The Apache Software Foundation Blog

Wednesday Jul 21, 2010

ASF Director Greg Stein awarded O'Reilly Open Source Award at OSCON

Congratulations to Greg Stein, ASF Director and Vice President of Apache Subversion, for being awarded an O'Reilly Open Source Award in recognition of his contributions to the Open Source and leadership in the Apache, Subversion, and Python communities.

The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache FOP Version 1.0


Redesigned, Stable Version of Pioneering XSL Formatting Objects Processor Rounds Out Apache XML Software Stack

FOREST HILL, MD – 21 July, 2010 – The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) -–the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of nearly 150 Open Source projects and initiatives-– today announced the Version 1.0 release of Apache FOP, the Open Source XSL Formatting Objects Processor.

An Apache project since 1999, FOP is one of the industry's first print formatters driven by W3C-standard XSL Formatting Objects created to display, convert, and print to formats such as PDF, PostScript, SVG, RTF, and XML. In addition, FOP is among the most commonly-used output-independent formatters.

The Apache FOP code base has grown over the past decade under the guidance of a Project Management Committee (PMC) who oversee its day-to-day activities and community development.

"FOP v.1.0 provides a good subset of the W3C XSL-FO 1.0/1.1 specification. Its stable, 1.0 designation provides added recognition as the productive tool it has been for years," said Jeremias Märki, member of the Apache XML Graphics Project Management Committee. "Its redesign and improved features in the layout engine makes it an even better experience for the many developers and users who produce millions of pages each year."

Apache FOP is in use at Accenture, Airbus, Australia Post, BNP Paribas, Capgemini, Credit Suisse, CSC, Denic, European Patent Office, FedEx, Ford, HP, IBM, IntelliData, Marriot International, Morgan Stanley, Polaris, Siemens, Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property, Tecra, US Army, US House of Representatives, and Wyona, among many others. In addition, FOP is the default implementation bundled in XML editors such as XSLfast, Oxygen, and XMLSpy.

"Thunderhead relies on open standards, and FOP is at the heart of our innovative NOW platform. We are proud to have been able to play a part in its development," said Glen Manchester, CEO of Thunderhead. "As long-time supporters of FOP, our congratulations go to the whole FOP team at Apache on reaching the Version 1.0 milestone."

The release of FOP v.1.0 completes a free XML software stack, comprising: Apache Xerces, Apache Xalan, and Apache FOP. The ability to to insert graphics into one's print output is possible using Apache Batik. The Apache XML stack makes transforming and formatting XML data (for example DocBook XML) a viable option for individual and start-up users without business cash flow.

"Some 'overnight successes' take ten years or more," said James Governor, Analyst and Founder of RedMonk. "Apache FOP seems to be one of them."

"The training wheels are long gone," said Apache XML Graphics PMC Chair Simon Pepping. "FOP's popularity is undisputed; FOP is used from an individual developer's pet project to large-scale document production. FOP is not yet 'feature complete', and work on it is continuing. We hope this important step forward will motivate skilled developers to jump in and help us make Apache FOP even better."

Availability

FOP v.1.0 is released under the Apache Software License v2.0. Downloads, documentation, and related resources are available at http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/ .

About The Apache Software Foundation (ASF)

Established in 1999, the all-volunteer Foundation oversees nearly one hundred fifty leading Open Source projects, including Apache HTTP Server — the world's most popular Web server software. Through the ASF's meritocratic process known as "The Apache Way," more than 300 individual Members and 2,300 Committers successfully collaborate to develop freely available enterprise-grade software, benefiting millions of users worldwide: thousands of software solutions are distributed under the Apache License; and the community actively participates in ASF mailing lists, mentoring initiatives, and ApacheCon, the Foundation's official user conference, trainings, and expo. The ASF is funded by individual donations and corporate sponsors including Basis Technology, Facebook, Google, HP, Microsoft, Progress Software, SpringSource/VMware, and Yahoo!. For more information, visit http://www.apache.org/.

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Thursday Jul 15, 2010

The Apache Software Foundation Announces New Board Members

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is pleased to announce that Shane Curcuru, Doug Cutting, Bertrand Delacretaz, Roy T. Fielding, Jim Jagielski, Sam Ruby, Noirin Shirley, Greg Stein, and Henri Yandell have been elected to serve on the ASF Board of Directors.

For more information on the ASF structure, visit http://apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#structure

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Wednesday Jul 14, 2010

The ASF Asks: Have you met Apache Pivot?

The all-volunteer Apache Software Foundation (ASF) develops, stewards, and incubates nearly 150 Open Source projects and initiatives, many of which power mission-critical applications in financial services, aerospace, publishing, government, healthcare, research, infrastructure, and more.

Did you know that 50% of the Top 10 downloaded Open Source products are Apache projects?
Did you know that most Enterprise Java solutions are built using Apache? 

We are pleased to showcase Apache Pivot, the full-featured, professional-grade Java development platform for Rich Internet Applications (RIAs).

Quick peek: RIAs are distributed Web applications that are delivered via site-specific browsers, plug-ins, sandboxes, or virtual machines. Apache Pivot provides a foundation upon which sophisticated and engaging applications can be easily built and deployed over the Web. Pivot combines the enhanced productivity and usability features of a modern RIA toolkit with the robustness of the industry-standard Java platform, leveraging its comprehensive feature set and extensive industry support.

Background: initially developed at VMWare, Pivot was accepted into the Apache Incubator in January 2009 and graduated as an Apache Top-Level Project in December 2009.

Why Pivot:  Like other RIA platforms, Pivot includes features that make building modern GUI applications easier, including:

- An XML-based markup language for declaring the structure of a user interface
- Stylable themes (aka "skins")
- Data binding
- Animated effects and transitions
- Web Services integration

Pivot is the only RIA framework that allows developers to build applications for the Java plugin using Java or any other JVM-compatible language, such as JavaScript, Groovy, or Scala. Pivot is also the only truly open RIA framework: it is completely Open Source, and is driven entirely by the software development community.

Pivot allows developers to build applications using languages, tools, and APIs they already know, reducing technology sprawl and streamlining solution techonlogy stacks.

What's under the hood: Pivot 1.5 improves the overall application development experience through

  • Expanded Data binding across a much larger collection of components and properties, as well as BindType enum to allow a caller to control the bind direction (load, store, or both).

  • New Pub/Sub (publish/subscribe) API to facilitate decoupled messaging within a Pivot application.

  • New SuggestionPopup component to simplify the task of adding "auto-complete" or "lookup" functionality to a TextInput and to provide "combo box"-like behavior in an application.

  • Overhauled Form improvements, including more prominent flagged fields and flag icons more consistent with the overall Pivot look and feel.

  • Improved Text rendering by Pivot components to be consistent with natively rendered text.

  • Improved Bindable interface that simplifies WTKX and Java code integration, including a Resources argument to the initialize() method to provide the caller with access to the resource bundle used to load the WTKX file.

  • Enhanced look and feel such as tab and Push button-like components (PushButton, ListButton, CalendarButton, etc.) with slightly rounded corners and bevel consistency.

  • Streamlined QueryServlet API which is more consistent with Web query client API, making it easier to write Pivot applications that provide and take advantage of REST-based Web Services.

  • New ResultList class (org.apache.pivot.sql.ResultList) added to simplify the task of returning JDBC result data from a Web query, and to transform SQL a result set into a JSON or CSV response without the need for any intermediary transformation (the data is transformed on the fly as it is read from the database).

  • New FileSerializer to simplify the task of writing file upload applications in Pivot.


Latest release: Apache Pivot 1.5 on 4 June 2010 under the Apache License v.2.0.

Downloads, documentation, examples, and more information: visit http://pivot.apache.org/ .

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Wednesday Jul 07, 2010

Media Alert: The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache Cayenne Version 3.0


Who        The Apache Software Foundation (ASF): all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of nearly 150 Open Source projects and initiatives.

What        Version 3.0 release of Apache Cayenne, the easy-to-use, Open Source Java framework for object relational mapping (ORM), persistence, and caching.

When        In development for nearly 10 years, and an ASF Top-Level Project since 2006, Apache Cayenne is the backbone for high-demand applications and Websites accessed by millions of users each day, such as Unilever, the National Hockey League, and the Law Library of Congress, the world's largest publicly-available legal index.

The Apache Cayenne Project Management Committee has released a new Technical Fact Sheet detailing the state of Cayenne, including dozens of technical features, release highlights, and the Project's future direction. The Apache Cayenne v.3.0 Technical Fact Sheet is available at https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/apache_cayenne_v_3_0

Why        Apache Cayenne Vice President Andrus Adamchik describes how Cayenne's powerful featureset and GUI tools successfully meet an extensive range of persistence needs, flexibly scaling to support database generation, reverse engineering, Web Services and non-Java client integration, schema mapping, on-demand object and relationship faulting, database auto-detection, and more. Through its mature technology, track record of solid performance in high-volume environments, and vibrant user community, Apache Cayenne is an exceptional choice for persistence services.

Where        Released under the Apache Software License v2.0, Apache Cayenne v.3.0 is available for download at http://cayenne.apache.org/.

Contact    Sally Khudairi, ASF Vice President Marketing & Publicity, at press@apache.org or on +1 617 921 8656

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Apache Cayenne v.3.0 Technical Fact Sheet

In development for nearly 10 years, and an ASF Top-Level Project since 2006, Apache Cayenne is the backbone for high-demand applications and Websites accessed by millions of users each day, such as Unilever, the National Hockey League, and the Law Library of Congress, the world's largest publicly-available legal index. This Technical Fact Sheet details the state of Cayenne, including dozens of technical features, release highlights, and the Project's future direction.

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