JBoss Operations Network 2.0
Posted by Jay on May 6, 2008
Like all software projects, we had breakthroughs and set backs, but at the end of the day, we got the job done.
So what do we have to show for it? To be honest, a lot. When I have to look back and work with our 1.4 release I feel cramped with its relative lack of features. Features aside, the entire 2.0 package feels considerably smoother, faster, and just plain cooler.
Easily my favorite new feature is the DynaGroup ability. Gone are the days of manually (read: painfully) maintaining large groups of resources. There is a definite cool factor to entering a few conditions and magically seeing the group populated to whatever your needs. Didn’t get what you wanted? No problem, edit the conditions and regenerate the group. Want all of a resource’s children as well? Flip the “recursive” switch. I had a blast poking around with this in QA and seeing all of the possibilities.
One of the more readily apparent differences between 1.4 and 2.0 is the number of new tabs (i.e. functionality) available per resource. Our remote configuration ability fulfills what I have always felt was a basic need of JON. Its robust implementation, featuring both server-side and resource-side validation capabilities, is a solid backbone on which many other features are built. For its first inclusion in a JON release, the remote operation execution is surprisingly flushed out, offering optional parameters and complex return values. On top of that, operations can be executed on groups of compatible resources as well.
While some people immediately gravitate towards new features as the benchmark for a new version, others find interest in less flashy — but no less important — performance and scalability gains. It’s unfortunate that we can’t add to our marketing campaign the experience of running a large-scale test and literally surprising ourselves with the results. Sweeping changes, such as reducing query counts by full orders of magnitude, don’t sound nearly as good on paper as they are noticeable when experienced using the product.
I feel obligated to throw in at least one link to formal announcements, but otherwise I’m not going to go on and on with press information. I do, however, want to extend my congratulations to the rest of the team. While I hope the product speaks for itself, what people don’t see are the ways the team copes with the normal challenges of any software project, dealing with being such a widely distributed team, and still managing to keep things fun. For what we accomplished for our small team size, I can’t imagine getting it done with another group of individuals.
