This week sees the launch of Typesafe Stack 1.1, the latest update to the commercial product offering based on the open source Scala language and Akka middleware. This most recent release has been engineered to include new features and enhancements from the community releases of Scala 2.9.1 and Akka 1.2.
Now in its commercially-aligned Sunday best, Typesafe is keen to detail the documentation, training, and consulting services for Typesafe Stack 1.1 that are available for customers who purchase a Typesafe subscription. The company has positioned these services as a helping hand to extend the use and productivity of Scala in the Java ecosystem, while preserving compatibility with investments that enterprise companies have made in Java technology over the last two decades as well as ensuring speedy deployments of Scala-based applications.
Scala, for those that might enjoy a reminder, is a "modern" programming language designed for multicore hardware and cloud computing workloads. It runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and offers complete interoperability with Java. Adjustments in version 2.9.1 provide Scala performance improvements. Akka is an open source toolkit and runtime for building highly concurrent and distributed event-driven applications on the JVM using actors, STM (software transactional memory), and transactors.
Akka 1.2 highlights include durable actor mailboxes (file-based transaction log, Redis-based, MongoDB-based, ZooKeeper-based, and Beanstalk-based); richer API for Actor lifecycle management and invocation tracing; improved Future API; and improved TestKit for testing Actor-based systems.
"Typesafe Stack 1.1 builds upon the success we've had with the initial release of the Typesafe Stack earlier this year," said Martin Odersky, chairman and chief architect of Typesafe. "With 1.1, we are delivering on our commitment to provide regular product updates for commercial adopters of Scala and Akka. Enhanced performance capabilities and added features in the new release enable our users to build more scalable and reliable applications for multicore and cloud computing."
