JBOSS

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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Maintainable Rich Web Applications with AngularJS – Part 2

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In the last post we used a demo application to discuss the development of maintainable Rich Web Applications with AngularJS. We introduced the most important concepts: The Model View Controller pattern and its application, the extension of HTML using directives and the routing concept to define the navigation between views.

This post explains how to integrate AngularJS into a build process based on Maven and shows how to develop automated unit tests and end-to-end tests for AngularJS applications.

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Configuration of the EAP6 / JBoss AS7 with CLI scripts

| Heinz Wilming

The JBoss EAP6 and AS7 supports different approaches to mange server configurations. One approach is the command line interface (CLI). It is based on the De-Typed Management API and allows the execution of management operations. The CLI has support for CLI scripts with management and configuration operations that can be executed in a non-interactive mode.

In this post we want to introduce two ways of using CLI scripts to manage server configurations.

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Maintainable Rich Web Applications with AngularJS – Part 1

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Compared to Thin Web Applications, Rich Web Applications imply a higher grade of client-side functionality and complexity as opposed to the server-side. The user interface of a typical Thin Client architecture is server-generated (per page), while rich clients are complete applications running in a web browser. This allows for user interfaces that are more user-friendly, more performant and offline-enabled. Such characteristics, offline capability in particular, are especially important for mobile applications.

HTML5 has established itself as an alternative to solutions like Flash, Java Applets and Silverlight. Compared to proprietary products it offers an open and platform-independent technology standard. Here, HTML and CSS describe the static structure as well as the design of the user interface, while the client-side dynamics is implemented using new HTML5-APIs and JavaScript.

The development of Rich Web Clients using HTML and JavaScript is complicated by maintainability problems though, as the combination of HTML and JavaScript alone offers no possibility to modularize and test the client in a clean fashion. AngularJS considers itself to be an HTML extension dealing with this problem in order to enable the development of maintainable JavaScript-/HTML based Rich Web Applications.

This blog post series introduces the JavaScript framework AngularJS. This first post explains the essential concepts of AngularJS, like the application of the Model View Controller pattern, the extension of HTML by so-called directives as well as the routing concept. In the second post, we will show the integration of unit and end-to-end tests as well as embedding those into a Maven build process.
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JGroups & Cloud issues when clustering the EAP 6 – AS 7

| Immanuel Sims

As announced this is the last post of our series about clustering of the Redhat EAP 6 and JBoss AS 7. The other posts of this series were

Overview

This post will dig deeper into the clustering mechanisms of the EAP 6 and JBoss AS 7. We will show different solutions to multicast problems you will get in most cloud networks as well as some other networks. Infinispan uses JGroups to do its cluster communication. Cluster communication here means multiple things: finding other cluster nodes, providing a reliable transfer, implementing multicast communication even if there is no IP multicast available, identifying dead cluster nodes and a little bit more. In fact JGroups is able to do a lot more but Infinispan does not need all of the opportunities JGroups offers. The upcoming HornetQ version 2.3 which will be included in the EAP 6.1 will use JGroups for server discovery too. This post will explain the basic principles of JGroups and how to configure it in different network setups, especially most cloud networks.

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Clustering of the messaging subsystem HornetQ in JBoss AS7 and EAP 6

| Immanuel Sims

In the recent posts of this series we talked about many different aspects of clustering for the JBoss AS 7 and its quality assured version EAP 6, such as:

Until now, there is one important thing we have not covered yet: clustering of the messaging subsystem. The EAP 6 as well as the AS 7 uses HornetQ as default messaging provider. In this post we want to give an overview about the clustering abilities of HornetQ and explain how to use the various clustering features in combination with the EAP 6 or respectively the JBoss AS 7. We implemented a simple JMS client application to demonstrate the HornetQ clustering abilities.

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Descriptor property substitution in EAP6 and JBoss AS7

| Heinz Wilming

Motivation

In a software development process, there are usually multiple environments, such as development, test and production, etc. The development team usually provides the QA users a test version before acceptance and production, as illustrated below.
deployment chain in development
If, however, the application contains assumptions about the environment, this chain is broken. Therefore it is good practice, for the deployment to make no assumptions about the target environment. A good way to achieve this is that the application servers provide the environment specific configurations of the application, such as datasource configuration or integration of other Enterprise Information Systems (EIS). But this is often not so easy.

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Load-balancing and failover of remote EJB clients in EAP6 and JBoss AS7

| Heinz Wilming

In the recent posts of this series about the clustering capabilities of the JBoss EAP6 and the AS7, we covered the basic concepts, managing cluster nodes in domain mode and scalable HA cluster topologies. This post will be about clustering capabilities for remote EJB clients. We will explain how to cluster EJB components and invoke them from a standalone remote client with client-side failover and load balancing.

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