm not talking about politic. Just software. Or better software development ;-)

The new year comes with the kickoff of Romulus project in Madrid, Spain. Today I'm here, in the center of the Spain's capital city.

But what is Romulus and what means with Roma? Because formerly the Romulus mission is:

"Domain Driven Design and Mashup Oriented Development based on Open Source Java Meta Framework for pragmatic, reliable and secure web development".

The main concept of Romulus is researching on novel methods for increasing productivity and reliability of web software development, in particularly, focused on Java web development.

In order to have a serious impact, the project does not start from scratch, it is based on two mature open source projects, Roma and LIFERAY, which will be extended according to this proposal needs and following an open source project development methodology, in order to disseminate and exploit the results of the project. The idea of using these projects is to solve the former problems, with Roma will get to make Java application development easy, integrate frameworks and tools using a meta framework and decreasing the implementation time. While with LIFERAY, we are integrating the leading enterprise open source portal framework, with relevant industrial references.

Asset Data company is part of the Romulus Consortium. If you want know more about the project visit the Romulus Home Page.

Below all the participants:

• Asset Data, as the company with the biggest skill in Roma Meta Framework and where most of the committers are working (Italy)
• Liferay company (Germany)
• Gesfor group (Spain)
  
• Imola Group company (Italy)
• DERI University (Ireland)
• Universidad Pòlitecnica de Madrid (Spain)
• National Institute for research and development in informatics (Romania)

Does 2008 will be the year of the Roman empire? I hope yes, but what I know very well is that the Meta Framework revolution is already started!