GUI Demo for JBoss Cache

So I've decided to try my hand at writing Swing code. For a guy who loathes writing GUI code, Swing is particularly painful, but IntelliJ's excellent GUI designer came to the rescue, taking away most of the pain. Sure, the generated code may not be optimal, but hey - this isn't a web browser I'm writing!

So on to the demo. The motivation for this demo is primarily the number of people that ask for a visual demo when I do presentations and talks on JBoss Cache or clustering in general. Everyone likes to see a demo, but JBoss Cache just isn't a visual product.

So that's what this demo tries to do - give JBoss Cache a "face".

The demo can be downloaded from the JBoss Cache download page on Sourceforge. The first release of the demo - 1.0-BETA1 - bundles JGroups 2.6.1 and JBoss Cache 2.1.0.CR3. Requirements are minimal - just a Java 5 JDK.

It should be pretty simple and straightforward to use - unzip and run the run.sh script to launch the GUI. The first thing you will see is an unstarted cache:


Once you click the Start Cache button, you should see the contents of the default configuration file used with the cache instance.



Note that this is a read-only display of the configuration file used. If you wish to edit this, exit the GUI demo, edit the config file in /etc/ and start the GUI demo again.

Now ideally you'd want to start several instances of the GUI demo, to watch them form a cluster and share data. The title bar of the application shows you the local instance's Cluster Address and the number of members in the cluster:


And once you have a few instances going, clicking on the Cluster view tab will show you the cluster's topology, indicating which instance is the JGroups coordinator, the current instance, and, if buddy replication is enabled, which instances are your buddy backups.

Finally, using the Manipulate data tab, you can either enter specific data, or generate random data, and using the Data view tab, watch how this replicates across your cluster.


Simple as that, really.

Enjoy playing around with this tool, and please provide feedback on the JBoss Cache user forums.

Cheers,
Manik

Another Month of Bugs

So after the overwhelming success of the last Month of Bugs competition we had (leading up to 2.0.0.GA) we'd like to do the same with 2.1.0.GA.

2.1.0.CR3 has just been released. It is faster and more stable than CR2, and we'd really like anyone using 2.0.0 to download and try out 2.1.0.CR3 instead. Try it in your test or staging systems, try it with your unit and stress tests. And let us know how it performs. Also, help us by going through the documentation, examples, everything, really - as far as the competition is concerned, every contribution counts, whether it is a bug, unit test, code patch, documentation edit, whatever.

As with the last time, there are some great prizes up for grabs such as gift vouchers, T-Shirts, etc., and we've also added @jbosscache.org email aliases to add to your geek credentials!

Please see the Month of Bugs page on the JBoss Cache website for details.

Happy hacking!
Manik

The first JBoss Cache release for 2008

We at JBoss Cache are proud to announce a third release candidate for Alegrias - JBoss Cache 2.1.0.CR3.

Please do download and try this release out - it has some substantial performance and stability improvements over CR2. Your feedback is really important in stabilising 2.1.0 - please join the user forums if you already haven't done so, and provide us with as much feedback as you can.

The download is available on the JBoss Cache downloads page, and the docs on the JBoss Cache docs page. The user forums are in the usual place.

Have fun!
Manik