JBoss App Server 5.1.0 CR1 – 5.1 is a pretty big milestone – it includes the new Jopr powered embedded console  – something you’ll like but also something we really need some early feedback on. Also a preview of Web Beans / JSR-299. [release notes, downloads]

Data Integration goes Open Source – I missed the launch of the Teiid Project you can find out more on the project page.

This has been brewing for a while and Manik has finally announced Infinispan – I predict that this is going to  be a pretty disruptive technology. [home page, quick guide]

JBoss Tattletale is a new tool that will analyze your code and produce detailed dependency reports – for example highlighting duplicate jars / classes, missing jars / classes, etc. [downloads, project]

The latest release of Jopr (2.2) is out – Jopr is the upstream project for JBoss Operations Network (see below). There are a shedload of UI enhancements, support for JBoss EWS and Performance improvements among other things.

Also a nice article on JBoss Cloud over on DZone.

On the JBoss Enterprise side of the house :

JBoss Operations Network 2.2 is out and JON receives a pretty decent makeover (see Greg’s post on some of the major enhancements) – product page is here.

One of the new capabilities of JON 2.2 is support for JBoss Enterprise Web Server (EWS) which was also released a few weeks ago – more on that in a future post.

If you’re currently stuck with Oracle Weblogic or IBM Websphere and need help getting off – here’s an opportunity you can’t ignore.

Sorry for the length of this post – I need to do this more frequently. The next couple of months are going to be even more hectic and you can follow the @JBossNews via Twitter. Finally, something from the happy news files – we’re still hiring.

Heiko Rupp has published a guide to writing plugins for JOPR / JON.

It looks like SpringSource had their annual developer event this week; Spring are well respected for their technology – but their marketing team seem to be stuck in 2002 – Andrew Rubinger has a perspective.

Gavin King has an update on the progress of the WebBeans spec. (aka JSR-299) public review – it’s clear that WebBeans will really change the way Java EE is perceived.

Many of the components that comprise JBoss AS 5 and the future EAP 5.0 are starting to coalesce. I’ll write a fuller post over the weekend but here are some of the highlights :

• JBoss Microcontainer 2.0.0 is out
• Hibernate Search 3.1 is out
• JBoss Cache 3.0.1 is out
• JBoss Web 2.1.1 is out
• RestEasy 1.0 beta 9 is out

Bob McWhirter has been playing with JBoss and Rails integration; clearly he’s made a lot of progress – to the extent where he can start to eat his own dog food. His new work related blog (OddThesis) is running in a hosted environment on Rails on JBoss – great stuff.

I’ve already mentioned Jopr a couple of times but this wink demo caught my eye and I’m sure it will be a pretty important feature for the millions of Hibernate users out there – Monitoring Hibernate from Jopr. For what it’s worth – the name Jopr still isn’t working for me – my fingers want to type Jorp.

Max announced that JBoss Developer Studio (JBDS) 2.0 beta is available for free – you just have to sign up for an evaluation. Go here for more info. or here to register for the free eval.

Gavin King has an essay on how he thinks Web Beans needs to integrate with Java EE 6; it’s also a good explanation of what Web Beans is (and isn’t) and why it’s essential to EE 6.

Microsoft aren’t known for their commitment to openness, interoperability and providing customer choice; but the announcement that they’re joining the AMQP working group maybe demonstrates that a leapoard can change its spots. More importantly and practically – there is hope for simple and efficient interoperability with the world of Microsoft – assuming thet actually adopt AMQP in their platform.

The really big news last week was that JBoss ON (Operation Network) has finally been open sourced as the Jopr project (I’m trying to like the name – honest). JBoss ON is a sophisticated management platform for the JBoss Middleware stack and it’s based on Project RHQ (A collaboration between Red Hat and Hyperic).

There’s a subproject of Jopr called Embedded Jopr which is the basis of the new console for JBoss App Server – this is a significant improvement over the current Web Console and JMX Console and should be a welcome addition to users who are familiar with IBM WAS and Oracle WLS. This first version only suport JBoss AS 4.2 (ie. EAP 4.3) but work is underway to support AS 5.0.

I’d recommend downloading and having a quick play – it takes just a few minutes to get up and running (even for me).  If you don’t have the time there are some screenshots and a short (15 min) video here. There’s also more detail on Ian Springers blog.