$Id$

                          Commons Modeler Package
                                Version 1.1
                               Release Notes


INTRODUCTION:
============

This document contains the release notes for this version of the Commons
Modeler package, and highlights changes since the previous version.


NEW FEATURES:
============

* Support for components that are not explicitely declared. Introspection and common
patterns are used to expose all attributes and simple methods with known type.

* New parser using DOM. That reduces the dependencies, is a bit faster and allows more
flexibility in processing the input,
 
* Support serialization of the model, and loading the .ser format. Serialization is 
implemented using an ant task, and all objects in the model are serializable. Reading the
.ser form is much faster than processing the XML.

* A set of ant tasks that use modeler to load metadata and operate on mbeans. The tasks
can be used with any JMX component, not only with modeler. An example use is tomcat5.

* Support for loading extended mlet files, with a syntax consistent with the ant tasks
and JBoss ( and other ). 

* Helper to perform lifecycle operations on sets of mbeans.

* A small startup program ( org.apache.commons.modeler.Main ) capable of loading an mlet
file and performing init/start on all components. This can help in testing and jumpstarting
small applications.

* Cleaner APIs, with deprecation of static methods.

* New methods to access the Registry, with support for container application separation.

* (Experimental) support for remote mbeans, allowing management of non-local mbeans. 

* (Experimental) support for persistence for mbeans loaded from the mbeans file. Modification of attributes will be saved, however adding new mbeans is not yet implemented.

* The distribution package includes commons-modeler-src.jar which can be used in IDEs to 
quickly see the sources when debugging and to do small builds.

BUG REPORTS ADDRESSED:
=====================

All bugs reported against modeler have been fixed.

* 17349 Attribute change notifications not beeing sent

In addition, this release fixes problems reported against jakarta-tomcat:

* Support for old connector and other components that are not declared in mbeans-descriptors.xml
* Use of thread class loader when creating objects or the parameter signature in invoke, to deal with
 the case modeler is installed in a parent loader

NOTES:
======

* The unit tests will fail with MX4J-1.1.1+ - there are 2 oposite tests for
severity, it can never work. A patch was submited to mx4j.