Highlights
Erlang 5.2/OTP R9B

This document describes the major new features and changes in version R9B of Erlang/OTP.  The changes are described as a comparision with the original R8B release and some of them have already been delivered as patches to R8B and/or R7B. For more detailed information, please refer to the release notes for the individual applications. Interesting news in this release is that we have integrated results from the ASTEC-HiPE research project  as part of the product. See Hipe and Packages below for more info on that.

Asn1, compiler and runtime functions for ASN.1

• New option optimize in combination with per_bin and ber_bin which makes the encode/decode functions much faster than before. In rough terms the encode/decode is 2 times faster when optimize is used.
• It is now possible to add options to the Erlang compiler to be used when compiling the generated .erl file. Any option that is not recognized as a specific ASN.1 option will be passed to the final step like: erlc +debug_info Mymodule.asn or asn1ct:compile('Mymodule',[debug_info]).
• The feature "multi file compilation" which compiles several ASN.1 modules together and produces one .erl file is improved.

Comet, COM client for Erlang (REMOVED)

Compiler

• The documentation for the 'compile' module now lists several options that were previously undocumented or only documented in the 'erl_lint' documentation. One very useful option is warn_unused_vars, which also is improved in the compiler. Use of this option can reveal bugs and dead code, it is highly recommended.
• The endianess specification 'native' has been added to the bit syntax. It will resolve to either big or little endian at load time. It is specially useful for communcating with linked-in drivers.

cosEvent, Orber OMG Event Service

cosEventDomain, OMG Event Domain Admin Service NEW

cosFileTransfer

cosNotification, Orber OMG Notification Service

cosProperty, Orber OMG Property Service

cosTime, Orber OMG Timer and TimerEvent Services

cosTransactions, Orber OMG Transaction Service

Crypto, MD5, SHA and CBC-DES encryption/decryption

Debugger

ERTS, Erlang emulator

• The previous hard system limit of 255 known remote nodes has been removed. With the exception of node-name atoms, all data regarding remote nodes is now garbage collected.
• Major improvements regarding memory handling, introduction of sl_alloc version 1 default and sl_alloc version 2 which makes it possible to tune the memory allocation behaviour to best suite a certain system. A number of other memory handling improvements are also added.
• The endianess specification 'native' has been added to the bit syntax. It will resolve to either big or little endian at load time. It is specially useful for communcating with linked-in drivers.

Erl_Interface, low level interface to C

EVA, a multi-featured event and alarm handler

Et, an Event Tracer with graphical viewing of trace data NEW

GS, a Graphics System

HiPE, High Performance Erlang NEW

• Native code generation for Sparc (Solaris) and x86 (Linux). The native option to the compiler is used to select this codegeneration. It is then possible to run the generated modules together with the ordinary interpreted modules on a standard OTP R9B system.
  The native codegeneration can give significant performance improvements especially on sequential code. See http://www.csd.uu.se/projects/hipe/hipe.html for more info. This feature is intended for evaluation and may be supported in future versions. Feedback is velcome.
• "Shared heap" a new approach to memory handling within the Erlang emulator where all Erlang processes share a common heap. This way of handling memory is very interesting and have a potential to reduce memory consumption an improve performance. A separate emulator is built to support "shared_heap", it is started with 'erl -shared'. This feature is intended for evaluation and may be supported in future versions. Feedback is velcome.

IC, an IDL compiler

Inets, HTTP server and FTP client.

• A HTTP client is added to the application. Author: Johan Blom of Mobile Arts AB. It is provided as is with very limited documentation in this version but we plan to support it fully in coming versions of Inets.
• Updated to handle HTTP/1.1.

Jinterface, low level interface to Java

Kernel

• The set_net_ticktime/[1,2] and get_net_ticktime/0 functions has been added to the net_kernel module (see net_kernel(3)) which makes it possible to change the net_tick time during operation.
• There are new functions bchunk/2,3 in the disk_log module that are to be used like chunk/2,3 but return objects as binaries.
• The loading of BEAM code at start-up of embedded systems has been optimized: if the thread pool is non-empty (see the system flag +A in erl(3)) and files are read from a file system (the default, see the value efile of the -loader flag in erl(3)) disk seek times have been reduced.

Megaco, a Megaco/H.248 protocol stack

•  The binary codecs ber_bin and per_bin is now both compiled with the +optimize asn1-compiler flag for better runtime performance.
•  The previously included tool, et, has been moved out of the Megaco application. It is now provided as a separate application called Et.

Mnemosyne, query language support for Mnesia

Mnesia, a heavy duty real-time distributed database

• The table fragmentation functionality in Mnesia has been improved.

- Select and match_object is done in parallel which should improve performance.
- A new concept of hash modules has been introduced. This means that a user now can define its own mapping between record keys and the actual table fragment hosting the record.

• Improved table loading performance during startup. Mnesia should be able to utilize the network bandwidth better, and Mnesia also uses new dets functionality to improve the loading of disc_only_copies tables, if possible.

Mnesia_Session, a foreign language interface to Mnesia

Observer NEW

Observer currently contains two different parts:

• Trace Tool Builder , a base for building trace tools for single node or distributed Erlang systems.
• Erlang Top, a tool for monitoring of Erlang processes similar to the UNIX top utility.

ODBC

• The Erlang ODBC application consists of both Erlang and C code. The C code is now delivered as a precompiled executable for Windows and Solaris.
• Various optimizations.
• New API that has an Erlang/OTP touch and feel instead of being a C-interface with Erlang syntax. The old interface is deprecated and will be removed in Erlang/OTP R10.

Orber, a CORBA Object Request Broker

•  Support for fragmented IIOP-1.2 messages.
• Possible to add and use the IOR component TAG_ALTERNATE_IIOP_ADDRESS.
• Unique VMCID:s assigned to Orber by the OMG.
• Supports the Fixed datatype.
• Possible to add new initial references.
• The NameService can be configured to be stored on disk.
• It is now possible to set Orber's configuration parameters in, for example, an Erlang shell.
• Possible to list which port numbers Orber may use locally when connecting to another ORB.
• Improved documentation.
• Several new debugging facilities:
• Two IIOP trace interceptors included (different verbosity).
• Type checking within an Erlang node.
• OrberWeb, which is an extension of the WebTool application.
• IOR dump.

OS_Mon, monitoring of disk usage and OS resources

• cpu_sup:util/0 and cpu_sup:util/1 which returns information about cpu utilization have been added. For further information see cpu_sup(3).
• Nodename is now used as key in loadtable (os_mon mib).
• The loadCpuLoad5, loadCpuLoad15 values has been added to the os_mon mib.

Packages NEW

Parsetools, parsing and lexical analysis tools

Pman, graphical process manager

Runtime_Tools

• Trace ports can now be opened on remote nodes
• It is possible to use the local node as a "trace control node", i.e. trace only remote nodes.
• The function dbg:i/0 now prints information about all traced nodes
• Added a number of functions for controlling tracing on remote nodes.

SASL, release handling tools

SNMP

SSL

STDLIB, Erlang standard libraries

• A number of improvements in dets.
• The function ets:select_count/2 is added to the stdlib application.
• New functions sofs:extension/3 and sofs:partition/3.
• A new module ms_transform which implements a parse transform that translates 'fun' syntax into "match specifications". This simplifies writing of "match specifications" used in ets:select and in dbg.
• The undocumented and deprecated modules bplus_tree and unix has been removed.

Toolbar

Tools

TV, grapical table visualizer

WebTool