ACS Java 4.0.2 Release Notes

This is a maintenace release of ACS Java 4.0, the Arsdigita Community System 4.0 translated into Java. This release contains several bug fixes. See section V. for upgrade instructions. ACS Java is a platform for development of database-backed web applications using the J2EE architecture. It may be used with several popular web servers and servlet engines:

• Apache, version 1.3 or later
• Apache Tomcat, version 3.2.1 or later
• Resin Servlet Runner, version 1.2 or later
• Microsoft Internet Information Server, version 4.0 or later.

Application porting from Tcl to Java is not yet scheduled. For full information on milestones and project planning, please see ACS Java 4.0 Project Central.

II. Key Components

There are four key documents that developers interested in ACS Java should direct their attention towards. The ACS Java team would appreciate review on any of these items. Please post to the ACS Design Forum.

1. ACS Java 4.0 Precompiler. The precompiler provides a means to extend the capability of the Java language. The current system is sufficient to implement the ACS Database API and ad_page_contract. This decreases the time to port database-backed web pages from ACS Tcl significantly.

2. ACS Java 4.0 Database API. The database API offers functionality equivalent to the ACS Tcl 4.0 database API. The API is implemented in JDBC and allows developers to use the API or JDBC directly.

3. ACS Java 4.0 Templating System. The ACS Templating system was introduced in ACS 4.0 to provide a separation between application logic and presentation logic. By translating the templating system to Java, the level of compatibility between ACS Java 4.0 and ACS 4.0 is increased. A requirement of this system is that any template that does not include inline Tcl code should run without modification in ACS Java 4.0.

4. Writing pages for ACS Java 4.0. Developers who are interested in seeing how ACS Java compares to the Tcl version from a perspective of writing code should look at this document.

The goal of the ACS Java 4.0 project is to move the ACS 4.0 data models and APIs to the Java servlet framework efficiently while maintaining as much common code as possible. ACS Java uses servlets and JSP to provide the same infrastructure provided by ACS Tcl.

This release contains the following major components:

• A Java servlet that implements the ACS 4 request processor.
• A precompiler that implements the ACS 4 database API using JDBC.
• A templating system that uses JSP for logic and the ACS 4.0 Tcl ADP template language for presentation.
• Other support and Java libraries, including regular expressions and an XML parser, from the Jakarta project are included.

III. Requirements

ACS Java 4.0 requires a Java Servlet container that meets version 2.2 of the specification and offers JSP 1.1 support. Oracle 8.1.6 or higher is also required. Development testing to this point has been under Solaris with Tomcat and Resin. Testing has also occurred under Windows and Weblogic, but the installation instructions do not fully address these environments at this time.

IV. Installation Notes

For full installation instructions, please see the installation guide, located at /doc/install.

V. Upgrade Instructions

This version of ACS Java 4.0.2 includes some minor fixes.
To upgrade:

1. Stop the server.
2. Load the upgrade SQL file in packages/acs-kernel/sql/upgrade/upgrade-4.0-4.0.1.sql into the ACS tablespace.
3. Copy the files in the ACS 4.0.2 archive into place.
4. Start your server.

The ACS Java 4.0 project has been a collaborative effort involving dozens of people from both inside and outside Arsdigita.

The ACS Java Team is comprised of alphabetically: David Dao, David Eison, Rajendra Jodhpurkar, Uday Mathur, Luke Pond, Bryan Quinn, Rafael Schloming, Bill Schneider, and Peter Su.

The ACS Java 4.0 effort is indebted to the ACS Java 3.4 team for providing a foundation for building ACS Java 4.0. That team was comprised of Joseph Bank, Jin Choi, David Dao, David Eison, Uday Mathur, Luke Pond, Bill Schneider, and Rory Solomon.

The ACS Java team would like to thank the following individuals for contributions to the requirements, design, and implementation of ACS Java, again alphabetically, Joseph Bank, Jin Choi, Steven Crossan, Yonatan Feldman, Karl Goldstein, Philip Greenspun, Ravi Jasuja, Lars Pind, Archit Shah, and Michael Yoon.

ACS Java 4.0 includes code contributed by the Apache Project. The ACS Java team extends its thanks to the developers and their supporting organizations for making such a distribution possible.

Feedback

Any feedback or comments about the ACS can be sent to acs@arsdigita.com. Please report all bugs with the Arsdigita Software Development Manager (SDM).