Author: Heinz Wilming

Red Hat JBoss Middleware: A technology stack for IoT-Applications

| Heinz Wilming

JBoss EAP 7 and ActiveMQ Artemis as connector between temperature and humidity and the application architecture

Most IoT-Applications face similar challenges on its way from sensor to final aggregation in terms of usage and, where applicable relaying of data. In this article, we introduce an architecture based on the new Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP) in Version 7 to outline a IoT application as a showcase.

MQTT has certainly become a standard protocol for IoT and in this context the Internet of Things is integrated via MQTT.

One new major update of JBoss EAP 7 is ActiveMQ Artemis as Messaging Broker with support for MQTT as transport protocol. JBoss EAP 7 is our preferred technology, i.a. for IoT architectures because of its outstanding technological capabilities thus facilitating efficient development of scalable and secure applications.

A combined temperature and humidity sensor, the Bosch XDK, and Harting’s Mica Box are used to supply data. It is the MQTT and the JBoss EAP 7 Middleware that connect and build a bridge between this sensor setup and the rest of the world.

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Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7 (JBoss EAP 7) – final release

| Heinz Wilming

A few days ago, Red Hat released the major version 7 of the open source Java EE application server, Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP).

Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP) is the supported and quality assured version of the WildFly application server from the JBoss community.

jboss-eap-wildfly-upstream-history

The JBoss EAP 7 is based on the version 10 of the WildFly application server. In 2013 Red Hat renamed the JBoss AS community project to WildFly to avoid confusion with the JBoss brand which referred to several different things at once, the application server, the JBoss Community, and a range of other JBoss Products.

The main improvements and highlights of the JBoss EAP 7 release

This article focuses on the following main improvements and highlights of the new major release of the JBoss EAP 7:

  • implementation of the new specifications of the Java Enterprise Edition 7
  • enhanced modularity
  • management improvements
  • component updates
  • compatibility and interoperability

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Red Hat JBoss EAP 6.4 now supports Java 1.8 / JDK 8

| Heinz Wilming

A few weeks ago Red Hat release the Red Hat JBoss EAP 6.4.0 Beta1 as tech preview. Featuring many updates, with additional supported and updated database certifications and the EAP 6.4.0 Beta1 including targeted support of Java 8 / JDK 8.

Oracle JDK 8
Oracle Java Platform, Standard Edition 1.8 (JDK 8) has been added to the list of supported configurations.

OpenJDK 8
Support for OpenJDK 8 has been added, but at the moment support is limited to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Try it today!
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JBoss EAP / Wildfly – Three ways to invoke remote EJBs

| Heinz Wilming

The JBoss EAP / Wildfly application server provides as primary API the EJB client library to invoke remote EJB components. This client library is the implementation of the WildFly application server to invoke EJB components. The lookup of an object, such as a JMS connection factory, from the naming service is with the EJB client library not possible. For this purpose the remote naming implementation can be used. It can handle lookups of objects from the naming service. Both libraries can be used through the InitialContext of the JNDI API.

This post introduces three ways to configure the InitialContext to lookup and invoke EJB components, describes the pro and cons of each approach and introduces a combination of both libraries.

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JBoss EAP / Wildfly Management Interfaces and Clients

| Heinz Wilming

The JBoss EAP / Wildfly provides a powerful concept for management, configuration, and monitoring of the application server itself and its Java EE applications.

In the previous post we focused on some useful runtime metrics, which are of interest when monitoring your application server and applications. This post introduces the management clients provided by the JBoss EAP / Wildfly Application Server to manage and configure server instances.

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Monitoring the JBoss EAP / Wildfly Application Server with the Command Line Interface (CLI)

| Heinz Wilming

The JBoss EAP / Wildfly provides a powerful concept for management, configuration and monitoring of the JBoss Application Server itself and its Java EE Applications. The concept is based on the detyped management API. All management clients of the application server use this detyped management API to interact with the server.

In this post we focus on some useful runtime metrics which are of interest when monitoring your application server and application with the Command Line Interface (CLI).

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Secure JSF Application – why you should always define a servlet mapping

| Heinz Wilming

If you deploy a JSF application in WildFly 8, you can omit to define the JSF serlvet mapping. In this case three default mappings will be active out of the box.

  • <context-root>/faces/*
  • <context-root>/*.jsf
  • <context-root>/*.faces

Tested on WildFly 8.0.0.CR1 and JBoss EAP 6.2.0.GA

This behavior is not mentioned in the JSF 2.1 spec. But it explicitly allows implementations to use proprietary means to invoke the JSF lifecycle.

In addition to FacesServlet, JSF implementations may support other ways to invoke the JavaServer Faces request processing lifecycle, but applications that rely on these mechanisms will not be portable.

This default mapping can be problematic as it provides several path to access resources within your web application. Especially if you use security constraints to protect parts of your application. For instance if you restrict access to <context-root>/secure/* using a security constraint in your web.xml, web resources can still be accessed via <context-root>/faces/.
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Upgrading and patching the Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP)

| Heinz Wilming

One of the biggest advantages, besides the support for the Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Middleware are the access to continuous updates and bug fixes. In previous versions, minor patches could not be applied automatically, also updates or bug fixes had to be installed manually, by changing individual configuration files and replacing Java Archives.

Since version 6.2 the Command Line Interface of the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP) contains a command to apply minor updates and patches without changing individual files manually.

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