Features/JBossAS7

= JBossAS7 =



Summary
JBoss Application Server 7 (http://www.jboss.org/jbossas) is a fast, lighweight and modular Java EE application server. A subset of the full Java EE functionality will be provided.

Owner

 * Name: Marek Goldmann


 * Email: mgoldman@redhat.com

Current status

 * Targeted release: Fedora 17
 * Last updated: 2012-04-02
 * Percentage of completion: 95%

Detailed packaging status is maintained on separate wiki page.

Detailed Description
JBoss AS 7 is fast, modular, lightweight, elegantly adminstratable, compliant Java EE application server with easily usable test features.

Fast
In the highly optimized boot process of AS 7, services are started concurrently to eliminate unnecessary waits and to tap into the power of multi-core processors. Non-critical services are kept on ice until first use.

Subsequent boots shave additional time by leveraging cached or indexed metadata.

As a result, AS 7 offers a 10-fold reduction in startup time over previous versions and even gives Jetty and Tomcat a run for their money.

Modular
Hierarchical classloaders are problematic, often causing failed deployments and quirky behavior. The time has come to say goodbye to the parent delegation model and find the path to modularity (i.e. sane classloading).

AS 7 does classloading right. It uses JBoss Modules to provide true application isolation, hiding server implementation classes from the application and only loading the classes your application needs. Modules, packaged as collections of classes, are peers that remain isolated unless explicitly defined as a dependency of another module. Visibility rules have sensible defaults, yet can be customized.

Lightweight
AS 7 takes an aggressive approach to memory management to minimize garbage collector pauses, only loads JAR files it needs and uses indexed metadata over full parses. All this keeps the memory footprint exceptionally small.

These optimizations enable AS 7 to run with stock JVM settings and on small devices. It also leaves more headroom for application data and supports higher scalability.

Elegant Administation
Rather than sending you on a wild goose chase to change a setting in the application server, configuration in AS 7 is centralized, simple and user-focused. The configuration file is based on a straightforward domain model that you can easily comprehend and no internal wiring is exposed.

The centralized configuration also unifies management. The same configuration file can be used for multiple servers in domain mode. In contrast, standalone mode controls a single instance, similar to how previous versions of JBoss AS were launched.

Strict Compliance
JBoss has always been committed to application portability to prevent vendor lock-in. That's why we've made AS 7 Java EE 6 Full Profile certified. But we didn't stop there!

AS 7 boasts an internal test suite based on Arquillian that achieves even more strict compliance to the portability expectations of our community of users.

As long as your application is Java EE compliant, you should expect it to run on AS 7. If you can't, it may be an indication that your application has portability problems.

Easily Testable
From the very start, AS 7 has been designed with testability in mind. The secret to that fidelity is Arquillian: a component model for integration tests that execute inside the real runtime environment.

By removing the clutter from your tests and handling deployment and test execution, Arquillian enables you to write tests for just about any use case your application encounters: real tests.

Thanks to the speed of AS 7, Arquillian tests run nearly as fast as unit tests.

Benefit to Fedora
Allow to run full Java EE applications on one of the most popular Java application servers.

The side benefit of having AS 7 in Fedora is that with the many Java libraries packaged - Fedora could be the best foundation for Java developers.

Scope
The moving goal is to package latest available JBoss AS version 7.1. Current work is based on version 7.1.CR1b.

There are a lot of Java libraries that need to be packaged to achieve this feature completness in 100%. Between 100 and 200 new packages must be added. It's hard to estimate the total count, as there are many build-time depndencies that are not a hard requirement to build the package, for example various test frameworks.

JBoss AS has a modular architecture. This means that not all modules (version 7.1.CR1b has 56 modules) are required to run AS 7. The core of AS 7 can be run with abut 15 modules and be extended later on with new features like Java Transaction API or Enterprise Java Beans.

How To Test
No system preparation besides installing JBoss AS is required.

yum install jboss-as

JBoss AS documentation provides many quickstarts that can be used to check if the server works properly.

User Experience
TBD

Dependencies
The oVirt management interface requires AS 7.

Contingency Plan
Although the dependency tree is very large - it doesn't affect the Fedora community in case of a partial submission. The result of such submission would be that some of the AS 7 features would be simply not available where other would work properly. In such case all mising features will be documented.

Documentation
Upstream has a very good documentation.

Release Notes
TBD

Comments and Discussion

 * See Talk:Features/JBossAS7