JDK environment

[susan.deaves]

Can any one point me at some information regarding jboss 2.4.* & jboss3* and the JDK (JDK 1.3 * & 1.4*) enviroment required by them. Also any issues,bugs commnets etc. Also whether jboss* requires the java runtime or full jdk to run and support web applicaitions?
Thanks

[jonlee]

JBoss 2.4.x and 3.x will run with the 1.3 distribution upwards. We've run JBoss on IBM AIX using the IBM JRE 1.3.1 (in parallel with WAS 5.0) with our range of J2EE applications.

You'll only need the JDK if you are running a servlet container (Tomcat/Jetty) with JSPs. The reason being that the container will compile the JSPs into Java byte code to run in the container.

JBoss 2.4.x doesn't have any major EJB issues, and is completely stable. We have noticed some transaction warning messages (related to what seems to be the container's connection management) with the later 2.4.x releases although this has not translated into any data problems.

It would be better to work with 3.2.x as this will have free support here in the forums. I suspect 3.0.x will still have support for some time to come while people are still running production instances. 2.4.x is probably fading in its free support base. Check the FAQs for any other issues.

[susan.deaves]

Thanks for information about jsp's that clarifies that issue for me, however we are wanting to use some functionality which is only available with JDK1.4*, we are wondering if this wil impact on our current environment of jboss2.4/jdk1.3; whether we should change this to jboss 2.4/jdk1.4 or jboss3.1/jdk1.4. Any information of this please?

Thanks

[afernandez]

Hi! I'm using JBoss 3.0.4/JDK 1.4.1. I tried JDK 1.3.x but I was a problem with XML classes and libraries. JDK 1.4 works fine with JBoss 3.0.4 and 3.0..6

[jonlee]

If you need to use some features from JDK 1.4.x then JBoss 2.4.x will run fine on this - we ran this with 2.4.x for most of last year without any problems. The only issues you will have is if you want to run your code on other containers.

For example, WebSphere AS 5.0 currently comes with the IBM JDK 1.3 that guarantees stable operation of WebSphere. That caused a problem for us and we had to retrofit 1.3 compliant code. But that should be your only problem. The JDK/JRE 1.4.x has advantages with the IO and other performance boosts.

I'd be interest to find out whether the 1.3 problems were due to missing classes that need to be downloaded or whether there are any real 1.4.x dependencies.

The JBoss 3.x stuff handles missing data source pools better and the organisation is much better for configuration. For example, the container will actually start up even if the database has gone missing. In 2.4.x, the container used to hang if the pool was not created because the database could not be connected.