Developer Blog

Appway 6 - Release highlights

Published April 29, 2014 by Emilie Boillat

We're thrilled to announce the release of Appway 6. This post is an overview of the most important high-level changes since Appway 5.3. The main novelties include Studio dashboards, multi-node architecture support, improved mobile responsiveness for Screens, and enhanced web service integration and security.

For a full list of changes, see Release Notes 6.0 (PDF). For upgrade instructions, see System Upgrade 5.3.x to 6.x.

Studio and Workspace

Developer Dashboard (new)
The previous Studio home screen has been replaced by a new Developer Dashboard. It provides insight into the Appway installation, developers working on that installation, Business Objects, and other data.

System Dashboard and Node Inspectors (new)
A new System Dashboard gives live updates on the health of the Appway system. The Node Inspectors allow developers to monitor individual cluster nodes.

Exporting deleted Business Objects (new)
It is now possible to deploy deleted Business Objects between different Appway installations. This allows developers to propagate deletions between different systems.

Workspace styles (changed)
The Workspace has received a new visual style. To ensure backwards-compatibility, the former default stylesheet is automatically set when upgrading an existing installation to Appway 6. To change to the new stylesheet, set the property "nm.workspace.css.version" to the value "v2".

Test Data editor (changed)
The Test Data editor has been overhauled. It is now faster and offers better support for large and complex sets of data.

Portal Worklist extension (changed)
The Portal Worklist extension has been overhauled and is now faster, easier to maintain and more reliable. >> Read more

Cluster Capability

Multi-node architecture support (new)
Appway 6 automatically distributes its state and computation over all available cluster nodes. Appway thus ensures scalability in the number of process instances and high availability.

Pluggable cluster storage (new)
Most of the data which was previously located in the Appway data home has been moved to cluster storage. Cluster storage can be configured to use either a distributed file system, a relational database or Cassandra.

Runtime elasticity (new)
Cluster nodes can be added or removed at runtime.

Cluster File service (new)
Cluster files are available on all nodes and reside in a virtual directory hierarchy. Note that solution-specific local files do not work in a multi-node installation. Migration options include a distributed file system for solution-specific files, or updating the solution to work with cluster files.

ClusterFile and LocalFile Primitive Types (new)
The new "ClusterFile" Primitive Type represents a file available on all nodes of a clustered installation while "LocalFile" represents a regular file on local storage. Both Primitive Types offer common file operations like read, write, move, copy, etc.

Cluster Cache service (new)
The Cluster Cache service provides a distributed key-value store cache. In comparison to the local Application Cache, it requires only one source access per cluster instead of one per node.

Cluster Log service (new)
The Cluster Log service transparently collects log statements from all nodes and makes them available in the Studio.

Cluster Lock services (new)
The Cluster Lock and Cluster Read-Write Lock services can be used to lock resources on all nodes in the cluster.

Job Execution service (new)
The Job Execution service makes it possible to execute a job on one node only.

Data-Home-to-Cluster converter (new)
This tool converts an Appway 5.3 data home, and splits it into an Appway 6 data home and a cluster storage directory (based on a file system).

Screens

Adaptive Flow Layout (new)
The new Adaptive Flow Layout component organizes screen elements into a form layout. It ensures mobile-responsive Screens by adapting the elements' position according to the client device's type and display size.
>> Read more

Float Layout (new)
The new Float Layout component displays screen elements next to each other. It orders them horizontally and vertically according to their priority and the space available.
>> Read more

Flow Layout (deprecated)
The Flow Layout component is deprecated in Appway 6. The Adaptive Flow Layout or Float Layout components (see above) must be used instead for new Screens. No changes are required to upgrade existing solutions.

Block User action (new)
A new "Block User" action is available for screen components. It blocks users from interacting with specific screen controls during an Ajax update, or with a whole Screen while it is submitted to the server.
>> Read more

Info Table (new)
The new Info Table component replaces the Table component. It receives a layout by default, and no longer needs to be styled manually using CSS. It is also mobile, responsive, and works well on devices with small screens.
>> Read more

Slider (new)
The new Slider component allows users to select a value by sliding a cursor vertically or horizontally.

Text Field (changed)
HTML5 input type properties have been added to the Text Field component.

Border Layout Manager (changed)
New overlay properties specify the flaps' behavior in detail. Dynamic expressions have been added for most of the properties. The flap size is now configurable. >> Read more

Phase Chevron (changed)
It is now possible to display parent or current phases, and to define different colors for past steps.

Error handling for Ajax updates (changed)
The default error messages generated by Appway in case of an Ajax update error have been improved. Additional client-side error handling can be implemented by entering custom JavaScript code for the "JavaScript On Error Code" property on Ajax Update Area Actions.

Web Note (removed)
The Web Note component was removed. It was already deprecated in Appway 5.3.

Processes

Evaluate Rule task (new)
A new "Evaluate Rule" task makes it possible to evaluate a single Rule business object during a process, instead of a whole Rule Set.

Process instance locking (changed)
The locking behavior was changed in order to support multi-node installations. Process instances are now locked when they are first accessed by a request (or any other thread) and the lock is released when the request is completed. >> Read more

Process instance isolation (new)
While one thread makes changes on a process instance, these are invisible to other threads until committed. This guarantees strong consistency.

Process Data service (changed)
The Process Data service is no longer responsible for persisting process instances and value stores. The persistence commands, command queue, persistence threads and the scheduled job "Process Data Persistence" have been removed. The persistence and in-memory management of process instances and value stores is now handled by Hazelcast.

Process Messages service (changed)
Persistence and in-memory management of process messages are now handled by Hazelcast. The "Process Messages Store" cache has been removed.

Process Log service (removed)
The Process Log and Process Audit Log services have been removed. It is recommended to migrate to the Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) or Process Audit Trail extensions. Alternatively, customer-specific requirements can be implemented based on the Process Listener API.

Integration

REST service (new)
A simple interface implementation of a REST service has been introduced. The REST endpoint "/version" returns the current Appway version, while "/cluster/shutdown" initiates a cluster shutdown.

Translation service (changed)
The new Translator API can be used to implement custom translation services for Appway solutions.

HTTP client (changed)
The HTTP client is now pluggable: HttpGet, HttpPost, REST and SOAP all use the Apache HttpComponents libraries instead of the Apache Commons HTTP client libraries.

SOAP and REST extensions (changed)
The SOAP and the REST extensions have been combined into a single WebService extension. The WebService extension is a drop-in replacement for the SOAP and REST extensions.

Mutual authentication (changed)
The functionality of the Mutual Authentication extension is now part of the Appway Platform's core and thus does not exist as extension anymore. Moreover, SSL client authentication is now clustered.

POI extension (changed)
The POI extension had been updated to uses cluster files.
>> Read more

System administration

Third-party libraries (changed)
Several third-party libraries have been upgraded:

Apache Commons Libraries
Xerces-J: from 2.9.1 to 2.11.0
Quartz: from 2.1.1 to 2.2.0
Java Mail API: from 1.4.3 to 1.5.0
JFreeChart: from 1.0.10 to 1.0.15
JDOM: from 1.0 to 1.1.3
jabsorb: from 1.3.1 to 1.3.2
OpenCSV: from 2.2 to 2.3
SLF4J: from 1.6.1 to 1.7.5
PJL Compressing Filter: from 1.7 to 1.8
YUI Compressor: from 2.4.6 to 2.4.8
Camel Framework: from 2.8.1 to 2.12.2
Spring Framework: from 3.0.5 to 3.2.4
jQuery: from 1.7.1 to 1.9.1
MarkdownJ: from 1.0.2b4 to 0.5

Servlet API (changed)
The minimum Java Servlet API version required is now 2.5.

Extensions directory (changed)
The "adapters" data home subdirectory was renamed to "extensions".

Runtime Data service (removed)
The Runtime Data service has been removed. It cannot be used safely in a cluster setting since shared in-memory data entities cannot be shared across cluster nodes. Solutions using the runtime database must be migrated to the Data Store.

HSQL database (removed)
HSQL database resources are no longer delivered as part of the Appway Platform's core libraries.

Services Dictionary (removed)
The Services Dictionary was deprecated since release 5.3 and has been removed.

Backup service (removed)
Appway 5.3 back-ups focused on the data home, which no longer contains solution data. Therefore, the Backup service was obsolete and has been removed.

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