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.
The TLCP Protocol
TLCP, which stands for Text Lightstreamer Client Protocol, is the new protocol all the new Lightstreamer client libraries are progressively implementing. Lightstreamer Server 6.1 fully supports TLCP. Don’t worry about backward compatibility. Lightstreamer 6.1 still supports all previous protocols released through the years. This means you can safely upgrade your Lightstreamer Server to 6.1 while your existing Lightstreamer Clients will keep working seamlessly, even if you don’t upgrade them to use TLCP. Since the same instance of Lightstreamer Server 6.1 can serve all types and generations of clients, based on any Lightstreamer protocol, you can upgrade the server first and progressively roll out client updates.
TLCP is designed around unifying principles like simplicity of parsing, uniformity of responses, and support for multiple transports. It is designed to work over WebSockets as well as over HTTP, for maximum reach. Some other improvements with respect to previous protocol are: notification of successful subscriptions and unsubscriptions within the update flow; support for independent execution of the requests in a batch; notification of the bandwidth and frequency constraints applied by the Server; notification of subscription metadata determined by the Server; support for subscription requests embedded in session opening requests. Read more details.
TLCP is a public protocol and its full specification is available in the “Generic Client TLCP Specifications” document, together with examples and tutorials. This means you can develop direct Lightstreamer clients at WebSocket (or HTTP) level, without using one of the ready-made client libs. This is useful when you need to connect to Lightstreamer from other platforms or, for any reason, cannot embed a client library.
Updated Android and Java SE SDKs
The Lightstreamer client SDKs for Android and Java SE, based on the Lightstreamer Unified API model, have been updated, respectively, to version 3.0.0 and 4.0.0.
The new SDKs now fully support the TLCP protocol, thus electing WebSocket as their primary transport and automatically reverting to HTTP Streaming and HTTP Polling as fallbacks, through the Stream-Sense mechanism. The use of WebSocket transport guarantees greater performance when sending messages from the client to the server at a high pace.
For full details on what has changed in these SDKs, please see the official changelogs:
Updated iOS, macOS, and tvOS SDKs
The Lightstreamer client SDKs for Apple platforms (iOS, macOS, and tvOS), based on the Lightstreamer Unified API model, have been updated too, reaching version 2.1.2.
The new SDKs include important fixes and improvements. Furthermore, they make it simpler than before to develop Swift application, thanks to a new option, which greatly reduces the use of exceptions for error reporting. We talked about this new feature in a recent article.
Version 2.1.2 of the Apple SDKs does not support TLCP yet. Complete TLCP support will come in the next release. As for the Android SDK, the transition will be totally transparent and automatic for both developers and users.
For full details on what has changed in these SDKs, please see the official changelogs:
- iOS Unified API SDK v.2.1.2 (changelog)
- MacOS Unified API SDK v.2.1.2 (changelog)
- tvOS Unified API SDK v.2.1.2 (changelog)
New .NET PCL SDK
The Lightstreamer client SDK for Microsoft .NET has been updated to version 3.0.0. The DLL is now built as Portable Class Library, targeting:
- .NET Framework 4.5 and higher
- Windows Phone Silverlight 8 and higher
- Windows Store Apps 8 and higher
- ASP.NET Core 1.0
This means the new SDK replaces three older SDKs, namely .NET, Windows Phone, and WinRT.
For full details on what has changed, please see the official changelog:
- .NET PCL SDK v.3.0.0 (changelog)
Other Improvements and Updates
Other improvements and fixes have been included in Lightstreamer Server 6.1, as detailed in the official changelog:
- Lightstreamer Server v.6.1.0 (changelog)
Several other components have been improved and updated. Below you can find direct pointers to the changelogs of some of the updated components.
Client-side SDKs:
Server-side SDKs:
- Node.js Adapter SDK v.1.3.2 (changelog)
- Python Adapter SDK v.1.0.0.post1 (changelog)
- Java Remote Adapter SDK v.1.1.2 (changelog)
- Adapter Remoting Infrastructure v.1.7.2 (changelog)
How to Get Lightstreamer 6.1
You can download Lightstreamer 6.1, both Moderato and Allegro/Presto/Vivace editions, from our website: https://www.lightstreamer.com/download/
If you like Docker, we do have an official Docker image: https://hub.docker.com/_/lightstreamer/
For an introductory guide on using Lightstreamer on Docker, check our previous article.
If you prefer to launch a ready-made Amazon AWS EC2 AMI, here you go: https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/v2/home?region=us-east-1#Images:visibility=public-images;search=ami-32a76024
To upgrade your existing installation of Lightstreamer, please follow the instructions of our How to upgrade guide.
Enjoy Lightstreamer 6.1 and feel free to post your feedback in the comments below!
Alessandro Alinone
