This is what we would normally have shipped as the Beta 3 release though
we aren't going to cut a Beta 3 at this point and will instead move to
1.0 as the next "official" version released. 0.7.0 is in production
operation already as per our other beta releases (yes we are fussy about
tagging something 1.0 :) ).

The reason for this release is to allow early adopters to familiarize
themselves with changes from Beta 2 until now. Most importantly this
includes:
* A restructure in the way ESOE plugins are handled. It is now a true
plugin system with binaries and config living under
$esoe.data/plugins/authentication or $esoe.data/plugins/identity this
means that unlike previous updates to the core ESOE ROOT.war binary
changes in the future will not destroy any custom plugin work you may
have been doing
* A new stats generation plugin writing data to
${esoe.data}/logging/esoe-stats.log which gives you a very nice picture
of where users are coming from and the environments they are using which
assists in debugging
* Internal bug fixes as reported by the community and as found
internally using our own quality processes.
* SPEP Java updates, most importantly a new configuration option:

# Interval in seconds after which to retry the SPEP Startup request, if
startup fails
startupRetryInterval=

This should be added to any existing spep.config files when upgrading
SPEP binaries. This allows deployers to fine tune how often their SPEP
will try to contact the ESOE if it fails to startup due to central ESOE
downtime.

Likewise esoe.config has several new options, you should carefully
compare pre 0.7.0 esoe.config files with the supplied template to
determine anything you may be missing. Most important are:

## Authentication Pipeline
activeAuthnPlugins=usernamePassword, statsGeneration

## Identity Pipeline
activeIdentityPlugins=ldap

...

## Authentication Plugins
authnpluginloader.activePlugins=${activeAuthnPlugins}

## Identity Plugins
identitypluginloader.activePlugins=${activeIdentityPlugins}

These correspond to the names of the plugins you've installed below.

We've not yet started to update the online documentation to reflect
these changes, another reason for this being a non official release. The
install is essentially:
1. Replace all existing war files in your tomcat deployment
2. Create the ${esoe.data}/plugins/authentication and
${esoe.data}/plugins/identity directories.
3. You will find we have shipped tars with the plugin binaries for each
sub plugin type, install as many or as few of these as you wish in each
category (or install your own).
4. Config can now be placed in any of the following locations:

${esoe.data}/config/esoe.config
${esoe.data}/plugins/plugins.config
${esoe.data}/plugins/authentication|identity/authplugins.config
${esoe.data}/plugins/authentication|identity/<pluginname>/plugin.config

The further down the list above you go the less visible the config
option becomes allowing you to be as global or as localized with
configuration values as you choose.

We will probably ship a 0.8.0 before the final move to 1.0, this will
include the brand new ESOE Manager environment and a new console based
method for doing initial ESOE installation (it has been decided to
retire the ESOE Startup web interface as it is to complex).

Any feedback welcomed.