Monthly Archives: September 2008
Intersting analysis about GigaSpaces and Space Based Architecture
As a CTO I often find myself about positioning and technology direction for GigaSpaces. I must admit that with the rapid changes in middleware and technology it is a growing challenge, which requires continuous adjustments and re-alignment. Unlike many of… Continue reading
GigaSpaces XAP – Product Overview
We’ve recently created a Product Overview book for GigaSpaces XAP.
The book, in a wiki format (soon to be delivered in pdf as well), is directed for architects and developers who would like to understand the rationale behind GigaSpaces XAP and the technical aspects of the product.
The intention was to create a high level, technical document that is read as a starting point to understand the product. After spending 20-30 minutes of reading, the reader should be able to understand the ‘ideas’ behind the product and the actual layering and roles of components and sub-systems within the product.
We used 5 rather lengthy pages in order to make it easy for the reader to go over the material with almost no distractions. We also kept external linking to minimum for the same reasons.
I encourage you to have a look at it. As always I’m interested in what you have to say about it. Here’s the link to it: GigaSpaces XAP Product Overview
Scaling Applications with GigaSpaces XAP
There is nothing like seeing something in action, so although I have blogged about the GigaSpaces application platform many times, its about time you had a chance to see it in action.
Clicking the link below will launch a demo with some intro slides outlining and showing how you can scale applications using GigaSpaces. It launches a pop-up window, so you may need to enable pop ups, and it may take a little while to load but you should see a progress status. Enjoy !
Cloud Cafe Podcast
A couple of weeks ago John Willis recorded a podcast with me as part of his excellent Cloud Cafe podcast series. He just posted it online and you can listen to it here.In it we talk about cloud computing in… Continue reading
GigaSpaces XAP R6.6 RC released
We’ve announced this week the availability of GigaSpaces XAP R6.6 Release Candidate. It gives me great pride when I look at all the ‘goodies’ within it. The highlights of this new release are:
Web Application Support
If you’ve ever faced with the challenges of scaling web applications you’ll really appreciate this feature. This one enables you to take your war file and deploy it across a cluster of machines and in many cases without even changing a single line of code. The true power of data grid and web application comes to play.
In addition to mod_proxy integration is all figured out so adding and removing web containers dynamically is solved as well.
Hanan, one of our techies, has written an extensive example here.
Executor Framework
We found it extremely useful to ship information from the client side to the server where the data reside execute it there and return back. Have a look at this code snippet as an example.
AsyncFuture f = gigaSpace.execute(new DistributedTask<Integer, Integer>(){
/**
* Space interface is wired automatically on the server
* to the current server instance
*/
@Autowired
private GigaSpace space ;
/**
* This is being executed on the server side
*/
public Integer execute() throws Exception {
return max(space.readMultiple(…);
}
/**
* This is being executed on teh client side
*/
public Integer reduce(List<AsyncResult<Integer>> maxList) throws Exception {
return max(maxList);
}
});
// block to get all results
int max = f.get();
Separate .NET package
GigaSpaces XAP for .NET is now packaged separately and provides native .NET L&F for the .NET developer. As a development organization stemming from Java roots, we had to listen to our own .NET people – so now we’ve done it!
Revised Documentation
We truly listen to our users. We’ve now revamped our documentation and broke it down into four main sections. Now we feel it’s going to be much easier to get started with GigaSpaces XAP, understand the product from a high level perspective and use it on a day today basis developers and administrators.
Extreme Scalability
We’ve added scalability into the core product’s API as well. There is a new asycTake API which enables execution on hundreds of cluster nodes at the same time without blocking the client to wait synchronously for results. In fact, the executor service which was mentioned above uses the same infrastructure added to support these capabilities.
GigaSpaces XAP R6.6 will be officialy released on GigaSpaces annual user forum event in London, on September 22 . As always we’re looking for your feedback!
