Our tests reports page has been changed and is now available at the new address. You can still access test reports for old version at the old tests reports address.

The reason for this change is that we run much more tests now than we used to do before and the page needed some redesign to make it easier to access all reports. We not only increase number of individual test cases but also we run increase number of test scenarios.

We have plans for the future to add more operating systems, more databases and more complex scenarios to the test suite to make sure we release new versions with as little bugs as possible.

If you have any suggestions to the test report page or any ideas for test scenarios use cases I would be happy to hear them.

No matter how many automatic tests you run only real users can check the software in real use. Well I am not saying automatic tests are for nothing... Just, they can not be a real user replacement.

This is just a bug fix, minor Tigase server release. Everybody who is affected by any of mentioned below problems is encouraged to update.

We are not moving project tracker or Tigase server development to launchpad.net however.

The purpose of the project created over there is to host prebuilt Ubuntu packages in a PPA (personal package archive).

A few weeks ago I announced that Gentoo ebuilds are available. I have also received information about RPM packages being maintained by someone. That would be the third packaging system for the Tigase server I know of. This makes live easier for all those who want to install Tigase server on different Linux distributions.

While I can not maintain packages for all systems myself I am always happy to help and assist those who decide to take this responsibility. If anybody is interested in helping with those please contact me. The Gentoo Linux ebuilds will be hosted in the main Tigase server SVN repository. Ubuntu packages on launchpad.net, I am not sure where RPM packages will be available but there is always a lot of space in our SVN.

The last release of the Tigase server included 2 our components: PubSub and MUC.

Unfortunately both components were not working with Apache Derby database. Due to a small bug. On top of that there was name change for the main class of the MUC component in the mean time I was not aware of. This causes configuration to be incorrectly generated by the installer.

We are going to release a big fix version today or at latest tomorrow for the Tigase server. In mean time for all those keen to get both components working ASAP I am giving both files to download below this article. If you want to install them, remove tigase-pubsub.jar and tigase-muc.jar from your libs/ directory and put there files downloaded from here.

For the MUC component you have to also edit init.properties file and replace MUCService with MUCComponent. Don't forget to remove the existing XML config file after before restarting the server if you edited the init.properties.

We are sorry for all the inconvenience that could caused.

I am happy to announce that the: Tigase XMPP (Jabber) Server 4.0.0, SVN revision: 1212 is now available for download.

The jar file contains the cross-platform installer and can be run on any Java capable system. It allows you to install, configure and prepare the database for the Tigase server. For MS Windows users convenience exe file is also available for download. This is basically the same JAR file wrapped inside the windows executable format. For those who don't like installers or can't use them on terminal only systems tar.gz file and zip file are available as well.

Taking the opportunity I would like to thank you all for the support you provided to the Tigase project over the time. Many people helped me in many ways, from writing patches, sending me suggestions, discussing new, better ways for doing things to simply spreading the good word.

The release was delayed several times as it is really hard to resist users' request to add "just one more change, improvement, fix, feature....".

And indeed the number of changes, new features, improvements and fixes fully justify long time waiting from previous release. There are additions specific to large installations and companies needing a scalable server supporting hundreds of thousands or millions user accounts can appreciate those changes. There are also changes and improvements specifically added for small installations and less advanced users. Please have a look at the brief list below for the major changes and additions:

1. Full Clustering support with HA and LB.
2. Cross-platform Installer with the server configuration and database setup functionality.
3. Supported databases for user data: MySQL, PostgreSQL and Derby, for the user authentication - any JDBC database.
4. New MUC and Pubsub components.
5. New user Roster Storage.
6. New Database Schema for users data.
7. Improved integration with Yate Server.
8. New Authentication Connectors for easier integration with third party systems.
9. Anonymous user accounts and anonymous authentication added.
10. Rewritten s2s connection manager.
11. Many new automatic tests added to improve quality of the code.
12. Tens or maybe hundreds of small changes, fixes and improvements...

Please note.

I have put a lot of effort to ensure the server works well. Many automatic tests have been added to check the server behavior in different scenarios. The server code seems to be stable and performs very well.

The installer however is a completely new thing. Even though I have spent a lot of time testing it on different platforms with different databases it might behave in unexpected way. Therefore I strongly advice to caution especially when upgrading the server from the previous version. Backup all old server files and also backup existing database. The installer should be able to upgrade the database schema without any data loss.

Any comments or thought are as always very welcomed....

Below is the detailed description for the list above:

Tigase server offers you quite a few authentication connectors which allow you to connect to almost any SQL database for user authentication data and share user accounts between the XMPP server and any different system. This feature makes it possible to integrate the Tigase server with other systems without any development effort and without any coding.

This article presents configuration options available to the administrator and describe how to set the Tigase server up to use user accounts data from a different database.

The whole Tigase server development is oriented around automatic tests we run using Tigase Test Suite. Our aim is to not release new stuff before it is tested using automated tests. Only this way we can be sure all the server features work the same way for every release. The drawback is that we first need to create tests, then we can run them to test the server. It is a bit like double development effort.

The suite evolves together with the server. At the beginning I was running only functional tests executing test cases sequentially. Then I added performance tests which required running many tests concurrently on a separate connections and stability tests which in turn required lower resources consumption and..... stability. Every new addition required slightly new features set.

A few months back when I was running load tests that was another challenge to run the test suite from multiple machines and again I had to lower resources consumption to be able to open more than 60k user connections from each test suite instance.

We extensively use Bosh in a few Tigase installations so to provide decent support for web clients I have added Bosh tests which required a different way to maintain connections to the server because the Bosh client can send each request on a separate TCP/IP connection.

Now the clustering in Tigase. We have working clustering mode in the server for a few months already but we decided not to release a new version before it is well tested using automatic tests. New challenge - open multiple connections from the test suite and each connection must end up on a different cluster node.

Today I am happy to announce all the cluster tests have passed. This is a big step for us in our preparation for publishing Tigase 4.0. Now we can focus on those countless tiny bits required to prepare binary packages for the new version.

Below is a copy of the clustering tests report, for those who are interested in more details.

Thanks to mazzachre user we have now Gentoo Linux ebuilds for the Tigase server. The euilds are not yet available in the Gentoo main portage tree. Instead they are in the Gentoo Sunrise overaly.

You can browse for the ebuilds in the source repository looking for the im/tigase-server entry. The ebuilds install the Tigase server from sources.

Please let us know if you spot anything unusual or incorrect with them. And also, if you have any suggestions or notices don't hesitate to contact us.

Initially the Tigase project was about the XMPP/Jabber server development. After a while the project received a support from other developers more interested in client side development. So now we host quite a few projects related to the IM and XMPP in particular.

The main focus is put to the server development and to the web clients development. By web client I mean not just the Minichat application used by many visitors of our website but also our AJAX libraries for XMPP/Bosh communication which are used in a few bespoke projects and also our child project - Tigase Messenger.

We have been working on the Tigase Messenger for some time already and it is still not yet finished product but we think it can be demonstrated to the public. Please go to the messenger.tigase.org page, login, play with it and let us know what you think.

For number of reasons the database schema had to be changed for Tigase server version 4.0. The most important are:

• Compliance with the XMPP RFC which says that each part of JID may have up to 1023 characters. We store in the database user JIDs without resource name thus the maximum possible size of the user id is 2047. There aren't really JIDs that long yet but we experienced quite long JIDs in a few installations already so we decided to prepare Tigase to accept any JID allowed by RFC.
• Performance and flexibility - the Tigase server now accesses database using stored procedures. This allows for any database storage format and it doesn't really matter for the Tigase server what is the database schema how data is organized inside. What it needs is just bunch of stored procedures to access the data. This allows for much more flexibility in storing user data as well as much easier integration with third-party systems and also organize data in more efficient way.

Therefore when you run the Tigase server now it may (depending on what exact SVN revision you use) refuse to start if it detects that the database schema is not updated. If it happens just follow steps below to update the database schema and start the server again. Updating of the database schema is very easy and almost fully automated process. Just follow the steps below and you should be able to run new version of the Tigase server in a few minutes or even seconds depending on your database size. It takes around 7 minutes to update database with 200k user accounts on an average machine. Note. Do not update the database schema before the Tigase server tells you to do so. And do a database backup before starting the schema update.

A new version of the Minichat client has just been released. This is a new version and actually the first version publicly announced.

It is still considered beta but seems quite stable and the code works well under all major browsers.

The new stuff in this release are improved stability, remembering chat session between page reloads and support for a nick name for anonymous user.

If you want to see the Minichat in action please try the version installed on the Tigase.org website.

The dependency for Tigase Utils Package has changed. This is important for everybody who builds the Tigase server manually from sources using Ant tool. The Maven handles all the dependencies automatically and scripts have been updated.

Please keep reading for more details how to compile the server from sources in current SVN repositories.

We have just launched the Tigase XMPP testing zone. This is the Tigase server clustered installation with 2 nodes. The installation is integrated with the Drupal CMS.

At the moment it offers c2s, s2s and Bosh protocols. We are going to enable more services for testing soon: MUC, PubSub, MSN transport and possibly more.

Please feel free to create an account on the Drupal website and use it for testing of your software.

Note. The installation is available through rather average broadband connection and it is not suitable for any kind of load or high traffic tests.

As usually all comments and suggestions are very welcomed. If you have ideas to improve the installation and make it easier for your tests please let me know.

A few days ago I have silently uploaded tigase-livecd-4.0.0.iso file into our download section. Even there was no announcement the download counter shows now 145. I wonder if there was such a big number if people knew what they are downloading....

Anyway. This ISO file is the first release of the Tigase LiveCD version. It is a complete environment runnable from the CD with pre-configured Tigase server, Drupal CMS (Blog and Forums) and Dovecot - IMAP4 server integrated together. The Drupal CMS runs with the Minichat on the example website. The live CD is based on the Gentoo Linux.

In this particular case integration means all services (Tigase, Drupal, Email) use user accounts from a single database. The user account management is done via Drupal website.

You can also post short news on the website directly from your XMPP client, you will also receive notifications about comments and posts on the website to your XMPP client.

The live CD contains also 2 nice XMPP clients: Psi and Coccinella in the most recent versions. Hm, Psi has just increased version number so it is not the most recent.

Everything installed and pre-configured, starting up automatically when the system boots from the CD.

Tigase.org website, e-mail, SVN, XMPP and all other services have been successfully migrated to a new server at the external service provider.

Let me know if you find any problems with the website or any other services.

I hope this solves for good problems with availability and accessibility to the Tigase.org services.