The primary objective of this release is better support for Eclipse Galileo (3.5.x). The Eclipse P2 update mechanism in particular, required important changes in the way we bundle our Eclipse plugins.
A complete list of bug fixes and improvements is available.
A minor improvement over 1.3.0. The primary reason for this release is to bundle the latest legstar-cob2xsd version 0.1.0 which solves a number of important issues.
A major release where the legstar-schemagen module, our COBOL to XML Schema translator, which was written in C, has been replaced by the brand new legstar-cob2xsd module, which is pure Java and uses the ANTLR parser generator.
The install is now simpler (as a consequence of previous point), and the product works on a larger number of plaforms.
We did our best to stay backward compatible but the XML Schema produced will look different from what they used to be. So don't be surprised.
Details about the changes implemented in this release are available here.
Some important refactoring in this release mainly for JAX-WS adapter generation.
So far we were primarily targeting Sun JAX-WS RI (Metro). In this release, we also support Apache AXIS2.
We also reduced the dependencies on Apache Commons Configuration and started using configuration beans instead. The idea is to move toward Spring-based configuration in a future release.
More stress tests were run against this release. Sources for stress test cases and JMeter test plans are available. See http://code.google.com/p/legstar/w/list for results.
Details about all the changes are available here.
This is mainly a bug fixing release with a particular accent on thread safety and performances.
We have systematic load test cases and JMeter plans for all transports (Sockets, HTTP and MQ). This complements what was done for the last release at the COBOL conversion/transformation level.
Details about all the changes are available here.
The MQ Transport for Adapters now supports the IBM CICS MQ Bridge. With this option, there is no need to install LegStar on the mainframe. There is an additional parameter in legstar-invoker-config.xml to support this option. When enabled, legstar sends an MQCIH header to the CICS MQ Bridge in addition to the raw data expected by the CICS DPL program.
The binding generator now produces XML to Host transformers in addition to java to Host transformers. With these, it becomes very simple to process XML as an alternative to java value objects.
COBOL PIC G, DISPLAY-1 data items are now fully supported. They map to Strings and legstar removes the shift-in/shift-out characters which are not needed in this case.
The XML Schema that describes the COBOL binding annotations has been changed. It is now located at http://www.legsem.com/legstar/xml/cobol-binding-1.0.1.xsd. The byteLength attribute has been removed and values are now attributes rather than elements.
Details about all the changes are available here.
The major new feature is support for POJO as targets for Proxy Services. The Service Generator accepts a POJO classname and method as alternative to Web Service WSDL. At runtime, it is assumed the target POJO is in the classpath of the Proxy Runtime.
As a consequence, the Mainframe to Web Service Runtime (legstar-c2wsrt) has been renamed "Mainframe Proxy Runtime" since it is no longer restricted to target Web Services.
Another important change concerning Proxies is that Mainframe clients no longer need to use the LegStar HTTP client libraries. You can now use the standard CICS HTTP APIs for instance. This means that you no longer need to install anything on the z/OS side if you use Proxies only.
Details about all the changes are available here.
This version is aimed at providing better support for other LegStar related projects see LegStar for JBoss ESB as an example.
There has been several important fixes to the Eclipse plugins. Details are available here.
An important change is that generated JAXB class names are not suffixed with "Type" anymore by default. You can still request a suffix to be appended to names but you have to explicitly set a parameter for that now. This change was necessary because our JAXB classes were not compatible with the ones third party tools might generate.
Details about all the changes are available here.
This version is a minor release, primarily aimed at simplifying intallation of ZOS modules.
There is now a complete, separate, zip file for ZOS containing files in TSO XMIT format. ZOS system engineers are familiar with this format. With this distribution there is no more need to compile individual source files and a CICS RDO JCL groups all updates to the CICS CSD.
New Maven reports have been added such as CPD, PMD, FindBugs and Cobertura test coverage. The Maven hierarchy has also been revised.
This version is a major release with many enhancements across all the feature set.
The most dramatic changes concern the Eclipse plugins which have been completely redesigned.
In addition to mapping COBOL structures to XML schema, it is now possible to map XSD/WSDL or Java Classes to COBOL structures. The schema generator plugin allows you to select the source type you want to start from.
The result is a mapping XML Schema which maps COBOL data descriptions to XML Schema elements using special COBOL annotations.
In addition to generating Web Services Adapters, which expose mainframe programs as Web Services, it is now possible to generate Mainframe Proxies which give mainframe programs access to remote Web Services.
The ant task launcher has been completely refactored and its use standardized across all plugins. All plugins generate ant scripts that are kept in the Eclipse project under a folder that you set in your preferences (default is a folder called ant).
The best description of the new Eclipse plugins is the presentation document.
Information on Eclipse plugins installation can be found here.
Complex Types Mapping Generator now comes with a new ant task that takes a set of Java classes and generate a mapping XML Schema. This feature is built on Sun's JAXB Schemagen utility.
Web Service Generator now comes with a new ant task that creates Servlet proxies for target Web Services. This allows mainframe programs, using the Mainframe to Web Service Runtime to perform outbound calls to Web Services.
One sample provided calls the Live search SOAP API from a CICS program.
Because the purpose of several generators has changed, it was necessary to adapt the naming. The choice of very short names in previous versions has also proven ambiguous. This table gives the correspondence between names used in version 1.1.0 and names in version 1.2.3:
| Name in version 1.1.0 | Name in version 1.2.3 |
| XML Schema Generator | COBOL Structures Mapping Generator |
| XML Schema Annotator | Complex Types Mapping Generator |
| Binding Generator | COBOL Binding Generator |
| JAXB Generator | JAXB COBOL Annotator |
| Service Generator | Mainframe Service Generator |
| Cobol Generator | COBOL Structures Generator |
| Host to Web Service Runtime | Mainframe Proxy Runtime |
| Pooling engine | Connection Pooling Engine |
| Invoker | Mainframe Adapter Runtime |
| Messaging | Messaging Protocol |
You will find details on changes affecting each important module at the following links: