Random thoughts: getting ready for Jolie 1.0 and remote services inclusion in KDE
Jolie is getting into shape for the 1.0 release. This is requiring a lot of work, and whenever we reach our current objectives we feel like improving things even further (every developer likes perfection, the problem is it requires too much time)! Nevertheless, the line for a good 1.0 release has been placed and is getting very near. The two major points we need to address are SSL support (both in SODEP an HTTP) and documentation. By documentation I'm not just referring to the language documentation but also to the source code documentation of the interpreter; the aim is to make the Jolie interpreter more approachable by hackers who want to improve it or want to write an extension (protocols, specifications, hardware support, ...). The 1.0 release will also contain experimental support for XML-RPC.
SSL support is already working and waiting for inclusion (rough edges need to be investigated) in the main source tree. SSL support will particularly benefit B2B applications, which until
now had to get security by wrapping Jolie in SSL containers, and the KDE project, which has just included support for remote services in trunk using Jolie and MetaService as backend technologies. SSL support in Jolie would allow KDE remote Plasma services to encrypt their data exchanges, an essential feature when dealing with sensitive data (though the initial handshake part is already made secure by using Qt).
I must say that the KDE inclusion was pretty quick: it was just one year ago when the Jolie and the Plasma teams met at the first Tokamak and now we already have a first functioning version in trunk. This process required quite a lot of work and skill, from writing a service orchestrator that could dynamically create bridges from Plasma to services using different protocols and technologies onward to the QtJolie gluing layer and the final implementation in the Plasma library. Now we have the basis for constructing even more complex frameworks and applications, and all of this will benefit from the future Jolie static analysis tools that we (the Jolie team) are planning to implement. All of this to say that it really is a pleasure to work with the KDE team: I will be sure to keep in touch as much as possible.
I'm now focusing heavily on source code documentation and polishing (for which I've just made some pretty big commits). Regarding code polishing, I got some help from the FindBugs static analysis tool; you can just ask it to read some Java bytecode and it comes up with a lot of good hints for performance improvements and bug removals. It is really easy to use and it even considers correct resource locking and releasing. Pretty useful if you have old code to maintain or for checking new extensions before merging them.
Ah yes, I should also blog about a lot of other features and the porting of Jolie to ARM-based devices thanks to the Jalimo project... but that's for other blog posts!
SSL support is already working and waiting for inclusion (rough edges need to be investigated) in the main source tree. SSL support will particularly benefit B2B applications, which until
now had to get security by wrapping Jolie in SSL containers, and the KDE project, which has just included support for remote services in trunk using Jolie and MetaService as backend technologies. SSL support in Jolie would allow KDE remote Plasma services to encrypt their data exchanges, an essential feature when dealing with sensitive data (though the initial handshake part is already made secure by using Qt).
I must say that the KDE inclusion was pretty quick: it was just one year ago when the Jolie and the Plasma teams met at the first Tokamak and now we already have a first functioning version in trunk. This process required quite a lot of work and skill, from writing a service orchestrator that could dynamically create bridges from Plasma to services using different protocols and technologies onward to the QtJolie gluing layer and the final implementation in the Plasma library. Now we have the basis for constructing even more complex frameworks and applications, and all of this will benefit from the future Jolie static analysis tools that we (the Jolie team) are planning to implement. All of this to say that it really is a pleasure to work with the KDE team: I will be sure to keep in touch as much as possible.
I'm now focusing heavily on source code documentation and polishing (for which I've just made some pretty big commits). Regarding code polishing, I got some help from the FindBugs static analysis tool; you can just ask it to read some Java bytecode and it comes up with a lot of good hints for performance improvements and bug removals. It is really easy to use and it even considers correct resource locking and releasing. Pretty useful if you have old code to maintain or for checking new extensions before merging them.
Ah yes, I should also blog about a lot of other features and the porting of Jolie to ARM-based devices thanks to the Jalimo project... but that's for other blog posts!