Granite Data Services

Granite Data Services (GDS) is an open source, event-driven, free, platform-independent, enterprise-grade alternative to Adobe LiveCycle (Flex 2) Data Services for J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) application servers.

Features at a glance

Key features include Tide, a client development framework, powerful code generation tools, support for cross client Java technologies, easy configuration, integration with cross-platform Java EE frameworks, as well as Gravity, a powerful real-time module.

The project has been designed to offer full AMF3 (Action Message Format) support, as well as an EJB3 Entity Bean to ActionScript 3 classes code generator utility. It comes with built-in support for all mainstream operating system, as well as some of the most popular languages.

Granite Data Services also features a Comet-like Data Push implementation (AMF3 requests sent over HTTP). It can be easily used by thousands of companies for critical applications, supports powerful cross client technologies, including Oracle JavaFX, Google Android and Apache Flex.

Integrates well with all Java EE application servers

Another interesting feature is the ability to integrate well with all major Java EE frameworks, application servers and JPA engines, including Apache Tomcat, DataNucleus, JBoss, Jetty, Spring, GlassFish, WebSphere, EJB, Hibernate, WebLogic, CDI, EclipseLink, Seam and OpenJPA.

Not a drop-in replacement for Adobe LiveCycle

Granite Data Services is not, however, a drop-in replacement, as you won't be able to simply deploy a Flex 2 Data Services application into a Granite Data Services server without modifications.

Under the hood and supported OSes

It is written entirely in the Java programming language, which means that it’s supported on all operating systems where the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) is available, including all GNU/Linux distributions, as well as the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. It has been successfully tested with both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x86_64) instruction set architectures.

What is new in this release:

• Complete repackaging of the project, new Gradle-based build system, new documentation, new tutorials/examples
• The new optimized binary JMF protocol for Java-to-Java serialization (for use with Java/JavaFX and Android clients)
• Full support for JavaFX clients
• Websocket messaging channels for all client technologies with Tomcat 7, Jetty 8.1 and GlassFish 3.1
• Fast UDP messaging channels for all client and server technologies
• Tide framework support for multiple servers with the new ServerSession API
• ChangeSets for incremental updates on complex object graphs (Flex only)

What is new in version 3.0.0.RC1:

• The build of the entire GraniteDS platform is now based on Gradle.
• This release fixes all discovered bugs since the 3.0.0.M3 and should be the last version before the final 3.0.0.GA.

What is new in version 3.0.0 Milestone 3:

• JavaFX and Android native support is new in this release, beside the usual bugfixes and improvements.
• The next release will be a 3.0.0.RC1, shortly followed by the final 3.0.0.GA version.

What is new in version 3.0.0 Milestone 1:

• Apache Flex(R) 4.8.0 compatibility (see here)
• New messaging transport based on websockets on application servers supporting websockets : Tomcat 7.0.29+, Jetty 8.1+, GlassFish 3.1.2+.
• Improved implementation of the Java client libraries (new remoting API, support for long polling and websocket messaging
• Initial implementation of client libraries for JavaFX 2.2 : data management, client integration with Spring
• Full support for Spring Data JPA, ability to generate AS3 / JavaFX beans for AbstractPersistable, and service proxies for Repositories.

What is new in version 2.3.2 GA:

• Many bugfixes and improvements are available with this release.
• New features include Hibernate 4.1, JBoss 7, and Jetty 7 support, file deletion/renaming handling in the Eclipse code generation plugin, and bean validation for DTOs.

What is new in version 2.3.1 GA:

• This release is mainly a bufix release after the 2.3.1.GA, but also features some minor improvements.

What is new in version 2.3.0 GA:

• This version adds client-side reverse lazy-loading.
• Several bugs were fixed.

What is new in version 2.3.0 RC1:

• Many bugfixes and improvements are available with this release, related to data-management, clustering, JMS support, and real-time messaging.
• Support for Hibernate 4, JBoss 7, and Flex 4.5 has been added.
• A new client-side, reverse lazy-loading feature was added, greatly improving serialization performance from the client application to the server.

What is new in version 2.2.1 GA:

• Fix potential AMF3 exploit
• Gravity support for WebLogic 9.1+ servers
• Make isEntityChanged have visibility into Embedded objects
• Tide: merge result of saving new entity makes the context dirty

Requirements:

• Java 2 Standard Edition Runtime Environment