Design Discussion

Goals / Requirements

• Simple Configuration file defining which “modules” should be included
  • only deploy what the user wants
  • e.g. <i-want /> ejb3, web and clustering

• Embedded integration

• The configuration should be:
  • easy to use (clear, domain specific)
  • documented
  • explicit (don't include all modules)
    

• Get started with modularizing AS
  • clearer picture on what our dependencies are
  • stricter AS integration requirements

• Separate user configuration from server side configuration

• ship AS with empty deployers/ and deploy/ folders
  • get rid of the “big ball of mud”

• get rid of ${common.lib} (asap)

• reduce distribution size
  

Packaging changes (AS6)

Instead of duplicating deployments in each configuration jboss-deployments will be moved to a common location - in a structure like:

• bin/ (not affected)
• client/ (not affected)
• docs/ (not affected)
• lib/ (maybe move to system/?)
• server/
  
  • ${server.name}/ (preconfigured all, default, web, ...)
    • conf/
      • server.xml (the user configuration file)
      • no bootstrap/ any more
    • deploy/ (empty)
    • deployers/ (empty)
    • lib/ (empty)
      

• system (new)
  
  • common-lib/ (if still needed)
  • profiles/
    
    • containing *-profile.xml (servers side profile configurations)
  • repository (if we want to do smth. Like that?)
    
    • org/jboss/**/** (local maven like artifact repository)
    • artifact.xml (explicit repository configuration)
  • static
    
    • static file repository (containing jboss-beans.xml)
  • templates
    
    • to create server configurations? Basically only containing conf/

Types of "profiles"

In general ProfileService defines 2 different types of profiles.

• Scanner profile
  • the AS4/AS5 notion of scanning a folder and deploying everything in there
    • e.g. deployers/ and deploy/
      

• Pre-defined profile (@see server-side configuration example)
  

  • A “predefined-profile” is more like a (sub-)profile and can be compared with a module, with higher level (more coarse grained) module dependencies.

  • It more or less defines:
    • a group of preconfigured deployments, which are deployed together and build a "deployment-phase"
    • a set of requirments/capabilities
    • additional management capabilities (in future)

In gernal profile descriptors have to be self-contained, in that profiles can be combined and the result is a complete description of the capabilities and requirements. Therefore a "predefined-profile" is a module description, defining which deployments have to be deployed to provide a certain service.

AS6UserConfigurationExample

AS6ServerSideConfiguration