Lightstreamer Web Client 8.1.0-beta

We have started the beta testing of the new Lightstreamer Web Client library, v. 8.1.0.

The main difference with the previous version is in the connection setup mechanism, also known as stream-sense. With version 8.1.0, instead of creating a session over HTTP and then switching to WebSocket, a session is created directly over WebSocket, while preserving the ability to fall back to HTTP. This means that in most cases, clients are able to set up the streaming channel with one connection only instead of two, reducing the session initiation time and overhead.

The new beta library is available on npm and you can test it in non-production environments.

Please get back to us for any feedback and questions.

Lightstreamer Server 7.1.2

We are happy to announce that Lightstreamer Server v. 7.1.2 is now publicly available.

You can download it, as usual, from https://lightstreamer.com/download/

This new distribution does not contain the Lightstreamer SDKs anymore. With time passing, every SDK has found its own home within standard repositories, depending on the platform. So, it makes no more sense to bundle them with the Server distribution. For example, the JavaScripts libs are available on npm, the Java libs on Maven, etc. You can find all the links on the same download page.

Furthermore, Lightstreamer Server v. 7.1.2 contains some minor fixes and improvements (check out the changelog).

New Lightstreamer .NET Standard Client v.5.0.0 Now Available

We are very excited to announce the availability of a brand new Lightstreamer client API for Microsoft .NET Standard specifications.

What's new

The new library introduces full support for the Unified Client API model, which we have been introducing in all Lightstreamer client libraries for some years now (indeed the first "Unified" library was JavaScript 6.0). The big advantage of using the Unified API is the same consistent interface and behavior are guaranteed across different client platforms. In other words, the same abstractions and internal mechanisms are provided for very different platforms (Web, Android, Java, iOS, .NET, Node.js, etc.), while respecting the conventions, styles, and best practice of each platform.

The New Features in Lightstreamer 7.1

We are extremely proud to announce the public availability of Lightstreamer 7.1, the best Lightstreamer ever!

Together with Lightstreamer Server 7.1, we released updated SDKs for Clients and Adapters.

This release contains hundreds of exciting improvements, optimizations, and fixes. Some of the main new features are highlighted below. To learn about all the other improvements and fixes, please go through the complete changelog.

Lightstreamer and Xamarin - a New version of Our Stock-List Demo

Xamarin, or more precisely Xamarin.Forms, is a cross-platform UI toolkit that allows developers to efficiently create native user interface layouts that can be shared across iOS, Android, and Universal Windows Platform apps.

Here at Lightstreamer we decided to create a new demo that, leveraging our .Net Standard Client API and Xamarin.Forms, shows how simple is, with very few lines of code, to create an application that displays full real-time data. The same code base can then be used to build iOS, Android, and UWP apps.

Meet Our Customers: ActivTrades

An interview with Rosen Mehanov, Senior Developer at ActivTrades. Rosen will explain the architecture of ActivTrades' trading platform and how Lightstreamer powers real-time data push.

ActivTrades is a well known online broker focused on FX, CFDs, and Spread Betting. May you please provide any further details on your business and offering?

Founded in 2001 as a small brokerage house, ActivTrades rapidly developed into an award-winning global derivatives broker for retail and institutional clients.
Our clients enjoy benefits associated with the fact that ActivTrades:

Data Streaming vs. Push Notifications

When dealing with mobile apps, the difference between real-time data streaming and push notifications is not always clear to everybody. Let's try to delve into this topic.

1. With data streaming, the server sends real-time data directly to the app, leveraging WebSockets and/or HTTP. This requires the app to be running and, with iOS, to be in foreground.
    
2. With push notifications, the server sends messages to Google's and Apple's servers, which deliver them to the mobile devices. Notifications are received by the device even if the app that subscribed to them is not in foreground or is not even running.

Lightstreamer 7.0 Released

We are delighted to announce that Lightstreamer 7 has been publicly released.

You can download it right now from https://www.lightstreamer.com/download/

The official Docker image and the Amazon EC2 AMI are available too.

Lightstreamer 7 and the client SDKs include hundreds of improvements and fixes, covering performance, features, compatibility, and licensing. This makes Lightstreamer more solid and faster than ever. Below are some highlights but you can check out the full list in the change log.

New watchOS SDK Now Available

If you are one of our customers (and if you are not, what are you waiting for?), you know the Lightstreamer company is customer driven. Whenever a customer requests a new feature, we do all we can to comply.

So, when a customer asked us if we had a watchOS Client Library on the roadmap, during Fall 2017, we scheduled it for Q1 2018. Now, we are happy to announce it is available and ready for integration in your WatchKit extensions.

The new watchOS SDK derives from the iOS SDK version 4.0.0 and retains the same version number. It includes all the APIs and features of the iOS SDK, with the single exception of WebSocket support (due to limitations of the watchOS platform).

Let's dig into some examples.

Note: if you need download and example pointers, jump directly to the end of the post ("Get the SDK").

Cloud License Manager

Starting from Lightstreamer 7, a new license verification mechanism has been introduced, called Cloud License Manager (CLM). With CLM, licensing happens online, with no more need for license files bound to the MAC address of the hosting machine. The increase in flexibility is tremendous.

Switching to the New Lightstreamer 7 Editions

For the last few years, Lightstreamer has been organized into four different editions, which got their names from Italian musical tempo terms, namely Moderato, Allegro, Presto, and Vivace. Now, with the upcoming release of Lightstreamer 7, the editions are going to change, to offer maximum flexibility to our customers.

In this post, we will explain how the old editions map onto the new ones for existing customers.

Mobile Push Notifications with Lightstreamer Server 7.0 and Client SDKs 4.0

With the upcoming release of Lightstreamer 7.0, and its beta 2 already available for you to test, Mobile Push Notifications APIs jump on the Unified Client API model with SDKs version 4.0, employing a new asynchronous model and delivering all the latest features of iOS and Android push notifications.

In this blog post we take a look at the new APIs, with code examples and use cases for both Objective-C and Java.

Note: if you need download and example pointers, jump directly to the end of the post ("Get the SDKs").

Version 3.0.0 of iOS, macOS and tvOS SDKs Now Out of Beta

After a month of beta testing, we released the final version of our SDKs for iOS, macOS and tvOS version 3.0.0.

Version 3.0.0 introduces:

• Support for WebSockets.
• Revised API documentation.
• Improved cookie handling. 

Check the beta introductory article for full details and examples.

The new SDKs are available through CocoaPods or via direct download, as usual. Native demo projects on GitHub and on the App Store have also been updated to version 3.0.0 of the client library. Check them out.

Note: if you need download and example pointers, jump directly to the end of the post ("Get the SDKs").

New 3.0.0 beta SDKs for iOS, macOS and tvOS

We have recently released a new version of the SDKs for iOS, macOS and tvOS: 3.0.0 beta.

This version introduces a new major feature: support for WebSockets, together with a completely revised documentation and a plethora of minor improvements and bug fixes.

See below for more details.

Note: if you need download and example pointers, jump directly to the end of the post ("Get the SDKs").

Welcome, Kotlin!

Google recently made Kotlin an official application development language for Android. We are very excited to announce that the new version of the Lightstreamer client API for Android embraces Kotlin. By ensuring full support for both Kotlin and Java, the library enables developers to choose their favorite programming language or even mix them.

Meet Our Customers: goFLUENT

"Lightstreamer technology is a vital part of our products and has enabled us to offer top-notch services." - A short interview with Edward Watson, Digital Marketing Manager/Specialist at goFLUENT, a leading eLearning company, which leveraged Lightstreamer for their Virtual Classroom solution.

Lightstreamer enabled the creation of a reliable and secure real-time chat/messaging system, working seamlessly behind proxies and firewalls on both the web and mobile apps.

What's New With Lightstreamer 6.1

We are very excited to announce general availability of Lightstreamer Server 6.1, which includes many new features and improvements.

Lightstreamer now speaks a brand new protocol, called TLCP. The Android and Java SE client libraries use the new protocol and natively support WebSockets. The iOS client library has become more Swift-friendly. A new client library is available for Microsoft .NET PCL, replacing older .NET, Windows Phone, and WinRT libs. In addition, several fixes and optimizations have been added to most components.

It's super easy to check out Lightstreamer 6.1. You can either download the installation package, or run the official Docker image, or launch the official AWS AMI.

One More Step Towards Swift Developers

The Swift language is designed to be as interoperable as possible with Objective-C. This goal is generally fulfilled, but an area still remains where the two languages don't interoperate as well as one would expect: exception handling.

Objective-C provides complete try-catch-finally semantics for exception handling, with full stack unwinding. While Cocoa and CocoaTouch conventions discourage their use for runtime errors (originally for performance reasons), they are of common use also in Apple's frameworks for programmer errors (i.e. logic errors, such as accessing an out-of-bounds element of an NSArray).

Swift, on the other hand, provides similar do-try-catch semantics, but its errors (do not call them exceptions) are actually passed back as an out parameter and does not provide a stack unwinding mechanism. Moreover, as of Swift 3.x, Objective-C exceptions are left completely out of Swift error handling: they are uncatchable in this language, and cause a direct crash of the application or the service. For the rationale behind this choice, and its corresponding discussion, see this dissertation on the Swift GitHub repository.

SDKs for iOS, macOS and tvOS Updated

We recently released version 2.1.0 of our SDKs for iOS, macOS and tvOS. This version introduces some important changes:

• You now have again control on the maximum number of concurrent sessions on the same Server. This feature was part of SDKs version 1.x, but couldn't be included in version 2.0.x.
• You now have again a connection event specific for authentication challenges. This feature too was part of SDKs version 1.x, but couldn't be included in version 2.0.x.
• Minimum OS requirements have been raised to 10.9 for macOS and 8.0 for iOS. Thanks to this, we could remove the use of NSURLConnection and all HTTP networking is now done through NSURLSession, reducing the use of threads.
• The SDKs are now packaged as frameworks, no more as static libraries. Thanks to this, the download size has been reduced and they cohabit better with other libraries when imported via CocoaPods (in particular for projects developed with Swift).

See below for more details.

Note: if you need download and example pointers, jump directly to the end of the post ("Get the SDKs").

Benchmarking Lightstreamer JMS Extender vs. Web Services in a Defense Scenario

While Lightstreamer is already well known as a mature solution for Real-Time Data Distribution in a wide range of contexts and industries, it has been also widely used as an academic research tool behind the scenes.

A recent one caught our attention. The research is on interoperability of real-time and non-real-time systems, a well-known topic that has been widely investigated in a large number of domains and industries. In mission-critical fields, performance and reliability of the bridges used to interconnect two different message exchange solutions is crucial. Defense is surely one of the most demanding, thus a perfect and realistic research scenario.