Rajith’s Column

The Apache Qpid community is happy to announce the release of Apache
Qpid 0.6.

Apache Qpid (http://qpid.apache.org) is a cross platform enterprise
messaging solution which implements the Advanced Message Queueing
Protocol (http://www.amqp.org). It provides brokers written in C++ and
Java and clients for C++, Java (including a JMS implementation), .Net,
Python, and Ruby.

This release contains many bug fixes and stability improvements over
previous release and we recommend that all users upgrade.

New in this release is another .Net WCF implementation which uses the
C++ client library as its transport rather than the native C# client.
This version has improved protocol version interoperability with Java
broker support for the 0-10 and 0-9-1 AMQP protocol versions.

Apache Qpid 0.6 can be downloaded from here:

http://www.apache.org/dist/qpid/0.6

A complete list of the reported features/bugs addressed in this release
can be found here:

https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=12310520&styleName=Html&version=12313728

I am honoured to have been able to contribute two chapters (entries) for the book “97 Things Every Programmer Should Know” that’s scheduled to be released this month.
There is nothing really ground breaking here, but rather short useful tips that could help in your goal in becoming a better programmer. Some of the advice given is obvious (or even trivial), but they are also what we normally take for granted. While some of those nuggets could potentially save you some trouble, others merely point out a different perspective about an aspect of programming that we may have failed to see. All in all I think it’s well worth a read. It’s also available on the wiki here.

This book is part of a new series started by O`reilly where the chapters (or entries) are chosen from a series of contributions (short essays) made by many individuals. The contributions are collected via a wiki and goes through an editing process via a designated editor. Once submissions are edited and agreed upon by the editor and the contributor they get added to a separate section from where the final contributions are chosen. This type of book offers the reader an opportunity to see multiple and varied perspectives of many individuals about the subject as opposed to a single authors perspective. The format of the book also allows for easy reading and the short concise entries are easy to digest. AFAIK there are two other books in the series, 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know and 97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know.

My contributions were motivated by the daily challenges I faced as a programmer. Refactoring and testing are topics that are relevant to any programmer.
Before You Refactor and Test While You Sleep (and over Weekends) are based on my humble experience working in the industry for over 10 years. I hope it helps another programmer to avoid the pain I had to go through by learning things the hard way. Kevlin Henny was the editor for this book and it was a pleasure to have had the opportunity to work with him. Sometimes it’s amazing to note how a little bit of editing could make a world of difference. During the process I learnt a few things about writing from Kevlin for which I am very grateful for.

And here is the cover page with my mug shot

Since joining the Apache Qpid project around Nov 2008 Microsoft has been helping with the windows port of the C++ broker. They also worked on a WCF client based on the C++ client libraries. Recently (about 2 weeks back) they contributed the code (QPID-2065). The examples could be found here.

From the read me the following features are available,
1. WCF service model programming using one way contracts
2. WCF channel model programming using IInputChannel and IOutputChannel based factories
3. Programmatic access to AMQP message properties on WCF messages
4. AMQP version 0-10 (as provided by the Qpid C++ native client library)
5. Shared connections for multiple channels based on binding parameters
6. WCF to WCF applications (using SOAP message encoders)
7. WCF to non-WCF applications (using raw content encoders)
8. Rudimentary AMQP type support for headers (Int and String)
9. Channel functional tests using NUnit
10. Programming samples

There are several opportunities for folks to collaborate in this area. Cliff Jansen who worked with Qpid on the code drop identified the following areas as potential areas for contributions.

From qpid/wcf/ReadMe.txt:

2. Planned features (not yet available)
=======================================

1. Full AMQP type support, including maps and arrays
2. System.Transactions integration (local and distributed with dynamic escalation)
3. Prefetch window for inbound messages
4. Shared sessions
5. Connection failover with AMQP broker clusters
6. Temporary queues
7. Broker management
8. System logging and tracing
9. CMake build system support
10. Transport and message based security

One item that I would like to add to the above list is documentation for the WCF client and it’s examples.

If you are interested in contributing please join us by sending an email to dev-subscribe@qpid.apache.org
You are most welcomed to contribute by way of code, testing, providing feedback or documentation.

The Apache Qpid community is pleased to announce the release of Apache Qpid M4!

Apache Qpid (http://qpid.apache.org) is a cross platform enterprise messaging solution which implements the Advanced Message Queueing Protocol (http://www.amqp.org).
It provides brokers written in Java and C++ and clients in C++, Java (including a JMS implementation), .Net, Python, and Ruby.

New features included in this release are:

• .NET, WCF and excel support for AMQP 0-10
• SSL added for C++ broker and all clients
• Windows port for C++ client & broker
• C++ Broker
  • ACL
  • Active-Active clustering
  • Federation, push bridges & dynamic routes
  • RDMA for C++ broker & C++ client (70-80us, yes us max latency on a well setup machines)
  • Support for message TTL
  • Queue options
    • added RING/ STRICT ring
    • LVQ
  • Exchange options
    • LVE
    • message sequencing
  • XQuery based XML Exchange now as plugin
• Performance work
• Management for AMQP 0-10
  • QMF C updates (console)
    • Python
    • C++
  • QMF Agent
    • C++
  • QMan JMX bridge for QMF
  • Alerts/ logger for QMF events
• JMSXUserId
• Java broker
  • Message Priority
  • bug fixes
  • some prep work for AMQP 0-10

It is available to download from:
http://www.apache.org/dist/qpid/M4/

Complete release notes are available here:
https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=12310520&styleName=Html&version=12313279

I guess by now many have heard that Microsoft is joining the Apache Qpid project and the AMQP Working Group. Sam Ramji mentioned this during his key note at the Apache Con US 2008. This is indeed great news for both the AMQP working group as well as the Apache Qpid community.

One of the engineers from Microsoft Anandeep Pannu, has written very excitedly about participating in Qpid.

In July Sam Ramji announced a sponsorship for the Apache Software Foundation. It kind of signaled about their intent to get their feet wet with playing an active role in open source. It seems that most large vendors have realized the importance of participating and promoting open source on one hand and also harnessing the power of open source on the other hand. IBM for instance played this strategy very well over the last decade or so. This is very good PR for the Qpid project and hopefully attract more participants and end users to the project. Definitely looking forward to working them in Qpid and the AMQP working group.

Danushka Menikkumbura has got AMQP support going for Axis2/C via the Apache Qpid project.
This will only work on Linux as the Qpid c++ client so far has only a Linux implementation. Currently there is ongoing work from two contributors trying to port the code base to support Windows and Solaris. This is scoped for the M3 release.

Watch the WSO2 blog space or the Axis2/C website for a tutorial/blog post from Danushka.