Struts 2.0.8 Released
The Apache Project has released Struts 2.0.8 an
open source framework for building web applications.
Apache Struts 2 is an elegant, extensible framework. It
uses Java Servlets and JavaServer Pages (JSP) for creating enterprise-grade web applications. Earlier it was
known as WebWork 2. The design of Apache Struts 2 is
based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern and is streamlined to maintain applications over time. Moreover it has over 60 bug fixes since 2.0.6 and it is simpler to use. After working independently for several years, the WebWork and Struts communities joined forces to create Struts 2.

Java Servlet 3.0 Specification

Sun has submitted Java Specification Request -315,
Java Servlet 3.0 Specification , to the Java Community
Process.

One of the goals for Java EE 6 is extensibility. Servlet
3.0 specification will work on extensibility / pluggability.
Web framework pluggability will be a key driver of the
Servlet 3.0 specification. As part of the revision for Java
EE 6 JCP would like to revise the Servlet specification to
support the Ease of Development (EoD) using the newer
language features. Also along with EoD there have been
requests for enhancements in other areas as well to
support the modern next generation web application
development.

Java Caching System 1.3 Released

Java Caching System (JCS) 1.3 has been released by
the Apache Jakarta Project. It is useful in speeding up
the applications and is highly useful for high read, low
put applications. Basically Java Caching System (JCS) is
an open source “distributed caching system written in
java. It manages cached data of various dynamic natures
and sharply drops latency times hence it speed up
applications. JCS works on JDK versions 1.3 and up.
The features provided by JCS are:

• Element grouping
• Minimal dependencies
• Region data separation and configuration
• Fine grained element configuration options
• Memory management
• Element event handling
• Remote server chaining (or clustering) and failover

• Remote synchronization
• Disk overflow (and defragmentation)
• Thread pool controls
• UDP Discovery of other caches
• xtensible framework
• Non-blocking “zombie” (balking facade) pattern
• Lateral distribution of elements via HTTP, TCP, or UDP

Apache POI 3.0 Released

POI is a Java library which is used to manipulate few of the file formats based upon Microsoft’s OLE 2 Compound Document format( like Microsoft Office files such as XLS and DOC). Now with POI 3.0, MS Excel files can be written from Java with few more functionalities. This version adds some PowerPoint support, as well as some formula support. Even in near future, Word files will be able to read and write using Java. POI is Java Excel solution as well as Java Word solution.

Collections 3.0 Released

To complement the Java Collections Framework
Apache group has released its Commons-Collections
Framework with new features in form of Collections 3.0
API. It possesses enhancements, implementations and
utilities over the previous releases. New interfaces, new
implementations and utility classes have been added
These features have been added by the Apache Jakarta
Commons Collections Framework component.

Commons-Collections was created to share collection implementations created in various places around Jakarta. Initiallly, there was no clear design or structure to the component. However, with this 3.0 release, a new consistent package structure is defined. Additionallly two new code donations are launched which are primitive collections and event notification collections .

Common Java Compiler Interface 1.0 Released

Common JCI 1.0 is a java component released by Apache
Jakarta Project. Java and other JVM hosted languages can be compiled with the help of it. Basically JCI is a java compiler interface which compiles Java or other languages like groovy or javascript to Java. It is well integrated with a FAM (Filesystem Alteration Monitor) that can be used with the JCI compiling/ reloading classloader. All the currently supported compilers (even javac before Java 6.0) feature in-memory compilation. The current implementation supports compilation via the following compilers:
• Groovy