j-Interop : Java - COM Interoperability / News: Recent posts

Dear all,
This release (v3.0.0) includes:-

1. We have moved from LGPL v3 to EPL v1.

2. Removed GNU Crypto and moved to BouncyCastle.

3. Removed Wombat classes and moved to Java implementation of the same.

4. Upgraded to DCOM 5.7 protocol. j-Interop will now "negotiate" (as per DCOM
   specs) and use the latest protocol if supported by the Server.

5. Bunch of minor fixes.

That's it,
best regards,
j-Interop Team.... read more

Dear All,
Introducing NTLMv2 security support in this release. Also includes some minor bug fixes.

thanks,
best regards,
Vikram

Dear All,
Introducing NTLMv2 security support in this release. Also includes some minor bug fixes.

thanks,
best regards,
Vikram

Dear All,
This is a bug fix release. Primary issue addressed here is related to releasing of COM references more than once during GC by the library. This causes "RPC server has disconnected" exception. There are also one or two minor fixes , but not worth mentioning.

until next time,
best regards,
Vikram

Dear All,
Long awaited final build. We have gone over the published MS DCOM specifications and reconciled any differences we could find. Of course j-Interop does not fully implement the Bi-Directional feature so those parts of the protocol have been left out (until someone pays us to do so).

take care,
best regards,
Vikram

Dear All,
(still retaining RC 8 status). This drop fixes issues related to reference counting done by the library for each COM object. It is highly recommended to move to this release as soon as time permits.

thanks,
best regards,
Vikram

Dear All,
This is a bug fix release.

1. Main issue addressed in this is a Deadlock faced in JISession under heavy threading.

2. Also if destroySession was invoked, any existing call to COM server would block till that call was complete. This has been corrected now. Any call in progress would be terminated and destroySession allowed to continue.

that's it,
best regards,
Vikram

Dear All,
This is also a bug fix release. Major issues addressed in this are:-

1.A deadlock condition which came up when stale COM objects where being cleaned out by the j-Interop GC thread has been resolved.

2. Introduced JIVariant.OUT_IUNKNOWN() and JIVariant.OUT_IDISPATCH() as helpers for COM methods asking for [in,out] IUnknown *.
and [in,out] IDispatch * references.

3. Also introduced a new subclass of JIException, the JIAutomationException taking care of automation related exceptions and enclosing the
COM EXCEPINFO structure. ... read more

Dear All,
This is a bug fix release (aren't they all :)...). Major issues addressed in this are:-

a) A deadlock condition which came up when COM references were being added to the session and being deferenced by the cleanup thread simultaneously.
b) Callback are now multithreaded (system used to hang sometimes during heavy event call backs).
c) JIVariant has a fix to take care of unsually high arrays.
d) There was a protocol error reported on Windows 2K3 servers during heavy multithreading, this has been resolved.
e) Reference mechanism has been enhanced , now an addRef implicitly takes place when ever the library acquires a COM interface reference.
f) A new method has been introduced in JISystem to allow users to set the hostname to IP mappings in those cases where such a mapping cannot be resolved via Java subsystem.
g) Importantly, our licensing is now changed to LGPL 3.0. If they are some users requiring LGPL 2.1 exception, please contact us. ... read more

Dear All,
This is a major release of the library and is not backward compatible with 1.24 (RC.4). We wanted to do a code refactoring for a long time and before we hit "stable" (to which we are quite close now).

We sincerely apologize to our existing users and would gladly render any assistance that you might need to get moving to 2.0 .

The javadocs and examples have been updated with the new code and the core packages have been tagged as "j-interop_release_2.0" and "j-interopdeps_release_2.0". The change log can be found here http://www.j-interop.org/docs/j-interop_2.0_changelog.txt .... read more

Dear All,
A long gap between this release and last, it gave us time to fix some serious bugs and add a few features on the way.

1. We have moved to SVN from CVS, and the CVS repository is now inactive. This release has been copied as "j-interop_release_1.24" in the "tags" folder at SVN root (https://j-interop.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/j-interop).

2. j-Interop now supports NTLM2 Session Security. This means that all the COM Servers requiring packet level security can now be accessed from this library. JISession.useSessionSecurity(...) has more information.... read more

Dear All,
Merry Christmas and best wishes for New Year. It has been quite sometime since the last release. I apologise, I _have_ been extremely busy past few months.

This time we have:-

1. VISTA compatibility. Thanks to Joe for helping test this out.

2. Reduced number of j-Interop jars. We are now down to 3 from earlier 7 (I think) and the biggest PIA of j-Interop classpath order is gone as well. We have 3 jars now, j-interop.jar, j-interopdeps.jar and jcifs. The rest can be deleted.... read more

Dear All,
Things are warming up for moving j-Interop from "Beta" to "Stable". This release contains :-

1. (Precisely) Couple of Bug fixes.
2. Updated documentation (Requires a bit more work though).
3. Cleaned up the examples (Have added a few new ones but they will be available next time due to pending I.P checks by the contributors).

That's it...
Thanks again for using j-Interop,
best regards,
Vikram

Dear All,
Lots of performance related changes in this build. The examples are a bit outdated now, so preparing some new ones (explaining mostly the non-automation APIs) and modifying the existing ones. These would be available by RC 2.

Fixed some major issues in pinging mechanism employed by the library to keep the DCOM server alive. It would have impacted the j-Interop client in the long run. Thanks to Benoit Jemine for bringing this to my notice.... read more

Dear All,
Lots of changes in this release. It seems to me that the library is taking real punishment :)...

Primary fixes:-

1. OOM when sessions are really large in number.
2. Call back functionality was not working as expected when the same JIJavaCoClass was used in the call backs. Now, the usage is restricted to one, but the user still has the flexibility to reuse it's interface definition and the implementation class (which is more or less the crux of a JIJavaCoClass).
3. JIVariant was not functioning as expected for Arrays. JavaDocs have been modified for this class as well.
4.errormessage_en_US.properties is now jierrormessage.properties and resides in the org.jinterop.dcom package. ... read more

Dear All,
Releasing 1.19(b), this release has:-

1. Fix for Arrays , when used from JIVariant was giving ClassCastException.
2. Performance enhancements.

j-Interop is also being used now in open-ESB project for DCOM Binding Component. More info is at http://www.glassfishwiki.org/jbiwiki/Wiki.jsp?page=DCOMBC

Thanks to all for trying j-Interop,
best regards,
Vikram

Dear All,
Releasing 1.18(b). This release has:-

1. Fixes for issues reported in 1.17(b).
2. The library now supports SAFEARRAYS of all types , earlier it was restricted to array of JIVariant only.
3. JIArray will no longer accept arrays of the type java.lang.Object, only typed arrays accepted here on.

Thanks to all developers for using j-Interop,
best regards,
Vikram

Dear All,
Releasing 1.17(b). Changes in this release:-

1. Performance improvements.
2. Critical bugs fixed wrt. DCOM protocol.
3. Issues reported in 1.16(b).

It is recommended that all developers upgrade to this build at the earliest.

Thanks to all for using j-Interop,
best regards,
Vikram

Dear All,
1.16(b) released, this build has:-

1. Fixed major bug reported in LPWSTR deserialization.
2. Made some performance enhancements related changes, typically to do with garbage collection.
3. Added VT_I8, VT_UI1 to JIVariant.
4. Added support for Unsigned types (not tested much)

My sincerest thanks to such a vibrant and helpful community,
best regards,
Vikram

ps: If any developer runs this on Vista , please let me know how it went..have no test setup for that OS.... read more

Dear All,
1.15(b) released.

1. Fixed bugs related to Internationalization.
2. Implemented SocketChannels to allow Java application to regain control if the COM server becomes non-responsive.

Next release should have support for "Unsigned" numbers, a mapping table for non-automation code and initial checkins for TypeLibrary\IDL compiler for code generation.

Thanks to all developers for using j-Interop,
best regards,
Vikram

Dear All,
Version 1.14(b) is Released. Nothing major reported in 1.13(b), I will wait for another fortnight before releasing RC 1.

1. Removed jilogging.properties file and gave j-interop its own logger. This part was neglected for a long time.

2. Set the default log level to WARNING.

3. Fixed a couple of Minor bugs reported in previous beta.

Thanks to all developers for using j-Interop.

best regards,
Vikram

Dear All,

1. Fixed bugs reported in previous Beta. Many Thanks to Jens Reinmann for excellent testing of non-automation interfaces.

2. Added/Deprecated api getObjectAsComObject and getObjectAsInterfacePointer in JIVariant. Please have a look at MSPowerPoint and MSWord examples for updated code.

Watch out for automatic code generation tool (IDL/TypeLib compiler) in Jan 2007.

Thanks again to all developers for using j-Interop.... read more

Dear All,

1. Fixed bugs reported in previous beta.
2. Fixed non-automation code issues.

Thanks again to all developers for using j-Interop.

best regards,
Vikram

j-Interop got a new website, my heartiest thanks to Massimo Ferrari for creating this one for me.

best regards,
Vikram

1.Fixed Bugs reported in previous Beta.
2.Did comprehensive testing for Non-automation interface, this is a precursor to automatic generation of wrappers using the Type library\IDL file of the COM server.

Thanks to all developers for trying j-Interop.

best regards,
Vikram