Introduction
XINS 1.4.0 was a stable, final release, which was considered fully compatible with all previous stable releases. However, it has been superseded by newer versions.
This (on line) page is kept up-to-date. You may mant to use a service like WatchThatPage to monitor this page. Last update: June 19, 2007.
New features
XINS version 1.4 features various improvements compared to previous versions:
- Compile-time performance and runtime performance improvements
- Bug fixes
- Automatic communication protocol detection
- Asynchronous requests
- Generation of documentation in OpenDocument format, for use by e.g. OpenOffice.org
- Pet Store demo
- Support for Unicode characters
- Functional error codes
- many more small features
Prerequisites
The following are prerequisites for using the XINS framework:
- Apache Ant: 1.6.2 or higher (1.6.5 recommended)
- Java SDK: 1.3.1 or higher (1.4.2 recommended)
Install these before installing XINS.
Compatibility
Binary backwards compatibility of the JAR files (logdoc.jar
, xins-common.jar
, xins-client.jar
and xins-server.jar
) with XINS 1.3.0 has been validated using Japitools.
Testing
Shell script
The xins
shell script in this release has been tested successfully with bash 2.0x on Linux 2.6/x86, Solaris 8 and Cygwin 1.5.12 (on Windows 2000).
Batch file
The xins.bat
batch file has been tested successfully with both Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
Unit tests
All 309 unit tests for this release have been executed on the following platforms, with the indicated results:
OS Platform Java SDK Ant Result Solaris 8 SPARC Sun JDK 1.4.1_07 1.6.5 OK Sun JDK 1.4.2_10 1.6.3 OK Sun JDK 1.4.2_10 1.6.5 OK Linux 2.6 x86 Sun JDK 1.4.2_10 1.6.5 OK Sun JDK 1.5.0_06 1.6.5 OK Sun JDK 1.6.0 EA build 79 1.6.5 OK Sun JDK 1.6.0 EA build 82 1.6.2 OK Blackdown JDK 1.4.2_01 1.6.5 OK IBM JDK 1.4.2 SR 3 1.6.5 OK IBM JDK 1.5.0 beta 1.6.5 OK BEA JRockit 1.5.0_03 1.6.5 OK PPC IBM JDK 1.4.2 SR 1a 1.6.5 OK Windows 2000 x86 Sun JDK 1.3.1_05 1.6.5 See note 1 Sun JDK 1.4.1_07 1.6.5 OK Sun JDK 1.4.2_10 1.6.5 OK Sun JDK 1.5.0_04 1.6.5 OK Sun JDK 1.6.0 EA build 79 1.6.5 OK Sun JDK 1.6.0 EA build 82 1.6.5 Failed. See bug report 1478969 Windows XP x86 Sun JDK 1.4.1_07 1.6.5 OK Sun JDK 1.4.2_07 1.6.5 OK Sun JDK 1.5.0_05 1.6.5 OK
Note 1:
- HTTPS does not work on Java 1.3. It may work if an appropriate library is installed, but this has not been tested.
- Also, on Java 1.3 the names of the calling class and method cannot be determined automatically. Consequently the logProgrammingError(String) method in class org.xins.common.Utils will log
"<unknown>"
instead of the actual class name and method name. - Finally, Java 1.3 does not come with a compatible XSLT library. Consequently, the XSLT calling convention does not work. It may work if an appropriate library (e.g. Saxon or Xalan) is installed. However, this has not been tested.
Issues
Critical issues
The following issues are expected to have a significant impact for a large number of users:
- none
Major issues
The following issues are expected to have a significant impact for a small number of users:
- API fails with no logs when no runtime properties file is specified (fixed in XINS 1.4.1)
- Parameters with empty values not returned with getParameterNames() method of the XINSServletRequest (fixed in XINS 1.4.2)
- Error in getParameterValues (internal servlet container) (fixed in XINS 1.4.2)
- Internal servlet container assumes path is query string (fixed in XINS 1.5.0)
- XSLT error: "putDocumentInCache found reparse of doc" (Eclipse-specific, work-around available)
Minor issues
The following issues are expected to only have a limited impact for a small number of users:
- NetBeans problems with directory with spaces (fixed in XINS 1.5.0)
- XML-RPC: 400 returned instead of XML-RPC fault
- Loglevel NOTICE not recognised
- Code generation error with nested elements starting with an uppercase in data sections (fixed in XINS 1.4.2)
- HTTP HEAD requests should return Content-Length (fixed in XINS 1.5.0)
- On Windows, XINS proposes to install in existing location (fixed as of XINS 1.5.0)
Trivial issues
The following issues are not expected to cause issues for any users:
- 'ant -lib lib tests' fails on JDK 1.6.0 EA b82 (Win2000) (fixed in XINS 1.4.1)
- Log.java in unexpected package for allinone test api (fixed in XINS 1.4.2)
- Unsolicited retry of HTTP requests (fixed in XINS 1.5.0)
- No function status on category page (specdocs) (fixed in XINS 1.5.0)
- Code generation does not avoid Java keywords
- Functional errors logged as ERROR, with JBoss (fixed in XINS 1.4.1)
- Circular dependencies in ACL files possible
- Category does not link back to API (fixed in XINS 1.5.0)
- Likely bug in server-side statistics (unconfirmed)
- Strange XSLT warning when JAVA_HOME/bin is not in PATH (Eclipse-specific, work-around available)
- 'ant -lib lib tests' fails with Apache Ant 1.7-alpha
- Log message 3003 should not be FATAL (fixed in XINS 1.5.0)