Avalon Framework 4.0 Released

The Avalon project is Apache's Java Server Framework which is separated into six sub projects: Framework, Excalibur, LogKit, Cornerstone, Phoenix, and Testlet. Its purpose is to simplify server-side programming for Java based projects and formalize several best of breed practices and patterns for server side programming.

About Avalon Framework 4.0

The Avalon Framework formalizes the contracts and patterns used in the other Avalon projects. It is derived from modern software engineering techniques and aims to provide a solid basis on which to build server products.

In other words, the Avalon Framework provides:

• Ready-to-use design patterns.
• A higher level of abstraction than OOP.
• Implementations of common components.

ChangeLog for Avalon Framework 4.0

• Added new method to Component Manager and Selector for discovering if a Component exists inside or not. Also augmented the default versions with the basic implementation to discover them. [BL]
• Added stylesheet to convert Stylebook markup to DocBook markup. [BL]
• Changed the documentation build process to use Cocoon to build the site. [BL]
• Added new "Developing with Avalon" book in DocBook format. [BL]
• Added Executable interface to activity package. [PD]
• Updated Resolvable interface to allow a ContextException to be thrown on failure. [PD]
• Add a makeReadOnly() method to the default implementations of Configuration, Context and ComponentManager. Calling this method after the respective object has been filled will make the object read-only. This is a safety precaution to stop code performing unwanted operations. [PD]
• Updated the javadocs of many of the classes. [PD]
• Update documentation so that it is more accurate and descriptive. [BL]

Downloads for Avalon Framework 4.0 and more information about the Avalon project are available at the Avalon project website.