path: root/CIAO/NEWS

PLANNED CHANGES BEFORE NEXT RELEASE
===================================

This is advanced notification that the CIAO-0.6.7 release of CIAO will be
the last release before a major refactoring is introduced into CIAO/DAnCE  
that will remove several features, with no planned replacement in  
their current form, such as:

.  ReDaC
.  Shared Components

Some features are being temporarily removed but with planned  
replacement in the near term:

.  RTEC Integration
.  Static Deployment
.  TargetManager
.  RepositoryManager
.  Swapping container

PLANNED MAJOR CHANGES "SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE" (i.e., exact beta not known)
===========================================================================

. Expand support for complex types in deployment XML.

. Enable use of CDR encoded deployment plans.

. Enhance Execution Manager and Domain Application Manager to make calls
  on the Target Manager to get resource information.

. Enhance Node Manager to integrate resource monitoring capacity within
  individual Nodes.

. Add assembly-wide component activation/deactivation feature.

    - This should allow system deployers to specify the dependencies
      among component instances within the assembly.

    - Add support in DAnCE so DAnCE could enforce the order in which
      components are to be activated within the assembly.

. Add AMI support in DAnCE toolchain to when the DomainApplicationManager
  contacts node-level managers to deploy components, all the node-level
  managers could performe the deployment concurrently.

. Integrate RT-CORBA 1.2 dynamic scheduling feature into CIAO, which
  will allow the application developers to use dynamica scheduling
  through meta-programming model.

. Enhance DAnCE to support OpenCCM components.

. Update DAnCE IDL data structures and interfaces to comply with the
  06-04-01 version of the DnC specification, and perform
  interoperability testing with other DnC implementations.  Note this
  work may change the functionality and semantics of some proprietary
  DAnCE extensions, notably ReDaC, Shared Compoents, and RTEC
  integration, and may even be absent until such a time as they
  can be implemented in such a way as to not break copliance with the DnC
  specification.

. Implement Resource Allocation and Control Engine (RACE), which is a
  component middleware framework built atop of CIAO/DAnCE that integrates
  multiple resource allocation/control algorithms for (re)deploying and
  (re)configuring component applications. RACE enables (1) system
  developers to configure algorithms depending on the characteristics of
  applications and operating environment, and (2) swapping in and swapping
  out multiple algorithms to make different resource allocation and control
  decisions, without handcrafting the mechanisms needed to (1) configure
  the algorithms and (2) deploy the decisions made by the algorithms.

. Implement support for more complex type initialization with XML.

. Decouple dependencies to NodeApplication from other DAnCE tools.
  These dependencies were added to support static configurator.  We
  need to have these tools in both conventional version and static
  configuration version.

. Support tool-specific debug levels and added CIAO_DEBUG macros to
  simplify adding debug printouts based on various tool-specific debug
  levels.

. Add support for querying for interface types to the
  RepositoryManager.

. Implement a planner to query the TargetManager and RepositoryManager
  and generate deployment plans on the fly.

. Start update of IDL/semantics to conform to 06-04-01 specification.
  This will immediately break most CIAO specific extensions, such as shared
  components and ReDaC.

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.6.6 and CIAO-0.6.7
======================================================

. Added the "CIAO" OCI Development Guide Examples under the directory
  /DevGuideExamples.  NOTE this is an ongoing port of the original
  version x.5.x examples and some are not yet 100% compatiable with the
  current version of CIAO.

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.6.5 and CIAO-0.6.6
======================================================

. None

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.6.4 and CIAO-0.6.5
======================================================

. None

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.6.3 and CIAO-0.6.4
======================================================

. None

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.6.2 and CIAO-0.6.3
======================================================

. None

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.6.1 and CIAO-0.6.2
======================================================

. Removed 24 unnecessary builds from the CIAO_TAO_DAnCE.mwc
  MPC workspace file

. Changes to the generate_component_mpc.pl Perl scrip, CIDL compiler
  generation of empty executor implementation classes, and existing
  tests and examples to make servant dependency on executor the
  default, instead of vice versa as previously

. Made the processing of IDL and CIDL files into separate build steps
  for tests, examples, and for DAnCE's TargetManager

. Added additional tests for CIAOEvents Integration, which executes
  several scenarios for components using Real-time EventChannels
  as event mechanism.

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.6 and CIAO-0.6.1
====================================================

. Fixed broken static deployment support

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.5.10 and CIAO-0.6.0
=======================================================

. Added support for building CIAO statically with Microsoft Visual C++

. Fixes to idl3_to_idl2 conversion tool, which
  - handle the mapping of IDL identifiers that are
    escaped (due to a clash with an IDL keyword) or
    that clash with a C++ keyword
  - handle the mapping of #includes of IDL files
    that aren't themselves processed by the tool

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.5.9 and CIAO-0.5.10
=======================================================

. Extended IDL3_to_IDL2

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.5.8 and CIAO-0.5.9
======================================================

. Added a new deployment algorithm to DAnCE for optimization of large
  scale deployment. In this algorithm, the number of threads spawned is
  based on the deployment plan, i.e, by parsing the deployment plan
  information, DAnCE decides how many threads to spawn (one thread per
  node). This algorithm knows how to "initialize" each thread since
  each thread will have different execution context, i.e., which
  components to deploy to which node, component configuration, etc.

. Added a NA component server callback wait strategy in NAM, which uses
  conditional variable to signal the NA call back so it can work with
  multi-threaded configuration, such as thread-per-connection mode. The
  original implementation uses the main thread to run the ORB event
  loop, which will not work for multi-threaded environment.

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.5.7 and CIAO-0.5.8
======================================================

. Improved the option handling of the Execution_Manager and plan_launcher.

. Added a utility library to manipulate the deployment plan, such as
  adding/removing instances, adding/removing connections, and pretty print.

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.5.6 and CIAO-0.5.7
======================================================

. Removed ACE_THROW_RETURN

. Remove exception specifications from ORB mediated operations (C++
  mapping requirement)

. All DAnCE core idl files are moved to DAnCE/Deployment

. QoS4CCM IDL files are moved to ciao/extension

. RACE has been fully removed from the distribution, a new version
  is work in progress and will be added again to the distribution
  when it is ready

. MPC base projects that contained _dnc_ have been renamed to not
  include that string.

. DAnCE executables are now installed into $CIAO_ROOT/bin

. Added a new TAO policy for specifying the DiffServ code points
 (DSCP) to be added to request and reply IP packets of an
 application. The policy can be added at the following levels: OBJECT,
 THREAD, and ORB.

. Extended the CIAOServerResources schema to allow the specification
  of request and reply DSCPs to be added to the IP packets of an
  application. Extended CIAO NodeApplication libraries, to read the
  CIAOServerResources specification, to create DiffServ policies on the
  objects, to allow automatic addition of DSCPs on the CCM port
  objects.

. Updated the Target Manager interface to comply with the latest OMG
  specification. This includes the addition of a new entity,
  ResourceCommitmentManager for the management of committed resources.

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.5.5 and CIAO-0.5.6
======================================================
. Updated the Target Manager interface to comply with the latest OMG
  specification. This includes the addition of a new entity,
  ResourceCommitmentManager for the management of committed resources.

. Removed all exception environment macros except ACE_THROW_RETURN
  and ACE_THROW_SPEC

. All CIAO libraries built on UNIX systems will now have the correct library
  version numbers.  Previously they had the same version numbers as TAO
  libraries.

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.5.4 and CIAO-0.5.5
======================================================

. Fixed problems and added command line options to the
  generate_component_mpc.pl Perl script. Also added an HTML
  documentation file for this script.

. All IDL has been refactored to get a smaller footprint

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.5.3 and CIAO-0.5.4
======================================================

. Adding support to manage multiple interconnected assemblies, which will
  involve the work through ExternalReferenceEndPoint idea.

. Seamless integration of swapping into the main line programming model,
  so that DAnCE can actually kickstart swapping.

. Integrated real-time event service into CIAO and DAnCE.

. Improved syntax error checking and reporting in the CIDL compiler.

. Add Null Component to be able to measure footprint in detail

. Added the naming service & the implementation of createPackage function
  to RepoMan.

. Added the code to save the state of the RepoMan at exit and load the
  state of it at start.

. Reimplemented the findNamesByType () and getAllTypes () operations of
  RepoMan, which use the newly generated    ACE_Hash_MultiMap_Manager class
  and its corresponding classes.

. Added Plan_Generator project. This project is used to retrieve information
  from Repoman and generate/modify DeploymentPlans based on different demands.

. A succesfull static deployment of the Hello example has been tested on
  VxWorks 6.3

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.5.2 and CIAO-0.5.3
======================================================

. Improve documentation for CoSMiC Quoter tutorial to reflect the latest update

. Reimplemented the findNamesByType () and getAllTypes () operations
  of Repository Manager, which use the newly generated
  ACE_Hash_MultiMap_Manager class and its corresponding classes.

. Added the replace argument in installPackage () and createPackage ()
  functions to Repoman and extend the functionalities of these two
  functions based on the latest D&C spec.

. Added the Plan_Generator project. This project is used to retrieve
  information from Repoman and generate/modify DeploymentPlans based
  on different demands. Removed the planner project.

. Added C++ keyword mangling to the CIDL compiler (bug#2427).

. Fixed the CIDL compiler source code to build with Intel C++ (bug#2387).

. Reimplemented the CIDL compiler command line handling to make use
  of '--' to separate options from arguments unnecessary (bug#2426).

. Added file and line number to the semantic errors printed by the CIDL
  compiler.

. Fixed a number of bugs in the CIDL compiler error handling and recovery
  mechanisms.

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.5.1 and CIAO-0.5.2
======================================================

. Changed CIDL compiler code generation for facet servant classes
  to enable reuse if the same interface is used as a facet more
  than once in a single translation unit.

. Fixed code that fetches component DLL entry points to be portable
  across all supported compilers.

. Fixed bugs in the recent implementation of component servant methods
  get_all_receptacles() and get_all_publishers().

. Simplified template code in component servant and home servant
  base classes.

. Added the naming service & the implementation of createPackage function
  to RepoMan.

. Added the code to save the state of the RepoMan at exit and load the
  state of it at start.

. A new perl library has been added to the bin directory. PerlCIAO is
  a wrapper around PerlACE with extensions to aid in scripting CIAO
  tests.

. DAnCE/Planner - a planner which contacts the RepositoryManager, gets a
  PackageConfiguration by name, and builds a DeploymentPlan on
  the fly. Note that the node information is currently not populated.

. Added two RACE utilities, the LocationUpdater and PlanGenerator.
  The LocationUpdater modifies the location field of artifacts in
  flattened plans to correspond to HTTP URLs pointing at the
  RepositoryManager.  The PlanGenerator is the Planner utility
  modified to work with RACE. Note that most RACE functionality is
  still in development and is not included with this release.

. Added support for parsing packaging descriptors to the
  Config_Handlers, and improved support for IDL->XML serialization.

. Added a Planner utility which, when given the name of a package,
  will contact the RepositoryManager and construct a flattened
  deployment plan on the fly.  Note this utility currently does not
  populate node assignments.

. Several important bugfixes for ReDaC and shared components.

. Changed Components.idl to include CCM_Component.idl instead of
  CCM_Container.idl. This removes a dependancy on the container
  library for stub projects.

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.5.0 and CIAO-0.5.1
======================================================

. Added the support of integrating real-time event service into the
  CIAO core framework. Enhanced DAnCE to support declaratively configure
  and deploy real-time event channels to mediate event communication
  among components.

. Fixed a bug in detecting External connection and Internal
  connections when components are shared across different
  deployment plans. Earlier when removing connections attached
  to an external/shared component, not *all* connections
  associated with this components are purged from the
  to-be-removed connections list.

. Fixed a bug when redeploying components using the same set
  of NodeManagers, the destroy of applications results not
  all internal components and external/shared components
  are unbinded from the cached map, which sometimes causes
  duplicate instance exception thrown.

. Fixed bug in detecting name clashes between names of ports of the same
  category (facet, event sink, etc.) in the same component.

. Added support for attribute exceptions in code generated for executor
  implementation classes.

. Implemented spec-defined component methods get_all_receptacles(),
  get_all_publishers(), and disconnect_consumer().

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.4.10 and CIAO-0.5.0
=======================================================

. Changed MPC configuration of Config_Handlers to turn off hidden
  visibility if applicable when compiling Config_Handlers or projects
  that use Config_Handlers on linux.This change was to work around symbol
  visibility inconsistencies in GNU standard C++ library when using g++
  4.x's symbol visibility features.

. Enhanced ReDaC service to enforce the correct
  assembly redeployment and reconfiguration order.

. Some bug fixes in ReDaC about removing components.

. Fixed NodeApplication to unbind a component with naming service
  when removing it from the container.

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.4.9 and CIAO-0.4.10
=======================================================

. Enhanced DAnCE ReDaC service to enforce the correct
  assembly redeployment and reconfiguration order.

  The order that ReDaC currently enforces:

  (1) Install new components,
  (2) Set up new connections,
  (3) Activate new components,
  (4) Passivate old components,
  (5) Remove old connections
  (6) Remove old components.

. Enhanced DAnCE to create hierarchical naming context
  path through XML descriptors.

. Enhanced DAnCE to maintain a component state map in
  the component server to manage component life cycle.

. Some bug fixes in DAnCE.

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.4.8 and CIAO-0.4.9
======================================================
. RTTI enabled versions of the Xerces library are no longer needed on
  Windows platforms.

. The CIDLC compiler now supports basic preprocessor directives:
  #ifdef, #ifndef, #else, and #endif as well as the -D command-
  line option.

. The CIDLC compiler now supports incomplete struct and union
  semantics which will appear in CORBA 3.1.

. DAnCE now supports dynamically adding/removing components
  to/from the existing running assembly without shutting down the
  running appliation.  This will allow the application developers to
  evolve their applications on the fly without incuring service down
  time. The service is called ReDaC (Redeployment and Reconfiguration)

  Basically ReDAC provides a whole range of redeployment and
  reconfiguration granularity level, including:

  1) Install/remove component instances of the existing component types.
  2) Install/remove component instances of a different type, i.e., a
     totally new type of component.
  3) Install/remove component instances from an existing container.
  4) Install new component instances into a dynamically created brand
     new container.
     Move around existing components from one existing container to
     another existing/new container.
  5) Install new component instances into another component server in
     the same physical node.
  6) Install new component instances into another component server
     into a remote host.

  To see how to use this feature, please see the ReDaC-Usage.html
  under the $CIAO_ROOT/examples/Hello/ directory.

. Removed the Old Config Handlers, which have been deprecated for some
  time.  Please see tools/Config_Handlers for the current version.

. Added a step-by-step CoSMIC tutorial for modeling CIAO components
  using PICML($CIAO_ROOT/docs/tutorials/CoSMIC). Using a simple Stock
  Quoter system as example, this tutorial demonstrates all the steps
  that needed to model Component-Based applications.

. DAnCE now supports making connections among components across
  different assemblies, and allow components to be "shared"
  across assemblies seamlessly.

  Internally, DAnCE provides a reference counting mechanism when
  deploying/destroying components, and a reference count table
  is maintained on each NodeManager.

  From a deployer's point of view, if he/she chooses to deploy
  a new assembly of component and simultaneously wants to reuse
  previous deployed components in an existing running assembly,
  then in the new deployment plan descriptor, he could refer
  to an old component instance in the <InstanceDeploymentDescriptions>
  XML tag. The "key" to identify the old component instance is
  through the <Component_UUID, Node> pair, if such a key is found
  present in a previous deployed assembly, then DAnCE won't
  install this component instance (specified by the <Component_UUID>)
  again, but instead it will increase the reference count of this
  component instance.

  DAnCE also supports making connections from existing running
  components to newly deployed components in another assembly, and
  vice versa.

. The RepositoryManager has been enhanced to support standards based
  interfaces. A number of techniques have been used to ensure high
  performance and scalability.

. The RepositoryManager can now retrieve packages from remote locations via
  HTTP.

. The Target Manager is released with this CIAO release. It is an
  infrastructure component which keeps track of resource usage in the
  target domain. The initial domain configuration remains with the
  Target Manager. A monitor framework has been built into Node Manager which
  monitors the resources used within each host. This monitor reports its
  data intermittently to the Target Manager which aggregates the data
  received across all such hosts acroos the Target domain. The monitor
  is implemented using a strategy pattern, thus enabling the plug-in of
  new monitors which can monitor different resources in the domain. The
  Target manager is a component thus it needs to be started using a
  deployment plan. It is right now a optional component in the DAnCE
  tool chain.

. We added a skeleton implementation of the Resource Allocation and
  Control Engine (RACE) which is a middleware framework built atop
  CIAO/DAnCE that integrates multiple resource management algorithms for
  (re)deploying and (re)configuring application components. We are in
  the process of developing resource management algorithms (both
  resource allocation and control algorithms) that will be a part of
  future releases.

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.4.7 and CIAO-0.4.8
======================================================
. The deprecated RepositoryManager implementation, under
  DAnCE/RepositoryManager, has been removed from this release. Please
  use the Plan_Launcher and flattened deployment plans to deploy
  component assemblies.

. The CIDL compiler frontend now supports constants, const expressions,
  bounded strings, bounded sequences, and arrays.

. The CIDL compiler frontend now supports automatic indentation of
  function arguments (both "new line" and "same line" styles are
  supported).

. Added backend CIDL compiler support for constants, arrays, bounded
  strings, bounded sequences, and attribute exceptions, corresponding
  to frontend support added by Boris Kolpackov <boris@kolpackov.net>.

. Updated documentation to include instructions for building
  the CIDL compiler using MakeProjectCreator (MPC).

. Fixed a bug in the CIDL compiler's determination if an IDL
  type is of fixed or variable size type, when it is declared
  in the scope of an interface, valuetype or home.

. Changes to generate servant code to support component
  swapping.

. Added capability to pass a base class event consumer to a
  subscribe() operation generated for a derived event type.

. Added support for .cdl file extension, which was belatedly
  standardized by the OMG.

. Added documentation on using Rational Purify with CIAO and
  DAnCE.

. Added tests and documentation for the IDL3-to-IDL2 converter tool.

. RepositoryManager:
  - enhanced the implementation to use various optimization techniques
  - added HTTP support
  - added PackageConfiguration visitor to update the locations of the
    implementation artifacts with relevant HTTP URLs
  - refactored some of the code and added a number of helpers functions

. The XSC based config handlers have been heavily optimized, resulting
  in greatly reduced parsing overhead for large deployments.

. The DAnCE toolchain now supports initializing attributes which have
  enumerated types. Support for other complex types is planned for the
  future. Please see examples/Hello/descriptors/
  flattened_deploymentplan_without_ns.cdp for an example of how to
  populate enumerated attributes.

. Integrated Real-time QoS support into the DAnCE-based runtime and
  deployment tools based on the new OMG Deployment and Configuration
  (D&C) specification.  Such effort allows application developers to
  use real-time CORBA 1.0 features within their CCM appliation through
  meta-programming (via XML metadata through DAnCE toolchain).  The old
  run-time and deployment tools based on original Packaging and Deployment
  section of the CCM specification have been completely removed.  This
  work includes extensions to D&C schema, schema parsers, container and
  NodeApplication.

. Added functionality in XML parsing code to resolve schema in
  $CIAO_ROOT/docs/schema instead of the local directory only. All
  DeploymentPlans should use Deployment.xsd instead of
  Modified_Deployment.xsd, which has been removed.

. Fixed bug in CIDL code generation for some types of component and
  home attributes.

. Packaging and Deployment (P&D) tools have been completely removed
  from this release.  DAnCE is now the only supported method of
  deploying components.

. The CIAO directory structure has changed in support of the previous
  item. The following important directory moves have been made:

  * $CIAO_ROOT/DAnCE/ciao => $CIAO_ROOT/ciao
  * $CIAO_ROOT/DAnCE/examples => $CIAO_ROOT/examples
  * $CIAO_ROOT/DAnCE/Config_Handlers => $CIAO_ROOT/tools/Config_Handlers
  * Various obsolete examples/tutorials/tests have been removed.

. Error reporting during component deployment has been greatly
  improved.  While debugging using CIAO_DEBUG_LEVEL is still
  available, detailed error messages are now generated and propagated
  to the Plan_Launcher using exceptions.

. generate_component_mpc.pl has been updated to generate MPC files
  useful by the modern CIAO infrastructure.  This script now also
  automatically generates export files.

. DAnCE has been enhanced to support deploying multiple assemblies
  with the same set of ExecutionManager and NodeMangers.

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.4.6 and CIAO-0.4.7
======================================================
. Added a component packaging tool to DAnCE. This tool will allow
  component packagers to create from deployment plan archived
  packages that wrap up all relevant component properties,
  descriptors and implementation artifacts.The component packages
  generated from this tool will be distributed to Repository
  Manager.

. Enhanced DAnCE to allow more than one NodeApplicationManagers within
  a NodeManager.

. Enhanced DAnCE to support configurable output of debugging information.
  Support for debugging information will be added at the level of both the
  DAnCE/CIAO infrastructure as well as individual component instances.
  Support for tracing of the DAnCE/CIAO infrastructure will also be added.
  Together, these efforts will help developers to understand the execution of
  their component-based applications, as well as allowing customization of
  the amount of debugging information logged

. Added binding component to the Naming Service. A system deployer
  could configure this through XML-based flattened deployment plan
  descriptor.
  See $CIAO_ROOT/DAnCE/examples/Hello/descriptors/flattened_deploymentplan.cdp
  for details. Currently DAnCE only provides resolving naming service
  reference through multicast, so be sure to initialize the naming service
  with multicast port.

. Added the first cut of the RepositoryManager implementation.

. Changed scoping of code generated by the CIDL compiler to accommodate
  cases where the composition declaration is enclosed in one or more
  IDL modules, and/or when the composition declaration is in a different
  scope than the associated component IDL declarations.


USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.4.5 and CIAO-0.4.6
======================================================

. Added support for handle component activation/passivation in D&C
  assemblies.

. Added a test for the tool that converts IDL3 into equivalent IDL2.

. Fixed CIDL compiler bug in code generation for sequence type
  attributes of components.

. Added more examples for CIAO, including a new Quoter example that is
  similar to the one in TAO, as well as GUI-based example.

. Added support for handle component activation/passivation in D&C
  assemblies.

. Added support for deactivating facets/event consumers when component
  is getting deactivated.

. Added support for destroying the component executors, when the
  component is getting deactivated.

USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.4.4 and CIAO-0.4.5
======================================================

. Split the previous NodeApplication interface into NodeApplication
  and Container interfaces to allow multi-container NodeApplication
  support. This will be particularly useful to provide an optimized
  CIAO container support for RT-CORBA features.

. Enhanced CIAO to handle dynamic replacement of components. Please
  see an example in $CIAO_ROOT/DAnCE/examples/Swapping

. The Config Handlers have been modified to use XML parsing code
  generated by the XML Schema Compiler (XSC).  Binary releases of XSC can
  currently be found at (http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~boris/xsc), and a
  recent snapshot of the CVS repository can be found at
  (http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~wotte/xsc.tbz2).

  Please direct all XSC inquiries/bug reports to wotte at
  dre.vanderbilt.edu

. Supported initializing attribute values on Component through XML
  tags. Please refer to the $CIAO_ROOT/DAnCE/examples/Hello for
  details, particularly the Hello.cid descriptor file.

. Supported parsing component instance names and using them to generate
  unique component port references, so that multiple instances of the
  same component can be deployed in a single container and the client
  requests could be properly designated to the appropriate ports.

. Enhance CIAO to support establishing connections between derived
  type ports and base type ports. For example, application deployer
  could set up event connections between base event sink port type and
  derived event source port type.

. Enhanced the existing set of DAnCE tools to support flattened
  Deployment Plan based deployment. Please refer an example in
  $CIAO_ROOT/DAnCE/examples/BasicSP/flattened_deploymentplan.cdp
  to see how the flattened deployment plan descriptor is used to
  deploy the BasicSP example.

. Develop regression/performance tests (similar to TAO
  regression/performance tests) that will test/evaluate the
  performance of various features of CIAO.

. Added regression test script to the nightly build for DAnCE example.
  This will make sure DAnCE tools could be ready to use out of
  box in various platforms.

. Improved documentation pages in various places.

. Some bug fixes.

. Added support for reception of eventtypes of a more derived type than
  the type of the event sink. Subscription will succeed if the passed
  event consumer is associated with an eventtype that is an ancestor of
  the published eventtype.


USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.4.3 and CIAO-0.4.4
======================================================

. Minor bugfixes.


USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.4.2 and CIAO-0.4.3
======================================================

. CIDLC can generate empty executor implementations for a given
  composition, which makes it easier to write executors.  This can be
  trigerred by passing --gen-exec-impl option while invoking CIDLC.

. Generated container code has been refactored into base classes,
  thereby reducing the amount of code generated by CIDLC.

. A new tool for generating equivalent IDL2 declarations from IDL3
  declarations has been added.

. Fixed a problem with DAnCE that prevented ports from getting activated
  properly.

. Added support for eventtype factories within CIDLC.

. DAncE compiles clean and works with VC6 and Borland compilers.

. Fixed compile errors and memory related errors on many platforms.


USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.4.1 and CIAO-0.4.2
======================================================

. Overall
  - Support for g++ 3.4.1.
  - Support added for latest HP aCC compiler.

. CCM Deployment and Configuration specification has largely been
  implemented.  The implementation is called "DAnCE", the Deployment
  and Configuration Engine.  For more information about DAnCE, and a
  list of supported features, please refer to
  $CIAO_ROOT/docs/releasenotes/dance.html.

. CIDL compiler
 . Added missing generation of servant code for operations and
   attributes of ancestors of interfaces supported and used as ports.
 . Added missing generation of factory operation(s) from inherited
   home(s).
 . Added support for "uses multiple" in generated code.
 . Fixed bugs in generation of inherited:     [Bug 1800]
        home operations
        attribute operations
        port operations
        home factory operations
        supported operations
  . Added automatic registration of value factories for event
    consumers.
  . Added support for emits-related navigation.
  . Fixed bug with multiple facets that provide the same interface.
  . Implemented get_all_facets() and get_all_consumers() navigation
    methods.


USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.4 and CIAO-0.4.1
====================================================

CIAO
----

. Added support for statically configuring an assembly. Please see
  $CIAO_ROOT/docs/static_toc_ciao.html for details.

CIDL:
-----
. Fixed incorrect generation of ACE environment macros in servant glue
  code operations.

. Fixed incorrect code generation in the body of a servant operation
  that delegates to the executor class.

. Added support for attributes in facets and supported
  interfaces.

. Fixed bug in code servant glue code generation when there are
  multiple nested modules in the IDL and/or CIDL files.

. Added missing code generation of enum type names.

. Fixed a bug in the generation of the scoped name of a local variable
  which is a _var of an executor interface for a facet. These types
  are required by the CCM spec to be generated in the same scope as
  the interface that underlies the facet.

. Fixed a bug in the generation of *S.h file includes corresponding to
  IDL files included in the CIDL file.

. Added ACE style Makefiles.

. Added support for bounded strings

MPC
===
. Removed all of the project type specific and unnecessary keywords.

. Changed the defaulting rules for idl files (generated source files
  will be automatically added even if idl files are explicitly
  listed).

. The makefiles generated by the gnuace type are now named GNUmakefile
  instead of Makefile.

. The IDL_Files section is no longer a built-in MPC type.  It is a
  custom build type defined in taoidldefaults.mpb.

. Added support for Borland Makefiles that aren't tied to ACE_wrappers
  (the bmake project type).

. Added wild-cards to the default.rel file.  Now, environment
  variables that end in _ROOT are automatically considered as if they
  were used with the -relative option.

. Added an environment variable,
  MPC_DEPENDENCY_COMBINED_STATIC_LIBRARY, to force MPC to put
  inter-project dependencies in static vc6 and vc71 workspaces.

. Added an html project type (originally by Justin Michel) to aid in
  the debugging of mpc files.

. Added a new keyword, pure_libs, that is put into a project
  unmodified (unlike the libs and lit_libs keywords).

. The behavior obtained through the use of the -hierarchy option is
  now the default for all "make" based project types.  This includes
  borland, bmake, gnuace, make and nmake.

. Added support for referencing workspace files (.mwc) from within
  other workspaces.

. Added an option, -genins, that causes MPC to generate .ins files
  that can be used with prj_install.pl.  This will help users install
  portions of their projects into alternate directories.

. Modified the gnuace workspace output to be based on directory
  recursion instead of having inter-project dependencies built into
  each workspace level GNUmakefile.

. Added a new keyword, dependent, for use within a Define_Custom that
  causes MPC to add a dependency to generated files upon the custom
  command.

. Assignments within a 'specific' section that are not recognized MPC
  keywords are assumed to be template value overrides (similar to
  using the -value_template option).

. Partial support for Visual SlickEdit has been added.

. Various bug fixes and optimizations have been added as well.


USER VISIBLE CHANGES BETWEEN CIAO-0.3.6 and CIAO-0.4
====================================================

. Added Makefiles to build the ciao and tools subdirs by default.

. The suport for the following IDL features have been added to the
  CIDL since the last beta

  - exception (exception declaration and raises() specification)
  - valuetype
  - enum
  - const declaration
  - const expression and literals
  - native
  - home finder
  - oneway operation
  - readonly attribute
  - type declaration inside interfaces, valuetypes
  - union

  CIDL doesn't yet support the following features

  - Complete error detection and recovery
  - Attribute exception specification
  - Array
  - Bounded sequence
  - Fixed type
  - Floating-point and Fixed-point constant expressions & literal.

  though we plan to add this support over the next several months,
  depending on user/sponsor needs.