GigaSpaces XAP 6.6 has been released. XAP, the eXtreme Application Platform, is an application server designed from the ground up to scale out, with applications in caching, distributed processing, messaging, and remote invocations.

This release has many changes, focusing around three core areas: ease of use, alignment with Java EE technologies including an integrated servlet container, and remote service invocations.

Ease of use has been addressed with a revamp of the documentation structure and content, with a new Quick Start Guide and Maven 2 integration. Creating an application that leverages the scalability space-based architecture gives you is now as simple as issuing “mvn os:create” now.

Jetty has been embedded into the platform, so that users can deploy web application archives into a distributed cluster as easily as copying a .war file. There are mechanisms to help manage Jetty configuration in the .war, as well as various integration points into XAP, so you can use multiple approaches to integration of a web application, depending on your needs.

The Service Virtualization Framework (See whitepaper on SVF) has been released, as well. This framework provides a service proxy through Spring that gives you the capability to issue synchronous and asynchronous calls, as well as parallel calls, through XAP – which means you can easily create applications that execute Map/Reduce algorithms, for example, with little effort.

GigaSpaces XAP has always had a focus on scalability, but recent releases have focused on integration such that traditional Java EE applications can easily be migrated to a space-based architecture, so they gain scalability without redesign. Spring is the lever used to provide this, so developers can use technology they're familiar with to scale out to the limits of their available hardware, and even beyond, if they have access to external grids like EC2 (See Easily Scale Your Apps on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud ).

Developers have the choice of integrating with GigaSpaces XAP through standard APIs such as JMS , Jcache, JDBC, JavaSpaces, or other such technologies, or can migrate to an actual space-based architecture in three phases.

GigaSpaces XAP is a commercial product, and has various license options available:

• The premium license, ideal for unlimited cluster sizes
  
• The standard license, which is ideal for small to medium distributed applications
  
• A community edition for developers who would like to investigate space-based architecture and capabilities
  
• An academic license for educational and research facilities
  
• A startup license, an edition free for startups under $1m revenue/year
  

For more details and other options, contact sales at gigaspaces dot com.

Does anyone have any "real-world" experience with Gigaspaces. The previous version of Gigaspaces did not work for my organization even for the simplest of POJO implementations. If anyone can post even one viable Gigaspace use case with sample code I would like to know. I was taken in by the Gigaspace marketing engine and I want to spare anyone else the same pain.

I'm not sure about your issues. We've used GigaSpaces with great success. GigaSpaces is an implementation of tuple space architecture, which is very simple and tremendously scalable. GS also has nice grid-enablement features.

When you say something didn't work, why? Did you not have enough GS knowledge to implement a solution, or did you run into a limitation. Throwing out comments like something didn't work, when it does work for hundreds of small companies and very large financial and other institutions, is not really fair.

Ilya

Hi Joseph,

It would be interesting if you'd precise in more details what it is that did not work in your experience with simple POJOs.

We have been using GigaSpaces quite successfully in a real life and business critical situation (http://quartetfs.com/casestudies/activepivotnatixiscasestudy.pdf) in a heavy real time data centric application.

Jean Safar
CTO Quartet FS.

Does anyone have any "real-world" experience with Gigaspaces. The previous version of Gigaspaces did not work for my organization even for the simplest of POJO implementations. If anyone can post even one viable Gigaspace use case with sample code I would like to know. I was taken in by the Gigaspace marketing engine and I want to spare anyone else the same pain.

I'd love to know more detail about what you tried to do and how. I wrote an article on using JavaSpaces with GigaSpaces on TSS a long time ago; what I've found is that OpenSpaces, the Spring access layer for GigaSpaces, makes most work fairly trivial.

So: please, explain what you tried to do and what failed; we can try to see why and fix it.

If anyone can post even one viable Gigaspace use case with sample code I would like to know.

Joseph (if that's your real name) -- Your post is quite irresponsible, but I'll let the readers of this thread decide for themselves.

There are hundreds of GigaSpaces customers in production with mission-critical applications. In addition to what GigaSpaces customers already posted here, Here are some additional resources about GigaSpaces customer use cases:

GigaSpaces web site - Partial customer list, including Dow Jones, Virgin Mobile, Nortel, Sempra, ABB and others
GigaSpaces discussion forums
Case Studies
LinkedIn discussion on GigaSpaces usage

You can also Google "gigaspaces" for many more success stories in blogs and other places.

Geva Perry
http://gevaperry.typepad.com
GigaSpaces

Geva,
Relax, it wasn't me or anybody from our team :) We use real names...

Congrats on release. Frankly, as much as I like to criticize GigaSpaces - they are used a lot and in many places. We see them in many of our customers. Why those customers are seeing us - that's a different question :)

Best of luck,
Nikita Ivanov.
GridGain - Grid Computing Made Simple

Strange how this is "Joseph Sabin's" only post on TSS, obviously not a real user and obviously has never even touch GigaSpaces. I doubt he's from one of the other respectable vendors as even they don't stoop to this level, probably a bitter ex-JBoss employee that got out of bed on the wrong side.

I won't even credit this comment with a huge list of successful implementations in numerous countries, I can name at least a dozen of their clients that would gladly serve as references.

Congrats GigaSpaces, another great milesone.

-John-
Incept5

A shill is an associate of a person selling goods(GigaSpaces) or services or a political group, who pretends no association to the seller/group and assumes the air of an enthusiastic customer. The intention of the shill is, using crowd psychology, to encourage others unaware of the set-up(GigaSpaces) to purchase said goods or services or support the political group's ideological claims. Shills are often employed by confidence artists. In the UK the term plant is also used.

Shilling is illegal in many circumstances and in many jurisdictions because of the frequently fraudulent and damaging character of their actions. However, if a shill does not place uninformed parties at a risk of loss, but merely generates "buzz", the shill's actions may be legal. For example, a person planted in an audience to laugh and applaud when appropriate (see "claque"), or to participate in on-stage activities as a "random member of the audience", is a type of legal shill.

"Shill" can also be used pejoratively to describe a critic who appears either all-too-eager to heap glowing praise upon mediocre offerings(GS), or who acts as an apologist for glaring flaws(John Davies et al). In this sense, they would be an implicit "shill" for the industry at large, as their income is tied to its prosperity.

Regards,
Joseph

Joseph -

Not that I am an objective by-stander (Gigaspaces is a product that competes with Oracle Coherence, the product that I work on), but could you be more specific as to whether you are stating that there were misleading claims or whether you believe that there are fundamental product issues? i.e. Was it just a misleading salesperson or are you saying that there are deeper problems? And if the latter, would you be able to substantiate those so that we could avoid the aspersions that other vendors are posting in your name?

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Oracle Coherence: Data Grid for Java, C++ and .NET

Hi Cameron,

Are you by any chance admitting to using the alias John Davies as a 'Nom De Plume'? Just kidding. I would love to be more specific about "misleading claims", very "fundamental product issues", and "misleading salespersons" but of course any any licensing agreement I might have hypothetically signed or accepted when I pressed the "I Agree" button would obviously prevent me from specifying any specific details about basic functionality or coherence issues with the standard Java constructs. It would in fact be wholly irresponsible of me to make any comment whatsoever.

Cheers,
Joseph

P.S. By the way your tech talk on Caching was quite informative.

any any licensing agreement I might have hypothetically signed or accepted when I pressed the "I Agree" button would obviously prevent me from specifying any specific details about basic functionality or coherence issues with the standard Java constructs. It would in fact be wholly irresponsible of me to make any comment whatsoever.

Joseph (that's clearly not your real name) --

First, I just checked our database and no one with the name Joseph Sabin has ever clicked a "Submit" or "I agree" button on our web site.

Second, there is no secrecy or NDA as part of those agreements.

Third, as an officer of the company, I hereby publicly release you from any secrecy obligation you think you may be under in this matter. Please tell us all about any issue with "misleading claims", very "fundamental product issues", and "misleading salespersons".

Geva Perry
GigaSpaces

Joseph,
Firstly let me state for the record, public record, that I do not work for and have never worked for GigaSpaces. I've never been paid by GigaSpaces or had any freebies. I am a JavaSpaces fan and I know most of the people involved in JavaSpaces, that's my only relationship with them. In the past I've been involved with GemStone (who've spent far more money on me than GigaSpaces) and worked with Tangosol too, I've represented all three companies at some point and often talk about all three technologies at conferences.

I would and have defended each of these companies as they represent the industry I work in. I would not deny that not everyone has had a perfect experience your experience is rare, whatever it may be. I understand that there are legal reasons why you can't disclose the details which is unfortunate.

Whatever your disagreement is, please understand that I am no "Shill" as you call it, my experience has been totally positive as it has with Coherence and GemFire, I remain neutral in my preferences and my comments and talks on the subject reflect my neutrality.

-John-
Incept5

John,

I apologize for implying that you may have been a Shill for GigaSpaces. I assumed that your uninvited attack on JBoss was designed to ferret out the individual that might have leaked any severe product faults in the GigaSpaces project. It seemed to be the reaction of someone that has just been dressed down by a superior(GS) who then turns around and kicks the innocent dog(JBoss) sitting at his feet. I humbly and sincerely apologize for casting any aspersions in your direction and peacefully bow out from this thread.

Peace,
Joseph

John,
I apologize for implying that you may have been a Shill for GigaSpaces.
...
I humbly and sincerely apologize for casting any aspersions in your direction and peacefully bow out from this thread.

Peace,

Joseph

Wow, apology humbly accepted :-)

Please make yourself known to me when you can, it would be good to chat about it over a beer.

-John-

You're playing a misdirection card, Mr. Sabin, assuming that's your real name.

(Sorry; my name's "Joseph" too so when people address you with your first name, I keep thinking they're talking to me.)

Are you accusing John Davies of being a shill? If so...

First off, I don't think you can credibly do that and not be laughed at. Too many people have known John for far too long for him to not be exposed as a grifter, if that were the case.

Second, it has nothing to do with the matter at hand: namely, that you say that GigaSpaces XAP has no basis on which to claim its strengths.

You said:

The previous version of Gigaspaces did not work for my organization even for the simplest of POJO implementations. If anyone can post even one viable Gigaspace use case with sample code I would like to know. I was taken in by the Gigaspace marketing engine and I want to spare anyone else the same pain.

What's your organization? You've been formally released from any statements you've made up about not being able to speak freely; you've been asked directly; please, for the benefit of all, tell us what happened.

It's a simple, direct request. If GigaSpaces was really unable to work for the simplest of POJO applications, then it wasn't; your unwillingness to tell us anything more really casts your motives and integrity in doubt, given the rest of your behavior on the thread.

Please enlighten us.

Perhaps the energy that your spending on trying to ascertain my identity is better spent performing a thorough code review of GigaSpaces? Hmmm?

What do you have against sharing common sense advice. Test drive a car before you buy. If it can turn-right but not turn-left then perhaps it should not be purchased.

Perhaps the energy that your spending on trying to ascertain my identity is better spent performing a thorough code review of GigaSpaces? Hmmm?

Quite possible - but that assumes I've spent energy trying to figure out what your identity is.What do you have against sharing common sense advice. Test drive a car before you buy. If it can turn-right but not turn-left then perhaps it should not be purchased.Makes perfect sense to me! But you've said that - erm, using your analogy - XAP can't turn left but it can turn right. My experience is otherwise, and I believe that the others on the thread would agree with that.

Therefore, instead of saying "Boy, Mr. Sabin, you're SO WRONG" I've been trying to find out what you actually tried to do that was unsuccessful.

Bleah... I can't go back and edit the comment once it's posted, and the block quoting didn't go through. So here's the full response...

Perhaps the energy that your spending on trying to ascertain my identity is better spent performing a thorough code review of GigaSpaces? Hmmm?

Quite possible - but that assumes I've spent energy trying to figure out what your identity is.

What do you have against sharing common sense advice. Test drive a car before you buy. If it can turn-right but not turn-left then perhaps it should not be purchased.

Makes perfect sense to me! But you've said that - erm, using your analogy - XAP can't turn left but it can turn right. My experience is otherwise, and I believe that the others on the thread would agree with that.

Therefore, instead of saying "Boy, Mr. Sabin, you're SO WRONG, aren't you, hmmmm?" - something I think you've been guilty of, honestly - I've been trying to find out what you actually tried to do that was unsuccessful.

Does anyone have any "real-world" experience with Gigaspaces. The previous version of Gigaspaces did not work for my organization even for the simplest of POJO implementations. If anyone can post even one viable Gigaspace use case with sample code I would like to know. I was taken in by the Gigaspace marketing engine and I want to spare anyone else the same pain.

Joseph,

like others who have responded to this thread I am tempted to simply ignore your post as a malicious prank. But for the record we at PSJ Solutions, a partner of GigaSpaces for 3 years now, have deployed GigaSpaces software successfully on many client projects, across multiple GigaSpaces versions.

If you want to discuss specific issues that you have had with the software in the past then people could comment on those. No software product of the complexity and capability of GigaSpaces XAP is totally bug free, however when I have found issues with GigaSpaces software in the past they have always been responsive to identifying and fixing any issues.

Regards,

John

.. like others who have responded to this thread I am tempted to simply ignore your post as a malicious prank.

I think it would be a grave mistake to assume that this is a malicious prank. When a customer (or potential customer) takes the time to provide feedback, even negative feedback, it's worth listening. Criticism stings, but there's usually something valuable to learn from it.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Oracle Coherence: Data Grid for Java, .NET and C++

Does this version improves on Mule integration? I know mule 1.4 was shipped with GS 6.5. Is GS now integrated with mule 2.0?

Does this version improves on Mule integration? I know mule 1.4 was shipped with GS 6.5. Is GS now integrated with mule 2.0?

Well, Mule integration is a core facet of our Maven archetypes, so ...

mvn os:create -Dtemplate=mule creates an archetype with a dependency on Mule 2.0.1. I don't know what you mean by "improving" on Mule integration, but I think the integration between the two is very strong.

For more details, check the documentation for XAP 6.6, Mule ESB.

Also check out this blog post: Mule 2.0 + GigaSpaces 6.5 = Pure S*x.

Funny, but cool.

Sorry for jumping a bit late here, I just got back from a long trip in London and Europe where we launched our new release and new pricing model during our annual user event in London.

I noticed that the new pricing model was missing in this discussion. Those who didn't notice it could see the details here

Below is a short summary of the main updates:

1. Our product is now available under yearly subscription model.

2. We launched a new package (XAP Standard edition) that is sold at very low price of $9,500k per package where the package include two servers, 4 GigaSpaces nodes and up to 50 clients or remote servers.

Other then that the event was great. The room was packed. There were lots of interesting customer case studies from both Telco, Finance and Energy industries. The first day was followed by two days of deep technical overview of the new features in 6.6 where we discussed the different patterns for turning existing JEE application to scale-out model.

During the event itself we demonstrated how easy it is to deploy a complete fault-tolerant and scalable web2.0 application using the new features of our 6.6 release in matters of minutes. We also showed how the system recovers from real failure when we literally crashed one of the machines in front of the entire crowed (Note that it was a real machine not a process running on a desktop). The system was able to recover seamlessly in few seconds and the web client was hardly affected of that failure. We also showed how you can dynamically scale your system by adding more web containers (Jetty in this specific case) on demand and how the apache load-balancer got updated automatically without a need for any manual configuration or downtime. To make things even more interesting we used EC2 and our new upcoming cloud tools for running this demo.

For those interested you can view some of the presentations and case studies from that event here .

Those interested in the demo itself were planning to make it publicly available on our site soon. You can also feel free to drop me an email and i'll send you an update as soon as the demo is ready.

Enjoy
Nati S.
GigaSpaces
natishalom.typepad.com