Coherence 3.2 Release Notes

Tangosol Coherence^TM 3.2 Release Notes

The following is a list of new features and improvements in Tangosol Coherence 3.2:

• Portable Serialization of Java Objects:
  • Coherence 3.2 introduces a new platform and language independent communication format for object values and method invocation. Existing Java standards for object serialization (java.io.ObjectOutputStream and ObjectInputStream) and remote method invocation (RMI) are completely non-portable outside of the Java platform.
    
    The Portable Object Format (POF) allows object values to be encoded into a binary stream in such a way that the platform/language origin of the object value becomes irrelevant. The Portable Invocation Format (PIF) allows method invocations to be similarly encoded into a binary stream. These two formats are derived from a common binary encoding substrate and together are referred to as PIF-POF^TM .
    
    In addition to portability and network efficiency, PIF-POF provides support for versioning of all user types to allow for their evolution over time, enabling both forward- and backwards-compatibility of user types. PIF-POF serves as the foundation for Coherence integration with non-Java languages and platforms, such as C++ and .NET.
    
    See the JavaDoc for the com.tangosol.io.pof package for API details.
    
    
• Cluster Protocol Enhancements:
  • Enabled Point-to-Point flow control using a new Remote GC Detection algorithm.
  • Improved detection for faster retransmission of dropped packets, enabling high data rates even during periods of packet loss.
  • Expanded performance statistics for tuning throughput and diagnosing networking issues.
  • Added a new PointToPointMBean that reports various network statistics between any two cluster nodes via Coherence JMX framework.
  • Improved heuristic death detection by incorporating additional network statistics.
  • Corrected a failure condition that would cause sockets to repeatedly attempt to refresh.
  • Corrected a problem with the panic protocol for clusters running without multicast enabled. (COH-755, b361)
    
    
• New and Improved Coherence Data Grid Functionality:
  • Added "Grouping" and "Composite" Parallel Aggregators, such as "Distinct", "Group By" and "Group By ... Having" (COH-425). See Oracle Coherence Forums.
  • Added support for aggregating BigDecimal values; see the JavaDoc for the BigDecimalAverage, BigDecimalMax, BigDecimalMin and BigDecimalSum classes.
  • Added "Conditional" Processors for implementing Put/Remove operations, supporting the full range of java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentMap functionality; see the JavaDoc for the ConditionalProcessor, ConditionalPut, ConditionalPutAll and ConditionalRemove classes.
  • Added support for delta updates of cached values; see the JavaDoc for the UpdaterProcessor class.
  • Added support for key-based extractors, filters and sorting (COH-401, COH-640). See Oracle Coherence Forums and Oracle Coherence Forums.
  • Added support for Date/Time values to aggregation operations (min, max, etc.)
  • Optimized Filter serialization to improve query performance and CPU utilization.
    
    
• Coherence*Extend Enhancements:
  • Added TCP/IP protocol support. See the Configuring and Using Coherence*Extend section of the User Guide for complete details.
  • Added network filter support for on-the-wire data transformations such as compression and encryption.
  • Added support for POF-encoding of user types.
  • Various performance improvements.
    
    
• Coherence*Web Enhancements:
  • Added support for WebSphere 6.0.
  • Fixed an issue with the Coherence*Web Installer that caused jsp-config web.xml elements to be dropped. (COH-719, b361)
    
    
• Logging Enhancements:
  • Added a number of new cluster node lifecycle messages. (b359)
  • Added support for a number of location and role related tags for cluster nodes ("cluster-name", "site-name", "rack-name", "machine-name", "process-name", "member-name", "role-name", "priority"). This information is also available via JMX. (b359)
  • Added and improved license related messages. (b359)
  • Added logging of underlying socket exceptions during intermittent UDP socket failures (COH-496, b359).
  • Added support for Log4j version 1.3.
  • All Tangosol output (logging and error) is now redirected through Coherence logging.
    
    
• Write-Behind Caching Improvements:
  • Dramatically improved the write-behind queue failover algorithm to completely eliminate potentially redundant writes during fail-back without requiring value objects to implement the Versionable interface (COH-52). This enhancement deprecates the VersionedBackingMap and VersionedNearCache cache topologies. See http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=480&start=0.
  • Fixed a potential issue with overly-aggressive write-behind batching during failover (COH-466). See http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=480&start=0.
  • Improved the Entry implementation used in Write-Behind Cache queues.
    
    
• Coherence Management Framework Enhancements:
  • Exposed the PartitionsUnbalanced attribute of ServiceMBean which monitors distribution progress. (COH-789, b363)
  • Added InsertCount, RemoveCount and EvictionCount attributes to StorageManagerMBean.
  • Added a Type attribute to ServiceMBean.
  • Added a Size attribute to ClusterMBean and a StorageEnabledCount attribute to ServiceMBean. (COH-733, b361)
    
    
• Cache Configuration Improvements:
  • Added the ability to configure classes using the factory pattern. (COH-602, b361)
  • Added the ability to configure a zero-capacity backing map useful for testing purposes. (COH-599, b361)
    
    
• Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes:
  • Various improvements to the off-line User Guide and JavaDoc. (COH-491, COH-549 and COH-806, b365)
  • Fixed a threading issue with Coherence*Extend caused by rapid restarts of the client and server-side services. (COH-798 and COH-811, b365)
  • Fixed a regression in PortalCacheProvider causing a failed license check. (COH-804, b365)
  • Fixed a conversion issue with the CacheStoreMap implementation. See http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=480&start=0. (COH-748, b363)
  • Allowed pluggable encryption algorithm to be specified for the out-of-the-box security module; see the JavaDoc for the DefaultController class. (b359)
  • Added an encryption filter for network communication; see JavaDoc for the ClusterEncryptionFilter, SymmetricEncryptionFilter, AsymmetricEncryptionFilter and PasswordBasedEncryptionFilter classes. (b359)
  • Optimized the LiteMap and LiteSet serialization routines. (b359)
  • Added a read-only NamedCache wrapper implementation; see the JavaDoc for the ReadonlyNamedCache class. (b359)
  • Fixed a partition ownership synchronization problem caused by a sequence of abnormal cache server terminations during re-distribution (COH-635, b359).
  • Changed the InvocationService startup sequence to prevent a premature execution of remote tasks causing potential deadlocks (COH-670, b359).
  • Fixed a regression in SerializationPagedCache introduced by the "storeAll" optimization (COH-571, b359).
  • Fixed a deadlock in the ContinuousQueryCache that could occur during a restart after abnormal service termination. (COH-574, b359)
  • Improved performance of putAll() operations on a NearCache.
  • Corrected the handling of serialization exceptions by reporting them back to the caller; previously, certain serialization exceptions would cause a restart within the clustering Dispatcher (COH-370). See http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=480&start=0.
  • Added life-cycle methods to the DefaultCacheServer, for example to more tightly integrate with DataSynapse or to provide service wrappers for Windows.
  • Correction to SerializationPagedCache (COH-571). See http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=480&start=0.
  • Added an example cache configuration file for the Coherence Hibernate CacheProvider. (COH-554, b361)
  • Fixed a regression in the J2CA ResourceAdapter. See http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=480&start=0. (COH-739, b361)
  • The default <high-units> of a <local-scheme> changed from 1000 to unlimited.

_{* All changes in build 359 and higher are marked with the build number in which they were made.}