Upgrading to JBoss AS 4.

2
Radim Marek
27/11/2007
12/14/07
 Agenda
Objectives of this presentations
• Introduction
• Installation and administration
• EJB 3.0
• Web Services
• JavaServer Faces

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - Introduction
Latest version of JBoss AS is 4.2.X
• Minor branch (originally not planned)
• Brings Java EE 5 specification into 4.X series, without need to wait for long
expected JBoss AS 5 (currently planned for Q1 2008).
• Provides support for RedHat branches (EAP) with guaranteed 5 years of
commercial support
• Improves future upgrade process

Initial release of 4.2.0 is from May 2007, current bug fix release is 4.2.2
• 4.2.3 on its way

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - Introduction
Other main features of this branch are
• Tomcat 6.0/JBossWeb included
• Latest implementation of EJB 3.0
• Integration of JavaServer Faces 1.2
• Support for JAX-WS 2.0 (JSR 224)
• JBoss Transaction (Arjuna) as the default transaction engine (JTA)

In addition there are many bug fixes and improvements.

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - Introduction
JBoss AS 4.2 is mature product
• If you’re using any Java EE 5 technologies the upgrade is recommended
• The upgrade process is relatively straightforward
• Most of the changes are related to updated technologies mentioned in this
introduction

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - Installation and administration
Installation of JBoss AS 4.2 is still very simple
• Download the archive from http://labs.jboss.com/
• Extract it
• Run!

The structure of the extracted installation is still same

• 3 configuration profiles (minimal, default and all)

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - Installation and administration
Major security related change affects default binding address!
• Before JBoss 4.2 default binding address was 0.0.0.0 (all interfaces)
• With JBoss 4.2 default binding address is 127.0.0.1 (localhost)

To achieve same behaviour as with JBoss AS before 4.2 use

• ./run.sh -b 0.0.0.0

It’s strongly recommended to secure installation before switching bind address!

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - Installation and administration
Minimum requirement for running JBoss AS 4.2 is Java 5
• JDK 6 is not formally supported, and confilict related to JAX-RPC API caused
problems with the implementation of web services
• Recent update of JBossWS to 2.0.1 fixed this problem and the AS 4.2.2 (which
included this revision) should support JDK 6
• Further testing is recommended!

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - Installation and administration
Changes to embedded technologies are reflected in administrators
• conf/log4j.xml renamed to conf/jboss-log4j.xml to allow custom libraries and
applications to use own log4j setting independent from the server
• Tomcat 6 is bundled as part of JBossWeb, deploy/jbossweb-tomcat55.sar has
been replaced by deploy/jboss-web.deployer
• Update of JBossWS (>1.0.x) made redundant custom extension JSE for
deployment WS endpoints nested in SAR files. Standard WAR files should be used
for such a deployments (simple repackaged).

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - EJB3
EJB 3.0 is included by default in JBoss AS 4.2
• Mature support still available for EJB 2.1 (If you don't need/want EJB3 support,
simply remove deploy/ejb3.deployer).
• Used version is EJB 3.0 RC10 (final version to be part of AS 5)

Upgrade from previous release (available as plug-in) for 4.0 is simple

• From 4.0.5: No change required for EJB 3
• From 4.0.4: Annotation @EJB was still in package javax.annotation and needs to
be changed to javax.ejb

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - EJB3
Current limitations of EJB 3.0 implementation in JBoss AS 4.2 include
• Unfinished alignment of the security constrains on different types of EJB objects in
the same way as it works for EJB 2.1
• EJB 3 web service endpoints can be only specified using annotations and not
metadata in XML file (fix already exists and will be included in release 4.2.3)

EJB 3.0 implementation is stable and already proven in many production deployments!

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - EJB
To support easy integration with the legacy solutions developed using older JBoss AS
libraries the full support is included and test for AS version 3.2.8 and later!

More information available at

http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=JBossVersionCompatibilityMatrix

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - Web Services
Most visible change to JBoss 4.2 is related to Web Services implementation
• Implementation is JBossWS
• Current version is 2.0.1.SP2 (JBoss AS 4.2.2)
• Follows specification JAX-WS 2.0 (JSR 224)

Upgrading process can affect integration with other applications

• Not really JBoss fault!
• General misunderstanding of specification behind Web Services

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - Web Services - background
Before addressing particular migration issues, it’s important to understand terminology!

JAX-WS 2.0 is current specification supported by JBossWS

• Java API for XML Web Services (JAX-WS)
• Part of Java EE 5

Replacing former specification JAX-RPC

• To reflect move from RPC-style to document-style endpoints

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - Web Services - background
Differences between JAX-RPC and JAX-WS
• Different packages names (do not confused with Java packages!)
• JAX-RPC requires endpoint to extend java.rmi.Remote and can throw
java.rmi.RemoteException
• Change in uses of holder objects (using Java 5 generics)

No matter what specification the main specifications are still in use

• SOAP (version 1.2)
• WSDL (version 2.0)

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - Web Services - background
Document style web services have got following advantages
• No type encoding information
• Schema to be used to validate document
• WS-I compliant

But there is one major drawbacks

• WSDL is getting complicated

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - Web Services - background
More information available online

JBossWS WIKI
http://jbws.dyndns.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Articles_and_Specs

Sun Blog
http://blogs.sun.com/trajesh/entry/migrating_from_jax_rpc_to

IBM JAX-RPC vs JAX-WS Articles

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-tip-jaxwsrpc.html

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - Web Services
Code level changes required for migration follows:

Following requirements for classes participating in Web Services

• Default constructor required (previously only for classes supposed to be
constructed by the remote side)
• Setters/getters required

To prevent problems always create regular Java Beans!

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - Web Services
Major changes related to JBoss specific annotations (extending JSR 181)

Annotation @PortComponent is not supported

• Web context and security related metadata are now set using @WebContext
• Endpoint configuration now specified by @EndpointConfig

To make life a little bit more complicated

• @WebContext changed package from package org.jboss.ws.annotation to
org.jboss.wsf.spi.annotation (in JBossWS 2.0 ~ JBoss AS 4.2.2)

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - Web Services
Before we can continue we have to focus on @WebContext a little bit more.

Automatic derivation of the web context root for the web services has changed
• No longer based on EAR or JAR file name
• Currently derived from class name

If multiple web services are deployed is not able to create single context
• There is no JAX-WS specification how to handle this situation
• Current workaround is to use @WebContext annotation and use single context for
all deployed Web Services within your deployment
@WebContext(contextRoot=“/mywebservices”)

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - Web Services
Changes described affect project build and deployment.

Different problems can occur during integration with existing

• Related to JAXB changes (Java Architecture for XML Binding)

Related to
• Capitalization of names, in newer version is decapitalized (override name with
@XmlType)
• Passing parameters, previously marked as nillable or required by default (specify
maxOccurs=0 or nillable=true or required=true using @XmlType)
• Arrays are special and you can be forced to create special holder class (LongArray
for example)

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - Web Services
Due to problem mentioned earlier, all the changes can be made only as annotations!

Make sure you annotate your classes properly (remember: all participating classes)
• To control if serialization will occur on field or properties use annotation
javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAccessorType

Hopefully XML override will be available soon!

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - JavaServer Faces
Upgraded to reference implementation of JSF 1.2

If your application relies on the default implementation, make following changes:

• Remove previous Unified Expression Language JAR file dependencies from your
application.xml
• If you’re using some components that can’t be pragmatically inserted into strict
xhtml+xml documents, you need to change content type manually to text/html
• New schema to be used for your faces-config.xml
• Remove StartupServletContextListener from web.xml

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
 JBoss AS 4.2 - Conclusion
Upgrade is not complicated, if you follow changes in all related technologies.
• Hopefully this presentation will help you to understand the changes behind it

Upgrading to JBoss 4.2

13/12/2007
BSG Overview
12/14/07