With 3.9.7 and 3.10.2 releases behind us, let’s take a look at what users can look forward to in the month of June.
Overview
In June 2013, the LogicBlox 3.x series will see a bug-fixing release of 3.9.8, and two major feature releases 3.10.3 and 3.10.4.
3.9.8 will include the fix for a bug in wrapped client-side controls, which prevents users from entering a 0 into a decimal field.
3.10.3 will be a mid-month release that includes the support for RabbitMQ, a queue mechanism for ServiceBlox services. For typical LogicBlox use cases, RabbitMQ offers more predictable behavior and performance gains over the existing SQS mechanism.
We strongly recommend applications that currently use SQS for services to upgrade to 3.10.3, and reconfigure the services to use RabbitMQ.
3.10.4 will be a regular, end-of-month release that will include
- Official release of the Measure Service
- The LogicBlox build configuration tool
lb config(formerly known asbuildlib) - A browser application that allows users to execute queries against LogicBlox workspaces, and displays query results in a grid. We expect this application to provide tremendous value to application support personnel, who will be able to inspect the state of production workspaces without logging onto the physical servers.
For Inquisitive Minds
LogicBlox 3.10.3
3.10.3 is a special, mid-month release with one major feature: RabbitMQ support in ServiceBlox.
RabbitMQ will become the preferred queueing mechanism for use with ServiceBlox services. RabbitMQ should address some of the consistency issues that we have observed in using Amazon SQS, and is expected to have much more predictable behavior.
Initial experiments show that for execution of large batch jobs, where queues with lots of requests are being concurrently accessed by different services, ServiceBlox configured with RabbitMQ yields significantly better performance than that configured with Amazon SQS.
The intent for this special release is to make RabbitMQ available to application development teams as soon as possible. We strongly recommend that applications upgrade to 3.10.3 as soon as possible to take advantage of RabbitMQ support.
LogicBlox 3.10.4
Measure Service
Measure Service provides a high level interface for developers to request metrics and associated attributes at different levels of aggregations, applying different aggregation methods as well as filtering criterias. Measure Service applies optimiztions across requests to maximize reuse of aggregations, and efficiently applies filters.
Measure Service (Developer Edition) has been available and in use by application development teams since LogicBlox 3.9.6. This official release includes a stablized request/response interface, many performance optimizations, robustness and usability enhancements, as well as new features. Measure Service is a read-only service, and does not yet handle updates to metrics at aggregated levels.
Measure Service is a ServiceBlox service, and thus capable of serving requests issued by any type of clients: fat, HTML5, or headless.
lb config
lb config is a build configuration tool for LogicBlox applications. It supports the specification of the structure and dependencies of a LogicBlox application, and the generation of a Makefile that includes targets for building and testing the application.
lb config is built upon the many versions of “buildlib” used and maintained by various independent projects. This official release consolidates these disparate versions, making lb config centrally available and centrally maintained.
We recommend that application using various versions of buildlib upgrade to lb config as soon as possible.
Browser Query Application
The query application allows a user to connect to an existing, potentially remote, LogicBlox workspace and issue queries against it. The application offers users improved usability over the command-line query tool (lb exec --print), and greater security for production applications.
- Usability: the application includes a browser-based editor that supports syntax highlighting, formatting, and tab-completion of predicate names. The result of a query is displayed in a scrollable grid. We expect this to be a major usability improvement over the current, command-line based queries.
- Security: it is recommended practice to limit access to production servers. Application support personnel had always required such access; one of the reasons is to be able to query the production workspaces to diagnose issues. The query application reduces, though does not completely eliminate, the need for application support personnel to log into physical production servers. Application support personnel can access the query application using any computer with a browser, and can query the production workspaces in an authenticated, authorized, and read-only manner.
