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The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has announced that Apache Struts 1 has reached its end of life (EOL) and is no longer officially supported.
With Struts 1 now at the EOL stage, Apache is recommending Struts 2 as an open-source, extensible successor framework for creating enterprise-ready Java Web applications.
Created in 2000 to provide an improved development experience over pure Java Server Pages (JSP) use, Apache Struts 1 soon became the de facto standard for Java-based Web application development. Numerous organizations adopted Struts 1 as a strategic platform, even after Java Server Faces (JSF) was introduced as a standardized Java EE framework for Web application development. Its popularity was so prevalent in the early 2000s, most job offerings in the space of Java-based Web technology required Struts 1 as a must-have skill, ASF officials said.
Today, many major Websites and Web-based user interfaces continue to rely on Struts 1 technology. In addition, many popular Web frameworks, such as Spring MVC and WebWork, were significantly inspired by Struts 1.
ASF said the Apache Struts Project Management Committee is not aware of any urgent issues posing the immediate need to eliminate Struts 1 use. However, the project’s EOL status signifies that security and bug fixes will no longer be provided as of April 9. The Apache Struts project recommends new projects to be developed using Struts 2 as opposed to Struts 1. While any action-based Java Web framework is a potential candidate to reuse Struts 1 architectural experience or migrate existing Struts-1-based applications, “users are highly advised to investigate Struts 2 as a successor framework,” ASF said in a statement.
Struts 2 is modern, highly decoupled and feature-rich, and is successfully running in many mission-critical projects globally, ASF said. It shares the same basic principles with Struts 1, and offers an improved architecture, API and solution portfolio.
The last release of Apache Struts 1 is version 1.3.10 from December 2008. All software downloads, notices and updates are available on the Apache Struts project home page at http://struts.apache.org/. The Struts community continues its focus on pushing the Apache Struts 2 framework forward, with as many as 23 releases to date, ASF said.
Meanwhile, also on April 9, ASF officials announced that Apache cTAKES (clinical Text Analysis and Knowledge Extraction System) has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a top-level project (TLP). Apache cTAKES is an open-source natural-language-processing (NLP) system for information extraction from electronic medical record clinical free-text. Widely used in production by numerous organizations across the health care sector, cTAKES was started in 2006 by a team of physicians, computer scientists and software engineers at Mayo Clinic, and was submitted to the Apache Incubator in June 2012.
Apache Shelves Struts 1, Graduates cTAKES, Bloodhound
Apache cTAKES was built using the Apache UIMA framework and the Apache OpenNLP natural-language-processing toolkit. Its components are specifically designed for the clinical domain out of diverse manually annotated data sets, and create rich linguistic and semantic annotations that can be used by clinical decision support systems and clinical research.
“As a well-developed NLP tool with a mature code base, cTAKES is the cornerstone of a variety of use cases in the domain of biomedicine such as phenotype discovery, translational science, pharmacogenomics and pharmacogenetics,” said Pei Chen, vice president of Apache cTAKES, in a statement. “We are pleased to have proven our adoption of the ‘Apache Way,’ and welcome additional contributors to our growing community.”
ASF also recently announced that the Apache Bloodhound project has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a top-level project. Apache Bloodhound is a software development collaboration tool, including issue tracking, wiki and repository browsing based on Trac, the open-source, Web-based project management and bug-tracking system.
“When Bloodhound entered the incubator, it was a completely new project, though being built on top of the Trac framework has given it a strong foundation,” said Gary Martin, vice president of Apache Bloodhound, in a statement. “Community growth and self-governing to the standards of a top-level project within The Apache Foundation has given the team invaluable experience.”
While Trac is already widely used in production by many organizations, Bloodhound resolves requests that have remained unaddressed, including the support for hosting multiple projects, full-text search and an intuitive user interface. In addition, Bloodhound’s integrated-source-code browser works with Apache Subversion and Git, provides Wiki functionality and is compatible with hundreds of free plug-ins for Trac, allowing users to customize their experience even further.
ASF officials said Bloodhound is especially relevant to organizations that need to avoid storing data in proprietary systems, which puts their information at risk of vendor lock-in. Its user interface supports a variety of screen sizes—from mobile phones to desktop computers.
Software provider WANdisco submitted Bloodhound to the Apache Incubator in December 2011. ASF was seen as the natural choice for its commitment to “Community over Code” which was the approach the initial contributors wanted to take, ASF said.
“Becoming a TLP is fantastic recognition of the progress Bloodhound has made so far in adopting the ‘Apache Way,’ but we do not plan to rest on our laurels.” Martin said. “We actively welcome potential contributors and continue to look at ways of reducing barriers to contribution.”