Need to deploy based on a metamodel

[bill.burke]

We need to change our deployment mechanisms to be focused on an object metamodel rather than a mismash of annotations and a metamodel. The idea of using annotations as a metamodel was interesting but a failure.

Why do we need to do this? Well, in JBoss 5, different layers will need to be able to override/modify deployment metadata. For example, EAR metadata may introduce security role mappings or a default security domain. Another reason is that the profile service may want to override and serialize an object model so that a management tool can change metadata at runtime.

Once we get the current deployers ported and working for the JBoss 5 model, we need to go back and refactor things.

Bill

[anil.saldhana]

I have an immediate need in that if the user has configured specific rolename-principals mapping in jboss-app.xml, then those need to be picked up by ejb3 metamodel.

These security role mappings get merged in the ejb21 and web meta data world. But the ejb3 meta model (based on independent JBossXB) is not doing the merge. The metadata parsed for the ear (J2EEApplicationMetaData) is available to the EJB3 deployment, but it is not using it.

A concern I have is that due to this merge (J2EEApplicationMetaData->security Roles) into the ejb3 AssemblyDescriptor ->security roles, there will be a link between ejb3 metamodel and the old org.jboss.metadata due to the use of J2EEApplicationMetaData/SecurityRoleMetaData. I know the original intent of ejb3 metamodel was not to use the old metadata infrastructure for ejb21/web.

I guess since this is all temporary and there will be an effort for an unified metadata from either Adrian or Bill, I am adding this change.

[starksm64]

I did merge the org.jboss.metamodel used by the ejb3 web tier components into the org.jboss.metadata model. This certainly could be done elsewhere. The concern is how to reuse the ejb3 deployer when it needs to be integrated with legacy jboss-4.0.x servers.

[bill.burke]

I thought Adrian was rewriting the ejb3/javaee metamodel? What happened with this?