Lightstreamer News

Proud to Be a Component of the Eco-District Technology Environment, the Eco-sustainable Bricks of a Green World

2012-01-24T13:08:00.000+01:00

by digitalart

An Eco-District is a small-scale area such as a neighborhood or a district with a community commitment to achieving neighborhood-scale sustainability. Smart Grid is one of the key features included.

The Smart Grid is a vision of the future electricity delivery infrastructure that improves network efficiency and resilience, while empowering consumers and addressing energy sustainability concerns. To make the grid "smarter," and capable of addressing the need to decarbonize generation sources and enable end-user energy efficiency, utilities will have to improve observability and controllability of their networks, while transforming them into geodesic structures that intersperse a variety of distributed energy resources – some owned and operated by consumers.

The dynamic infrastructure resource allocation becomes pervasive. Events potentially impacting performance could be easily missed without a strong real-time data distribution solution.

The Lightstreamer team is excited to be a small piece of a green future!

EMBIX has chosen Lightstreamer as the real-time data distribution  solution for the energy management environment.

“Alstom and Bouygues—through its subsidiaries Bouygues Immobilier and ETDE—have agreed to  create a 50/50 joint venture under the name EMBIX to develop and provide energy-management  services for eco-districts. The initiative opens a new chapter in the fruitful partnership begun by  Bouygues and Alstom in 2006.  EMBIX will offer a wide range of services with high added value, ranging from audits for ecodistricts  taking account of new environmental and regulatory requirements to optimisation of  energy performance through the use of information systems featuring the latest advances in  Smart Grid technologies.” (Source: Alstom web site)

Social Gaming is Here to Stay

2012-01-06T18:19:00.000+01:00

In 2011, Buzz All Stars moved to Silicon Valley with a simple vision. Sport is Social (TM) and fans watching Live Sports want Match Tracking Game Play in a Social TV environment on their Second Screen and Smart TV devices.

This is the statement that appears on the home page of buzzallstars.com, a Silicon Valley company that is innovating the way live sports events can be enjoyed.

The buzz is predicting the result of the next play during a live sports event in a social and competitive environment. We use a combination of statistical models and sports analysts to track the live game presented on intuitive and dynamic game screens that allow players to compete with each other to win points for correctly predicting what happens next in the live sports event. Play against a group of friends around a virtual Game Table or against all players in Stadium View.

Buzz All Stars has chosen Lightstreamer as the real-time communication engine. Lightstreamer makes it possible to reliably push live data back and forth to any web page and mobile application with low latency and high scalability.

Our games are standards compliant built in HTML5 and CSS3 which allows us offer all games across multiple devices and platforms.

Laptop and tablets offer full screen immersion in our games. Each game is click, drag, touch and swipe compatible. Watching live sport on TV with a tablet in hand is the best way to enjoy our games and get involved in the action.

We are launching fully integrated iPhone, iPad and Android Buzz Baseball apps in March 2012.

Sport is Social™ and our games are built on Social Networks. Play all our games as Facebook apps in 2012. Invite your social network friends to compete on Private Tables and find new friends by playing on our Open Tables.

Here at Weswit (Lightstreamer), we truly believe that the Real-Time Web has taken off. After many years of evangelization on our real-time technologies, we are happy to see more and more application domains and new business ideas leveraging the power of Lightstreamer.

Happy Technology from Lightstreamer!

2011-12-19T15:33:00.001+01:00

Weswit Srl, the maker of Lightstreamer, would like to wish you happiness and great technological choices for this end of year and the beginning of 2012!

As you probably know, Lightstreamer is the leading technology for exchanging low-latency real-time data over the Web. You take care of your application, we take care of efficient and reliable data delivery, whatever platforms you are using on the server side (Java, .NET, etc.) and on the client side (web browsers, native mobile apps, or whatever).

More and more finance, aerospace, gaming, and other types of companies are taking benefit from the real-time communication capabilities of Lightstreamer, moving toward the True Real-Time Web.

Expect many exciting news in the course of 2012 as for Weswit's product offering!

Cheers,

The Lightstreamer Team

Lightstreamer 4.0.2 Released

2011-12-12T19:22:00.000+01:00

An update to Lightstreamer software is available for download.

Lightstreamer Server v. 4.0.2 contains a fix that solves a potential
issue with polling mode and older browsers.

Other minor changes to Lightstreamer Server and to some client
libraries are included, as explained in the detailed changelog.

Our engineering team is currently working hard on the new release
of Lightstreamer software, which will include several new and
exciting features... (More on this later).

Nice banner

2011-09-23T12:30:00.003+02:00

We are rolling out a new Lightstreamer banner :)

NASA and Lightstreamer for Project Morpheus

2011-09-19T14:47:00.001+02:00

NASA's Undergraduate Student Research Program site recently published an interesting paper by Matthew Noyes and Robert Hirsh: Rendering Flight Telemetry in Platform-Independent Three-Dimensional Touch-Interactive Simulations (PDF download).

The paper describes an innovative project where Lightstreamer is used for pushing spacecraft telemetry data to tablet devices, which render a 3D representation of the vehicle in real time.

The authors describe the rationale for the project:

In NASA's quest to lay the foundation for next-generation space missions, this involves developing new propulsion systems and rocket designs, as well as flight software guidance algorithms to operate these vehicles. Both products require operational verification on live test vehicles. As VTB flight frequency increases, telemetry analysis requires greater dedicated field test time. Due to smartphone portability, a new, intuitive telemetry display for the device provides instant datastream access.

Then, they introduce the iMorpehus application:

Designated iMorpheus, this application will be the primary education asset for NASA's Project Morpheus. It will allow users to view test flight simulations using live data, browse and play recorded data files, and control the virtual simulation model for self-piloted fights around a virtual JSC.

The UNITY 3D engine is used for rendering the 3D models in real-time, based on live data pushed by Lightstreamer servers.

We should add just a couple of clarifications from Lightstreamer's perspective.

At the end of page 5, the paper says:

The Morpheus vehicle provides updates at 10 Hz; while Lightstreamer's maximum update frequency is 1 Hz; to compensate for this latency, the server delivers telemetry values as JSON strings, containing an Arraylist of 10 states. The iMorpheus application parses this object and updates vehicle state over the course of a second. iMorpheus vehicle state will have a minimum latency of 1 second from data delivery; there will be additional lag derived from linearly interpolating the spacecraft along designated waypoints.

Our clarification regards the fact that Lightstreamer does support 10 Hz updates and greater. The maximum frequency is imposed only by the software edition or by a development choice. In other words, when low-latency and high-frequency telemetry data is needed, Lightstreamer is able to deliver it in real time with no added latency, apart from the Internet link latency.

Still on page 5, the paper says:

Lightstreamer provides clients for many different software environments, including .NET, Java, and HTML/Javascript. Due to clients' reliability on libraries unsupported by UNITY, a custom socket interface was designed for iMorpheus until Lightstreamer releases a proper UNITY client.

I confirm that the Lightstreamer engineering team has been working on a specific client library for UNITY, via a port of the Lightstreamer .NET Client library. It is still in beta stage and we are looking for testers. Anybody who is interested in using UNITY together with Lightstreamer, please email support@lightstreamer.com and we will send the library file for testing.

Thanks to the authors of the paper and to Project Morpheus' team for the excellent job.

Real-Time Forever...

2011-09-16T20:20:00.002+02:00

With refreshed minds and bodies after summer vacation, the Lightstreamer team is working hard on several new exciting ideas. Lightstreamer will keep shaping the future of the real-time Web :-)

Make sure to follow us not only through this blog, but via the other social channels too. We post short updates on Twitter (@Lightstreamer) and propagate them to LinkedIn and Facebook. Find all the details here.

If you have had some experience with Lightstreamer and would like to recommend it on LinkedIn, you are welcome. This could help increase your visibility too within your professional network. You can easily do that from http://www.linkedin.com/company/weswit_srl/lightstreamer-232441/product

Finally, we are hiring. There are several open positions. No boring lists here. Just propose yourself, whatever you do, and explain why you think you could help us.

Thanks!

-Alessandro

Lightstreamer Server 4.0.1 Released

2011-07-20T16:13:00.000+02:00

A new update to Lightstreamer Server 4.0 is available for download.
The new version is 4.0.1 build 1513.1.3.

This release fixes a bug introduced with Lightstreamer 4.0 that affects HTTPS connections. Under some circumstances, when very large control requests are sent (usually due to very long item and field names, combined with high numbers of subscriptions) the underlying TLS/SSL connection may break.

How to upgrade from Server 4.0 to Server 4.0.1:

Download the new distribution of Lightstreamer Allegro/Presto/Vivace.
Extract the files "/Version.txt" and "/lib/lightstreamer.jar" from
the archive and replace the same files in your existing installation.
Restart the server.

Patch Release Available

2011-07-11T14:41:00.001+02:00

We recently released an update to the latest distribution of Lightstreamer (codename Duomo, which contains Server 4.0 and HTML Client 5.0).

Such update, which is available from the usual download page, contains two changes:

Lightstreamer Server: fixed the time format in the audit log files (which are used to collect statistics on the number of concurrent users for some paid editions of Lightstreamer).
Lightstreamer HTML Client: Improved compatibility with Firefox 5.0+ and Chrome 11+, where JavaScript timeouts of inactive tabs were delayed.

The new build number of Server 4.0 is 1513.1.1.
The new build number of HTML Client 5.0 is 1446.3.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Push Technology, Comet, and WebSockets: 10 years of history from Lightstreamer's perspective

2011-07-08T17:10:00.003+02:00

by Alessandro Alinone (originally published on Comet Daily)

More than ten years have passed since the creation of Lightstreamer. Now that Lightstreamer 4.0 is generally available, it is a good moment to look back at what happened in the history of Push/Comet and to share a short analysis of the current trends from Lightstreamer’s perspective.

1996-2000: The first wave of Push Technology (Webcasting)

At that time, Push Technology was mainly referred to techniques also known as webcasting, narrowcasting, or channeling. A channel was related to some category of information, and once the user registered with one or more channels, she would automatically receive the information, which was displayed by dedicated client software (thick applications, browser plug-ins, or special screen savers). In 1996, PointCast, the first push system based on channels, was created. Soon after, over thirty players entered this market, including Microsoft and Netscape. Push Technology was expected to become a killer application, but this forecast did not come true, and in 2000 that kind of Push Technology was finally dead. The main reason is that the pushed information was very coarse-grained and not real-time. Users did not need to find significant amounts of information downloaded to their computer every morning, most of which they would never read. Someone compared the first wave of Push Technology to having giant heaps of newspapers dumped on your doorstep every morning…

2000 onwards: The second wave of Push Technology (Comet)

Starting in 2000, the success of online security trading systems created a new need for real-time data being pushed to the user’s browser. The information had to be very fine-grained (at the level of a single field being updated) and very real-time (the lower the latency between the data generation and its delivery, the better the quality of the trading platform). The first players in this arena were Caplin and Lightstreamer, together with Pushlets and KnowNow. In these eleven years, Push Technology has kept evolving in many ways: by adding new features to the available solutions; by improving reliability and performance; by seeing many new entrants coming into this market niche; by proposing new standards.

The success of this wave is increasing, with more and more production systems taking benefit from the real-time data delivery. Most of the financial trading platforms currently employ some form of data push. Online auctions, betting, and gaming systems are moving in the same direction. And we are seeing several new projects in both the military and aerospace domains leveraging this wave of Push Technology.

The very dynamic nature of this set of technologies has made it very difficult to agree even on a common umbrella term. Below is a list of the many terms that can be somehow related to Push Technology (I am fully aware of the many, more or less subtle differences in place among such words):

Push Technology
Data Streaming
Data Push
Streaming AJAX
Reverse AJAX
AJAX Push
Comet
HTTP Streaming
HTTP Long Polling
Real-Time Web
Last Mile Messaging
Internet Messaging
Bi-directional HTTP
Full-Duplex Web Communication
WebSocket

How about Comet? When Alex Russell coined the Comet term in 2006, it seemed to be a very good umbrella word and we all started to adopt it. But then, partly due to marketing-originated differentiation needs, and partly due to actual technological differences, other terms kept emerging or being reused. In particular, starting from 2007, the interest began to focus on bi-directional communication, leading to a new wave of Push Technology (see next section). Notice that the list above tries to cover both these waves, as the boundaries between the two are very blurry and arbitrary.
The push channel (from server to client) can be implemented via several different techniques, such as:

Polling
Long Polling
Frame Streaming
Iframe Streaming
Flash Streaming
XHR Streaming
Server-Sent Events

Several protocols have been created in the past few years employing one or more of the techniques above. Some of them derive from open-source initiatives (e.g. Bayeux and BOSH) or from standard specifications (HTML5 Server-Sent Events), others (like Lightstreamer’s protocol) are proprietary. Even if Lightstreamer’s network protocol is publicly documented, we prefer to provide high-level APIs for each supported client-side technologies, including mobile applications. This way, we can keep full control over the heuristics mechanisms needed to choose the best delivery technique to use, including low-latency fall-back processes.

2007 onwards: The third wave of Push Technology (WebSocket)

Bi-directional communication means not only pushing real-time messages from the server to the client, but also the reverse. This may seem awkward, as sending messages from the client to the server at the client’s discretion has always been the normal behavior of HTTP! In reality, the aspect that is considered new and important has been the ability to send such reverse messages with low latency and high frequency. In most cases HTTP can stream messages with low latency and high frequency from the server to the client, but it always requires a full round-trip to send messages from the client to the server. This is a constraint imposed by how browsers and proxies are implemented. And this is one of the reasons that led to the WebSocket specification, aimed at enabling full-duplex communication over a single TCP connection (the other main reason being to prevent intermediaries from buffering the streaming content, as it happens in some cases with HTTP).

At the time of writing, the WebSocket specification is still in draft status (the latest version is draft-ietf-hybi-thewebsocketprotocol-09) and its adoption by “infrastructure” vendors (including browsers, proxies, packet inspectors, antivirus’, etc.) is still extremely immature and fragmented.

Without WebSocket, the reverse push channel (from client to server) can be implemented on the top of a second HTTP connection. The major problem here is that the application code has no control over the binding between HTTP requests and HTTP connections, which are handled by a pool manager that is part of the browser. This means that the browser might decide to send two backward messages originated from the application code on the top of two different physical TCP connections, with the risk of altering the message order. This issue, together with the low-latency and high-frequency requirements mentioned above, originated the need for a sophisticated reverse channel implementation within the application layer, to guarantee message ordering, low latency, and high frequency.
For example, Lightstreamer implements all of the mechanisms needed to give the developer a high-level and robust abstraction over the HTTP reverse channel. In particular, Lightstreamer automatically manages message numbering and re-ordering, transparently batches messages to minimize the round trips, and implements guaranteed delivery, by means of acknowledgements and automatic retransmissions.

WebSocket simplifies the implementation of both the communication channels, but WebSocket is only a transport layer, over which application-level protocols need to be implemented. For example, most Push Technology solutions are based on publish-and-subscribe paradigms. WebSocket alone does not offer any pub/sub facility, which must be implemented on the top of it. Another example: WebSocket alone does not dictate any technique for throttling the data flow of filtering/conflating the data based on bandwidth constraints or on Internet congestion. Again, this is something left to a higher-level implementation. For these reasons, eleven years of experience originated from second-wave Push Technology will be invaluably precious for the success of the third wave. Furthermore, the transition between the two waves requires some years of co-existence, until WebSocket is: a) specified in final form; b) fully deployed across all infrastructure components, implying the abandonment of all the older browsers (for instance, at the time of writing, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer requires a separate download to support the current draft of WebSockets on both IE9 and IE10 beta).

As for Lightstreamer, we have been delaying the roll-out of WebSocket, waiting for the more stable specifications and better browser support. Now, we believe that the time has finally come to inject all the experience gained in the past years into the third wave of Push Technology. Our role will be to guarantee a smooth and safe transition between the waves, taking care of all the issues above.

Conclusion

Our perspective on the history of the technologies aimed at enabling the Real-Time Web (known under many different names and with different meanings, such as Push Technology, Comet, or WebSocket) will help with the new third wave that is centered around bi-directional communication in general, and the WebSocket standard in particular. I maintain that WebSocket needs to leverage the second wave of technology to be successful, due to: the necessity, for several more years, to be able to fall back to high quality Comet when needed, and the necessity to build application-level protocols and network management optimizations over WebSocket that have already been implemented and deployed on solid second-wave solutions.

Lightstreamer 4.0 Released!

2011-06-07T19:12:00.003+02:00

We are very proud to announce that the new version of Lightstreamer, codename Duomo, is now generally available.

New Lightstreamer contains many exciting improvements, making it the perfect solution whenever you need to deliver real-time messages through the Internet.

Performance has been improved, making Lightstreamer Server even more scalable and faster than before. It is now easier to manage the system, via the new logging facility and new JMX interface. Many stability and reliability improvements have been introduced across all the code.

Support for mobile apps is now extremely extensive and mature, covering all the mobile platforms and operating systems: Android, iOS (iPhone and iPad), BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Java ME.

See the "Changes and New Features" section below to find out more details.

New Lightstreamer is quite completely backward compatible with previous custom code you developed, for both Adapters and Clients, but please see the "How to Upgrade" section below to know more.

From a sales perspective, we are finalizing a new price schema for the paid editions of Lightstreamer, aimed at being much more flexible. In particular, it will be possible to purchase individual features in-between the editions. Furthermore, a brand new rental model will be available along with the current perpetual model. This way, you will be able to pay for Lightstreamer licenses year after year, rather than upfront. Finally, we will provide a 24x7 support option for the most demanding customers. To know more, please send your questions to info@lightstreamer.com.

Why and When to Upgrade

We recommend you to upgrade from any previous version of Lightstreamer at your earliest convenience, to take benefit of the many improvements that Duomo brings, in terms of improved robustness, better performance, and new features. It is important that you upgrade not only the Server components, but also any Client API you are using, even if the new Server is fully backward compatible with older Client APIs. In any case, if you signed a standard Support and Maintenance agreement, please remember that you should upgrade within six months from the new release date, that is, by December 7th 2011. After that date, support and maintenance on earlier versions might be discontinued. If you have a custom Support and Maintenance agreement, the terms may be different. Please contact our sales representatives at info@lightstreamer.com if you need to check your upgrade terms.

How to Upgrade

First, download the new Lightstreamer distribution package from our web site. Choose the correct link based on the Lightstreamer edition you are using (free Moderato on one side, paid Allegro, Presto, and Vivace on the other side).

Secondly, you need the new license keys. If you are using Lightstreamer Allegro, Presto, or Vivace, please contact us at support@lightstreamer.com to get your new keys (in the past few months, we started to roll out the new keys to some customers in advance; check with us to know if you need newer keys). If you are using Lightstreamer Moderato, you can get get your new key online.

Then, you can begin the upgrade process. Typically, on the server side you might want to start from a fresh installation of the new Lightstreamer package and deploy your existing Adapters there, after reapplying your changes to lightstreamer_conf.xml and lightstreamer_log_conf.xml onto the new version of such files. On the client side, you should incorporate the new provided libraries into your client code. For both the server side and the client side, it is highly recommended that you read through the official changelog very carefully, to know every difference between the version of each component that you are currently using and the new version (identify the entry pertaining to your current version of each component and read upwards until the latest version). This will take a few minutes, but will give you a full understanding of what changes you are going to apply. Please dedicate particular attention to the red sections of the changelog marked as COMPATIBILITY NOTE.

When the upgrade is complete, you should obviously test the new build of the system in a test environment, before rolling it out to production. Feel free to get back to us at support@lightstreamer.com in case of any doubts, questions, or issues you may have.

Changes and New Features

Below is a short overview of what's new.

LIGHTSTREAMER SERVER v. 4.0

Massive performance improvements. Compared to Lightstreamer Server 3.6, version 4.0 has shown to use half CPU for the same message throughput, with reduced latencies.
Improved reliability and performance for asynchronous I/O and for advanced thread pooling on newer multicore architectures.
New logging system. Logback is used instead of log4j, for improved reliability, flexibility, and performance. Many logging messages have been improved and made clearer.
New service wrapper for Windows platforms. A brand new wrapper is provided to run Lightstreamer as a service under Windows, with full support for 64-bit platforms.
Support for HTTP 1.1 compression. In addition to Lightstreamer's unique mechanisms for compressing the data structures at the application level, now real-time network-level compression in full streaming mode is supported too.
Improved HTTPS. Support for client-side TLS/SSL certificates is now provided.
Renewed Monitor Console. More indicators are now reported, including an extensive summary of the inbound and outbound activity.
Revised parameters for configuring streaming and polling connections. The new parameters in lightstreamer_conf.xml are much clearer and easier to understand and tune.
Improved JMX support. All the MBeans are now fully implemented, with several new methods for inspecting the server's state. The connector configuration is much more flexible. Support for secure encrypted JMX connections has been added.
New audit log. The auditing of concurrent users (when this contractually applies) is now more reliable, robust, and clear. You can consult the audit log yourself, to know exactly what data you are sending us when you deliver the files.
Java 1.4 has been discontinued. Java 6 is recommended, but Java 5 is still supported.
Several bug fixes for excellent stability (see the changelog).

HTML CLIENT API v. 5.0

New Stream-Sense algorithm. Automatic choice of best message delivery option is now faster and lighter.
Full support for all newer browser versions (including many mobile browsers, such as Skyfire, Dolphin, etc.).
Support for streaming in Android browser. As far as we know, Lightstreamer is currently the only solution that is able to bypass the buffering mechanisms of Android browser and deliver a true streaming experience. This was achieved via sophisticated compression mechanisms implemented for this purpose.
Support for HTML5 offline web applications.
Improved JavaScript functions (see the changelog).
Several bug fixes (see the changelog).

FLEX CLIENT API v. 2.1

Removed deprecated methods and classes (see the changelog).
Added new Portfolio Demo.
Several bug fixes (see the changelog).

SILVERLIGHT, iOS, ANDROID, BLACKBERRY, WINDOWS PHONE, JAVA ME, JAVA SE, and .NET CLIENT APIs

Too many news to bother you here... Please check out the changelog!

For a detailed list of all changes, please refer to the full changelog.

Also, check out the new Online Demo Page to see Lightstreamer Duomo live in action!

About Milan Cathedral: Called Duomo di Milano in Italian and Domm de Milan in Milanese, it is a stunning Gothic cathedral located in the center of Milan, Italy. It took nearly six centuries to complete, from 1386 to 1965. The plan consists of a nave with four side-aisles, crossed by a transept and then followed by choir and apse. The height of the nave is about 45 meters, the highest Gothic vaults of a complete church (less than the 48 meters of Beauvais Cathedral, which was never completed). The roof, which is open to tourists, is renowned for the forest of openwork pinnacles and spires, set upon delicate flying buttresses.

Stream Real-Time Data to Mobile Apps

2011-05-30T19:12:00.004+02:00

One of the tasks recently completed by the Lightstreamer engineering team has been to provide maximum support for all mobile platforms, so that any mobile app for any device could easily become real-time enabled.

The new release of Lightstreamer, codename Duomo, which will be publicly available next week, will contain a lot of exciting new features to extend the power of Lightstreamer's push to every mobile clients.

For each mobile platform, a dedicated full-blown SDK is provided, containing native libs, documentation, and source-code examples and demos. Supported platforms are: Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, Java ME.

In addition to the above libs for creating native apps, the new Lightstreamer HTML lib is compatible with most mobile browsers, giving developers full flexibility in choosing whether to build native apps or browser-based apps (including HTML5).

Let's see some cool details about each of those technologies.

MOBILE BROWSERS

The new HTML Client API for Lightstreamer, based on HTML and JavaScript, is compatible with most mobile browsers. The big news is that real streaming is now supported on Android browser. As far as we know, Lightstreamer is currently the only solution that is able to bypass the buffering mechanisms of Android browser and deliver a true-streaming experience. This was achieved via sophisticated compression mechanisms implemented for this purpose. The same streaming capability has been added even to Adobe Flex for Android. Check out our online HTML and FLEX demos with your Android browser to see streaming in action!

All the browsers, both desktop and mobile, can now take benefit from a brand new Stream-Sense algorithm. There are cases where some combinations of antivirus software and proxy servers block any form of streaming. The unique Stream-Sense algorithm of Lightstreamer automatically detects these situations and falls back to Smart-Polling mode, which provides a user's experience that in most cases is identical to real Streaming mode. The new Stream-Sense algorithm of Lightstreamer Duomo is super-fast and much more lightweight than before.

ANDROID APPS

The new Android Client API for Lightstreamer is based on Java for Android and enables full streaming capabilities within any native Android application. You just need to integrate the Lightstreamer client library in your Android app and all the complexity of real-time communication with Lightstreamer Server is managed transparently by the lib. A simple demo app with full source code is provided. It is the famous "Lightstreamer Stock-List Demo", where some simulated stock quotes are subscribed to and pushed in real-time from the server. Of course this is just a coding example and the same principles can be used in other application domains, like chat systems, telemetry, auctions, collaboration systems, etc. You can install the demo from the Android Market and check it out.

iOS APPS

The new iOS Client API for Lightstreamer is based on Objective-C and extends the real-time streaming features of Lightstreamer to iPhone, iPad, iPod, and any future devices based on iOS. Just include the provided lib in your iOS project and forget the complexity of bidirectional real-time communication with the server. A simple demo app with full source code is provided. As explained in the Android section above, this is the "Lightstreamer Stock-List Demo", which shows how to subscribe to some information items and receive fast real-time updates on them. You can install the demo from the iTunes Store and check it out.

BLACKBERRY APPS

The new BlackBerry Client API for Lightstreamer is based on Java ME and adds streaming capabilities to any RIM BlackBerry devices. The provided lib can be included in your app and it will take care of managing the interaction with the server. A simple demo app with full source code is provided (including the "Lightstreamer Stock-List Demo", see above, plus a simple messaging demo). You can download the installation file directly.

WINDOWS PHONE APPS

The new Windows Phone Client API for Lightstreamer is based on Silverlight for Windows Phone and adds streaming capabilities to any Windows Phone 7 applications. Just include the provided lib in your app and enter the world of real-time data push. A simple demo app with full source code is provided (the "Lightstreamer Stock-List Demo", see above). You can download the demo app from the Windows Phone Marketplace.

JAVA ME APPS

Some older devices need traditional Java midlets. With Lightstreamer, you can add push functionalities even to these older apps (especially used in the Symbian world). The Java ME Client API for Lightstreamer is still provided and maintained. Even in this case, you can check out the simple demo app (the "Lightstreamer Stock-List Demo", plus a simple messaging demo) by downloading the installation file.

With Lightstreamer, you get rock solid technology for streaming live data to any possible "thing" connected to the Internet, with massive scalability and extremely low bandwidth consumption.

If you plan to attend SIFMA Financial Services Technology Expo in New York in June, you are welcome to come and visit us at our booth!

Lightstreamer has a New Logo

2011-05-09T21:33:00.000+02:00

After ten years' great service, it was time to replace the Lightstreamer logo with a brand new one, more up to date and stylish.

Above is the new logo. It keeps a bit of Italian style. The central 'S' gives a slight idea of a rotation, recalling the bidirectional data flow implemented by Lightstreamer. Below is the old logo, which gave the idea of streaming through the underlying wave made of small colored bits. But ten years of history are visible...

There is more stylish news! We updated the company logo too:

Weswit, the company behind Lightstreamer, is an Italian software house. The meaning of the acronym is actually WE make SoftWare in ITaly. We decided to recall this explicitly, through the colors and the slogan, as our mission is to inject the high quality of "made-in-Italy" products into the software industry.

New iPhone and iPad Lightstreamer Example

2011-05-03T17:17:00.000+02:00

Next Lightstreamer version, codename Duomo, will have many new exciting features, including some brand new client APIs. We now directly cover all the mobile app technologies out there, including iOS. We have recently published on Apple Store a simple iOS application that is a good example of how to leverage the iOS Client API for Lightstreamer inside an Objective-C application.

Previously, to develop iOS applications that could receive real-time data from Lightstreamer Server you had to use a third-party client library. Now we provide our own officially supported API.

The new example, provided with full source code, shows a simple grid updated in real-time with market data generated by Lightstreamer Server. Such application automatically adapts to both iPhone and iPad.

Learn more and download the source code >>

A preview release of Lightstreamer 4.0 (Duomo), including the new iOS SDK, is already available. The final release is expected soon!

Meet Lightstreamer in New York in June at SIFMA

2011-04-28T19:09:00.005+02:00

Weswit will present the new version of Lightstreamer software, codename Duomo, at Financial Services Technology Expo 2011 (SIFMA) in New York.

Come and visit us at our booth! You will have a chance to speak to Weswit's co-CEO and CTO Alessandro Alinone and co-CEO and Chairman Mauro Fantechi.

Financial Services Technology Leaders Forum and Expo
June 14-16 2011
Hilton New York, 1335 Avenue of the Americas
Booth #1827
www.sifma.org/FSTE2011/

A New Silverlight Example

2011-04-15T19:13:00.005+02:00

We have released a brand new version of the Lightstreamer Silverlight Demo, which shows some new features, like automatic reconnection, automatic resubscription, and cell highlighting.

The live demo can be seen at:
www.lightstreamer.com/demo/Silverlight_StockListDemo/

When launched, this Silverlight application connects to a Lightstreamer Server and subscribes to 30 stock quotes. The data is delivered in real time, via a streaming/push connection, from the Server to the Browser, based on the highly optimized Lightstreamer protocol (with bandwidth management, dynamic throttling, data conflation, delta delivery, etc.).

A Silverlight Grid is used to display the real-time data and a "highlight & fade" effect is used to show changed data, as usual in typical dealing/trading applications. You can sort on any columns and drag the columns around.

If the application is disconnected, it will try to reconnect to the Server automatically and will resubscribe to the items, without need for any user's action.

This is a basic example, with full source code, which should work as a starting point for implementing your own real-time Silverlight applications.

The source code will be released as part of the new Lightstreamer 4 distribution, codename "Duomo". In the meanwhile, if you want to check out the code, please send an email to support@lightstreamer.com and we will send you.

At the same time, we have released a new version of the Lightstreamer .NET Demo, which is similar to the Silverlight Demo but is based on the .NET Framework. You can find more details on our online demo page.

Let us know if you have any feedback!

Real-time Business Analytics Using Dojo and Lightstreamer

2011-04-04T15:08:00.000+02:00

(Below is a re-post from the SitePen Blog)

The proliferation of online data gives businesses more information than they can possibly manage. Real-time dashboards and trading systems help users make sense of financial information, analytics, business trends, customer stats, and much more. The Dojo Toolkit and Lightstreamer are two popular choices available for building your own platforms and applications.

Building on a long-standing collaboration between SitePen and Lightstreamer (Weswit Srl), SitePen created the new LightstreamerStore. Based on the new Dojo Toolkit 1.6 Object Store API and the latest Lightstreamer preview releases, it is intended to make streaming data from a Lightstreamer server super-simple for developers. SitePen also updated the existing Lightstreamer + Dojo Toolkit demo to demonstrate this simplified interface. The demo visualizes the data returned in real-time from Lightstreamer using both the Dojo DataGrid and Dojo Charting. Charts display the “normalized last price” to more easily visualize changes in prices.

The new LightstreamerStore is planned for release in version 1.7 of the Dojo Toolkit. Preview versions are now available with the current development trunk of the Dojo Toolkit.

“We’re very excited to have worked with SitePen on this project,” said Alessandro Alinone, co-CEO and CTO at Lightstreamer. “StockList showcases the most powerful capabilities of both Dojo and Lightstreamer, showing what’s easily possible with a powerful real-time Comet server and an extremely flexible JavaScript toolkit”

Key Technologies

Using the Lightstreamer 4.0 preview Moderato release, SitePen used the new Dojo Object Store approach in conjunction with two of the most powerful technologies in the Dojo Toolkit–the DataGrid and the Charting library– to create a completely data-driven visualization dashboard application. No other technologies were hurt during the production of this project.

Obstacles

A number of obstacles were removed with this project:

Making sure communication and dispatching data on the client-side worked flawlessly
Ensuring the Dojo DataGrid updates based on both the items being displayed, and the speed at which data changes
Adapting the returned data from a “streaming” concept to an historical one
Accurately displaying changes in value on the Charts based on time received
Switching the value ranges on the Chart’s x-axis based on the latest data being received (i.e. “scrolling”)

The new LightstreamerStore combines the abilities of the Lightstreamer Web Client with Dojo’s own Promises and QueryResults to allow a user to quickly setup a LightstreamerStore and perform a query on it. The query itself then opens up a data stream, from which the results of the query initiates a function called “observable,” the basic entry point for consuming data with the Dojo Toolkit’s Object Stores. Each execution of “observable” tells the listening functions what object is being altered and the new data for the object – all in an easy-to-use JSON format.

From there, an adapter (dojo.data.ObjectStore) was used as the interface to feed data into the Dojo DataGrid. This allowed SitePen to use the standard data-binding interfaces between dojo.data and the Grid to allow for updating. In addition, a slight “throttle” was used to limit how often the DataGrid responded to updates; this was enabled to allow the Grid to respond to batches of updates as opposed to trying to handle each updated as it was received, improving application performance and behavior.

The charts were more challenging, in part because of the nature of the stream being returned by Lightstreamer’s server. Dojo Charting is typically used not just to visualize data, but to visualize it historically. In other words, it is more useful to visualize not just the latest data, but how it trends over time. The nature of the Stock List feed from Lightstreamer prevented SitePen from simply reading that stream and plotting the latest points, because a real-time view discards any historical data. SitePen created a set of items that listened to data being returned from the Lightstreamer server, and pushed them into a historical list–recording both the value received, and the timestamp when that data was received. From there, stock items that the user wished to visualize in a chart were passed to the chart engine as-is.

One problem this introduces is ensuring that the chart’s data was “scrolled” accurately, much like any other monitoring tools, such as Windows’ TaskManager shows CPU usage. Dojo’s Charting engine supports this through the use of “named axes.” If you keep track of the current time stream, you can update an axis (and all the data that is rendered by it) by simply re-adding an axis with the same name as the original, with new parameters. In the case of Lightstreamer, the new parameters were simply an update to the minimum and maximum values of the X axis. Thus, based on a 30 second window, the chart in the demonstration will continue to scroll as long as the server and client are communicating.

Appearance.

The initial view of the demonstration dashboard:

You can dynamically add and/or change the stocks that are being observed in the charts:

You can also switching the display to use straight lines (as opposed to the corrective curved lines):

And also switching the display to show corrective/curved lines without individual markers:

See the Demo

Lightstreamer is proudly hosting the demo. Check out the demo, and learn more about how to create your own Lightstreamer + Dojo application today.

Lightstreamer 4.0 Preview Release

2011-02-04T18:11:00.003+01:00

We are very excited to announce early availability of the Preview Release of next-generation Lightstreamer.

The final release is expected in the next few months, but this sneak preview will allow you to check out some of the improvements to the product and enable us to collect your precious feedback before releasing the final version.

We encourage you to download and test the Preview Release and get back to us with any comments.

PACKAGE CONTENTS

Here is what you will find in the Preview package:

SERVER:

Lightstreamer Server v. 4.0 a4 build 1495
SDK for JMX Extensions v. 4.0 build 1495 (API doc *)

ADAPTER Development Kits:

SDK for Java Adapters v. 4.0 a4 build 1495 (API doc *)
SDK for .NET Adapters v. 1.7.3895.27492 (API doc *)
SDK for Adapter Remoting Infrastructure v. 1.4 build 43

CLIENT Development Kits:

SDK for HTML Clients v. 5.0 b1 build 1413 (API doc *)
SDK for Flash Clients v. 1.1 build 38.131 (API doc *)
SDK for Flex Clients v. 2.1 build 83 (API doc *)
SDK for Silverlight (and Windows Phone 7) Clients v. 1.3.4049.30377 (API doc *)
SDK for iOS Clients v. 1.0 a1 build 14 (API doc *)
SDK for Android Clients v. 1.0 build 6 (API doc *)
SDK for BlackBerry and Java ME Clients v. 3.1 build 135 (API doc *)
SDK for Java SE Clients v. 2.5 build 1101 (API doc *)
SDK for .NET Clients v. 1.5.4049.30448 (API doc *)
SDK for Generic Clients v. 4.0 a4 build 1495

WHAT'S NEW

There are a lot of new features and improvements in this version of Lightstreamer. As you have probably noticed in the list above, there are some brand new client SDKs included, covering iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone 7.

All the existing SDKs have been improved and extended, with bug fixes, stability improvements, and new features. The backward communication from the Client to the Server has been extremely optimized, with asynchronous support, automatic batching, and guaranteed delivery.

The Server has undergone many optimizations and feature improvements. Just to mention a few: improved JMX support (more Mbeans and security support); support for client-side SSL certificates; more extensive Monitor Console; higher scalability and throughput, especially during fast client connections and disconnections.

Please take a look at the full CHANGELOG (*).

Expect other improvements for the final release.

DOWNLOAD

NOTE: Please remember that this is a Preview Release and should not be used in Production, but only for testing.

All the editions of Lightstreamer are available for download.

Download Lightstreamer Allegro/Presto/Vivace:
- Download zip (*)
- Download tar.gz (*)

To run the new Allegro/Presto/Vivace Server any valid Evaluation license can be used. If you are a Lightstreamer's customer and you need a different type of license for some reason, please get back to us.

Download Lightstreamer Moderato:
- Download zip (*)

- Download tar.gz (*)

To run new Lightstreamer Moderato Server, you need to get a new free license.

(*) UPDATE 2011-06-07: The final release of Lightstreamer 4.0 is now generally available and these old links have been discontinued.

We look forward to hearing from you, reporting any issues you might find. Please write us at support@lightstreamer.com.

Thanks!

The Lightstreamer Team

Season's Greetings from Lightstreamer

2010-12-23T17:23:00.000+01:00

The Lightstreamer team wishes you health, happiness, and success in 2011 and always!

The new year will bring many important news for Lightstreamer, including a new major release of the software. Lightstreamer Server 4.0 will add new features and performance improvements. All the Client APIs will get important updates too. And we will add even more specific client APIs for all the major mobile platforms, including iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone 7.

We might decide to make a first preview release available in January. Please let us know if you are interested in checking it out, by writing to support@lightstreamer.com.

All the best,

The Lightstreamer Engineering and Support Team

Use RTD to Push Data to Excel via Lightstreamer

2010-11-24T17:48:00.000+01:00

Real-Time Data (RTD) is a technology introduced in Microsoft Excel starting from version 2002, aimed at replacing DDE for updating spreadsheets in real time.

It is possible to use Lightstreamer to push real-time data through the Internet and then inject it into an Excel spreadsheet via RTD.

We have just released a demo, together with full source code, that shows this possibility.

The demo is made up of a DLL library that acts as an RTD Server, which receives updates from Lightstreamer Server on one side and injects them into Excel on the other side. The library has been developed with C#.NET. It leverages the Lightstreamer .NET Client Lib to subscribe to 30 stock items and the Microsoft Office library to set up the RTD server.

Check out the Excel RTD Demo online and download the source code.

NASA Spacecraft Telemetry

2010-10-21T13:18:00.000+02:00

Lightstreamer has been procured by NASA Mission Operations Directorate via Lockheed Martin. The Mission Operations Directorate is evaluating the product for distribution of real-time spacecraft telemetry data. [Read the press release]

Telemetry is a kind of application where being able to push real-time data through the Internet, to any web browsers and smartphones, is a new fundamental feature.

The "Push Paradigm" (also know as "Comet") originated in the Financial Serivces industry, where Lightstreamer was the very first solution, back in 2000, that was able to update stock market prices in real-time using only html and javascript. Now, more and more application domains are taking benefit from this paradigm, including aerospace, military, gaming, sporting, and entertainment.

Are you using Lightstreamer for anything other than Financial Services? Let us know on our forum.

Meta-Push, COMMAND Mode, and the New Flex Portfolio Demo

2010-10-18T20:36:00.001+02:00

On of the advanced features of Lightstreamer that sometimes is not notice when first dealing with the product is COMMAND subscription mode. It is a very handy way of pushing not only changes to the data rows, but even changes to the table itself (in terms of adding and removing rows).

A typical example of this is a trading portfolio. You have a table with the list of stocks currently in your portfolio. The value of such stocks keep changing based on the market, so some columns keep being updated. At the same time, you may sell or buy some stocks, resulting in removing or adding rows to the table. You want such changes to be pushed to the front-end in real-time too. A nice example of this is the online Portfolio Demo.

This is what we call "meta-push". By using Lightstreamer's COMMAND mode, you can push commands to the client in order to add, delete, or update a row. The delivery of such commands over the wire is extremely optimized, with the auto-detection of redundant commands.

With meta-push, your Data Adapter needs to send the "add", "delete", and "update" commands. But there are cases where you need to decouple part of the update logic from the add/delete logic. For example, in the Portfolio mentioned above, it's easier to have one Data Adapter managing the changes in the portfolio, and another Data Adapter managing the updates to the prices coming from the market.

Lightstreamer enables this behavior by what we call "multi-meta-push". In this case, when the first Data Adapter pushes a command to add a new row, the client uses this information to automatically subscribe to an underlying item coming from the second Adapter. On the other hand, when a command to delete a row is received, the client automatically unsubscribes from the underlying item.

This powerful logic is implemented in the Lightstreamer Client libraries, thus removing the burden of handling that from the developers. There are many application scenarios where meta-push or multi-meta-push are very useful, even outside the financial area.

In addition to the HTML-based Portfolio Demo, we have now released a Flex-based Portfolio Demo.

You can find more details on the official demo page.

New Excel Demo Available

2010-10-15T21:52:00.000+02:00

Excel spreadsheets are often the main means used by professional traders to analyze data and make decisions. Being able to inject real-time data into Excel means boosting the capabilities of the traders.

We have hosted a Lightstreamer-to-Excel demo for a long time, but we never provided the source code. We have now reengineered such demo and published online together with full source code. This way, Lightstreamer developers will have a good starting point to implement their own Excel applications.

From a technical perspective, this demo is made up of on a Java application, based on the Lightstreamer Java SE Client library. The application includes a third-party DDE server and acts as a bridge between Lightstreamer Server and the Excel sheet. It subscribes to 30 stock quotes and injects the real-time updates, received from the remote Lightstreamer Server, into the Excel sheet, via the DDE protocol.

Read more details, check out the demo, download the source code from the demo page: Excel DDE Demo

We are now working on another Excel demo based on the RTD protocol. This way, Lightstreamer developers will have all the resources they need to get started integrating Lightstreamer with Excel based on both the protocols.

Android Demo Available

2010-10-04T18:49:00.007+02:00

The Android operating system is spreading to more and more smartphones. Being able to deliver real-time updates to applications running on Android phones may be a crucial feature for many scenarios (from financial applications, to social and collaboration tools).

Lightstreamer is a perfect means to push data updates to any application/device connected to the Internet, including Android phones. For this reason, we have decided to release an Android example for Lightstreamer, together with full-source code.

This Android app, developed in Java, uses the Lightstreamer Java Client library to subscribe to 15 stock prices (as most of our typical "Stock-List Demos" do). The price updates are received in real-time, with very low latency, through a connection based on HTTP streaming.

All the well known optimization mechanisms of Lightstreamer take place, such as congestion control, adaptive throttling, delta delivery, and conflation. This results in a very modest bandwidth used to push the data.

You can download the full source code and use it as a good starting point for your own tests and projects.

Check out this demo on your Android phone by installing it via the Android Market. You can use the QR code to the right as a shortcut.
If you don't see it, please go to http://www.lightstreamer.com/demos.htm#AndroidDemo

Google Web Toolkit (GWT) Demo Available

2010-09-15T15:26:00.001+02:00

We have released a new Lightstreamer demo based on GWT (Google Web Toolkit).

A GWT FlexTable is used to display the real-time data pushed by Lightstreamer.

Full source code is provided, so that it will be easier to develop GWT applications that need to receive real-time data.