About build 18

I could have called this release "The parts release" or the "AKC release". "The parts release" because this build contains the consolidation of the basic plumbing for incorporating parts into Aspire. This release also adds around 7 parts to the distribution. "The AKC Release" because the major story of this release is actually an application that is build on Aspire build 18 called "Aspire Knowledge Central".

AKC is a content management system with dual purposes. Geneal public can manage folders worth of information for their own or public reference on the AKC site. AKC can also be used to effectively manage dynamic web pages on third party web sites without the inconvenience of ftps and manually creating links to those ftped documents.

AKC can be accessed http://www.activeintellect.com/aspire

Where is the build available

The build is available at the following link http://www.activeintellect.com/aspire/aspire_distributions

The name of zip file is "aspire_jsdk21_r2_b18.1_src.zip

Changes to the aspire jar file

Starting with this release the jar will have both the source and the class files. This will ensure that the source and binaries are always in sync. As a result the jar file is now about 900K. The source directory contains the source by itself as well.

Recommended parts for this release

These are the parts that are used most often when developing web pages. This quick compatibility list will enable developers to see what the recommended parts for this release are.

A new platform for online documentation is released: AKC

The lion's share of aspire documentation will be maintained in AKC. You can get to akc via http://www.activeintellect.com/akc. Once you are at AKC, visit public library and look for a user called Aspire/J2EE.

Additions/Deletions to the master aspire.properties

request.Aspire.BooleanExpressionEvaluator.className=com.ai.htmlgen.SimpleBEEvaluator1
request.aspire.expressionevaluator.classname=com.ai.htmlgen.DefaultExpressionEvaluator

The apptemplate is now enabled for tomcat4 out of the box

The web.xml that is in the "web-inf" directory is for tomcat 4. The web.xml file for the tomcat 3 is kept in the back up directory.

AITransform7 introduced

AITransform7 will allow dynamic templates to paint the hierarchical data sets. The dynamic aspire template can reside in a database and you can swap them on the fly. This will allow multiple styles for a given web page. This is used for instance in AKC to cross link content on third party web sites.

IF processing updated

Some bugs have been fixed. An updated document is in the how to folder of AKC.

Ability to include headers and footers introduced

Aspire tags now support for headers and footers to be included on html pages. This facility can be used from JSP pages as well. See the howto folder in AKC for using the facility.

There is an update to the way mail is sent

There is an update to the emails are sent out. See the howto in AKC for this.

A list of parts in this release

How do I know what each part does?

Each part will be documented separately in AKC. The best way to know what these parts do is to access the source directory and see the comments and the source code. These parts tend to be very small (10 to 15 lines) and easy to understand.

How do I know what parts exist in Aspire?

Just check the package called "com.ai.parts.*"

Other changes

The following are some other changes that are in build 18. Each of these will be separately document in AKC.

Apptemplate releases notes

I have noticed a few issues with the apptemplate at the time of release. The issues are

  1. Need to find a better way to display properties files
  2. Some of the links seem to be relative and hence broken