Release Notes for OpenCms 5.0.0 (5.0 final)

5/5/2003: This is the OpenCms 5.0 "final" release. The exact version number of this release version is OpenCms 5.0.0. This release features numerous enhancements and fixes over the last published "release candidate" (5.0 rc 2). The 5.0 release is a major step for OpenCms in general. It is far superior to OpenCms 4.x and we recommend everyone who uses OpenCms to upgrade to the 5.0.0 version.

OpenCms 5.0 comes with a new template mechanism based on JSP and taglibs. JSP is a well documented standard, easy to learn for Java programmers, the created templates are extremely fast and development of interactive functionality like web forms or database connections with JSP in OpenCms is straightforward. Therefore the JSP template mechanism makes the 4.x style proprietary "XMLTemplate" mechanism pretty much obsolete, even though it is still supported in the 5.0 release. For new projects, we strongly recommend using only JSP templates in OpenCms. Full documentation and examples for OpenCms JSP templates developed by Alkacon Software has been made available together with the 5.0.0 version. Experience shows that using JSP in OpenCms can reduce development time up to 50%, with a much easier to manage learning curve for beginners when compared to XMLTemplates.

Upgrading to OpenCms 5.0 is easy. Please check the upgrade information provided as part of the org.opencms.welcome module to learn how to upgrade your existing OpenCms system to the 5.0 release.

OpenCms 5.0 is Open Source software published under the LGPL license.

OpenCms 5.0 supports Java 1.4. and 1.4.1. Because of required features related to file encoding and JDBC, Java 1.3 is not longer supported.

If you run Java 1.3 on your OpenCms server, please upgrade to 1.4.1. for OpenCms 5.0.

The almost complete list of changes and improvements in OpenCms 5.0.0 final over the last release candidate (5.0 rc 2):

Please use our Bugzilla to report bugs in this release: http://www.opencms.org/bugzilla/

Thank you for using OpenCms and have fun with OpenCms 5.0 :-)

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