My Test Drive on JBoss AS 6.0.0

Took a test drive of JBoss 6.0.0 this weekend, thought would be nice to summarize my observation (with the background of using JBoss 4.3.0 version for my current projects).

JBoss 6.x.x is a re-architecture of JBoss 4.x with new the kernal (JBoss Microcontainer). Good news for application developers not much of change to the folder structure with exception of few new configuration files & some old ones were moved around.

High Lights

1. Default support to Java EE 6.0 Specification support.
2. JSF 2.0 support with integration with Bean Validation (JSR-303)
3. CDI (Contexts and Dependency Injection) JSR - 299 , Weld is JBoss project to support CDI.
   
4. Hornet MQ is the default & recommended messaging infrastructure.
5. New Apache CXF-based JBossWS stack.
6. JBoss Embedded AS
   
7. New Admin-Console to ease the server administration.
   

Admin-Console

1. New Admin-Console is a refresher, user friendly with tree based navigatio.
2. Lot of resembles to Weblogic Admin console :), never mind it does the purpose.
3. All configuration parameters are persisted for good, unlike the JBoss 4.* version.
4. "Service Binding Manager" Component externalizes all port configuration for a given/running profile. This saves lot of time fiddling with the raw .xml files :) as in 4.3.0.
5. Applications (.war, .ear) can be added/updated dynamically using the console.
6. Queues & Topic can be added dynamically using the console.
7. Database connection pools can be added dynamically using the console.
   
8. You have provision to restart/start/shutdown the server using the admin console.
9. Very detailed Garbage Collector / Memory pool info on the console.
   
10. The Metric tab for every component provides you useful statistics/metrics an the component. Ex: Selecting a queue provides (Message count, consumer count etc.)
    

JMX-CONSOLE

1. JMX-CONSOLE is still available, but with a new look & feel.

Others

1. Jboss VFS (Virtual File System), help yourself reading this article to understand.
   
2. Jboss Web is the default webserver offering from JBoss 5.x.x, build on top of Tomcat.
   
3. Felt the Server startup & Shutdown is slower than 4.3.0 GA :( hoping minor tweaks should take care of it.
   
4. Couldn't find any documentation on migration from 4.3.0 to 6.0.0, will keep looking...

Reference
Jason Greene - What's new in JBoss AS 6.0.0
Admin Console user guide
www.jboss.org
www.java.dzone.com