the right choice ?

[nitm]

hi,

this is a very general question, regarding a lot of JBoss products.
we want to set up a server for development purposes, we are very new to this whole server business.
this so called "server" is a regular pc running a windows xp os, connected to a 5MB adsl connection with a fixed ip address.

after a lot of searching and reading we found that the JBoss products are right for us since we want the server to run mainly on java.
we installed the JBoss AS 4.2.2 and we're having a lot of hard time configuring it to work the way we want (you can search for my username and see a lot of posts all over the jboss forums).
since we probably made a lot of false configuring we think that it might be smart to start over now that we know a bit more (though not enough).

the problem is that there's a new jboss AS now and so our question is this:
should we go with the JBoss AS 5 or the 4.2.x ?
the 4.2.x have more documentation and more examples so it will probably be easier to configure BUT we saw that the 5.x has major differences and so it might be foolish to start with something that will be deprecated soon.

our goal is a server that will have the following features:
- J2EE support (including EJBs)
- MySql database as the jboss datasource
- hibernate
- php for the "view" part of our application
- a version control software (like subversion)
- ftp access (does this have anything to do with the jboss at all?)

in addition we might want to use JBoss Cache, Mobicents and probably a few more JBoss products (including the JBoss Tools).

how should we go about this?
thanks, nitzan.

[peterj]

The question of 5.0 versus 4.2.x, is whether you are willing to put up with the pain of working on beta and the release candidate software. So far the road to 5.0 has been bumpy, and very long and drawn out (beta1 came out Dec 2006, beta 2 in May(?), and now is beta3). When 5.0 GA comes out is anyone's guess. And then there are the growing pains as a lot of the plumbing moves from a JMX kernel architecture to the pojo microcontainer. Personally, If I have to put a product in the first half of 2008, I would go with 4.2.x.

As far as you laundry list, either 4.2.x or 5.0 will fit the bill (you never said what version of EJB you are interested in, but both 4.2.x and 5.0 have EJB3)

Finally, I think you need to go back and read the End User License Agreement (EULA) that you agreed to when you installed Windows XP. It specifically states that you can have at most 10 incoming connections to a machine running XP. So unless you are hosting a web app for a very small office (10 people or less), you will need to look into Windows Server (or Linux, which is a heck of a lot cheaper).

[nitm]

hey again peter, and thanks!

we decided to go with the 4.2.2 for now and migrate when the 5 is more stable and documented, thanks for reassuring us.

we still dont know which version of EJB we want to use, but we'll probably go with the EJB3.

the "we" that i use every once and a while refers to 2 people (me and my partner) and since the server which runs the XP is for development purposes i really don't think that we'll exceed to 10 connections limit...
the only reason we are using XP is that it already came with the computer we're using for a server... if and when we'll need more connections we'll probably have more money to invent in this whole thing so we'll upgrade everything... and we'll probably wont stay with a microsoft os since we dont intend to use any microsoft product for the server...

thanks.