[XML-SIG] 4Suite and 4SuiteServer 0.11 alpha announcement

[Mike Olson]

Well, friends, thanks for all your patience.  Finally, we are ready to
release 4Suite and 4Suite Server 0.11, and this is to announce an alpha
package of
the product.

The alpha test is available from 4Suite.org: no registration required. 
See

http://4suite.org/download.html

So why the looooong delay for this release?

We have taken all the lessons learned from developing, deploying and
using 4SS so far, huddled up for an intensive few weeks, and emerged
with a complete re-factoring of the architecture.

The most important change is that now the heart of 4SS, which is simply
a set of Python APIs for managing and processing XML in a
server-oriented framework, is directly exposed, rather than hidden
through CORBA.

This means that all the heavy requirements and complex installation are
a thing of the past.  You can still use CORBA and all that, but it is
just another integration protocol that sits beside HTTP, SOAP, WebDAV,
etc.  It is not required.  PostgresQL or other RDBMS is not required. 
In fact, all that is required now is Python and 4Suite.  It's quick to
install, and there is a great boost in performance.

The architecture of the repository is now much more "Pythonic" and easy
to grasp.

And we have also spent a good deal of time on docs.  Starting at

http://4Suite.org/topics/rdf/Top/Documentation/GeneralProgrammersGuide

you will find a comprehensive, step-by-step introduction to 4SS 0.11.

For the now very simple installation, see

http://stage.4Suite.org/documents/guides/4SuiteServer/UNIX_Installation

(should be applicable to Windows users as well but we'll get the Windows
installation
docs back on line before final release).

Note that the 4Suite 0.11 alpha is a prerequisite.

Pretty much all the features of 4SS 0.10.2 will be in the 0.11 final
release, and all but a few are fully implemented in this alpha.

See

http://4Suite.org/topics/rdf/Top/Documentation/features.html

For a listing of features in this release.

Please help us shake out this Alpha for bugs, or give 4SS a try if
you've been shy of doing so because of its complexity.  We have set a
pretty firm final release date of 30 April (next Monday), so quick bug
reports and suggestions would be ideal.  Note that we have been testing
it a great deal internally, and all our own 4SS apps have already been
ported to and tested on the new architecture, so you needn't feel like a
guinea pig.

Thanks.

The Fourthought guys

-- 
Mike Olson				 Principal Consultant
mike.olson@fourthought.com               (303)583-9900 x 102
Fourthought, Inc.                         http://Fourthought.com 
Software-engineering, knowledge-management, XML, CORBA, Linux, Python