8 hours lost due to missing info in the documentation

[stupiddog]

I recently bought the "JBoss Administration and DevelopmentThird Edition (3.2.x Series)" PDF document. Today, I got authentication errors when trying to deploy my first MDB. After eight hours and endless searching through the forums, I found out that I need the mdb-user and mdb-passwd elements in my jboss.xml descriptor. The book tells me about security and JMS configuration, but misses this very important bit of imformation. Thanks to that, I lost eight hours of work till I got this problem solved. Thanks, documentation team. ;(

[bryanerank]

"bryanerank" wrote:
I see there is a new book due out..

Core JBoss 3.X: J2EE Application Development and Deployment
by Wellie Chao (Author) (Paperback)

I've got the money to purchase it, or the "official" jboss doc. I want to help support the effort, but after reading the quick start (guideQuickStart-30x.pdf), I had the urge to correct a bunch of casual errors, generate a new PDF, and read it again. The worst part was I couldn't trust when I was wrong vs. when the doc had an error anymore. Seems like the doc should be smarter than StupidDog and me. Shouldn't it?

Anyone that's been through the learning curve provide a little insight? Suck it up and deal with it, by the Chao book, move on to SUN, or WS?

Websphere has better documentation and support. Maybe you need to go there. Jboss is a sink or swim product. If you can't figure it out, you are sunk, unless you purchase a support contract to get help. The docs you pay for don't even tell you how to define a remote queue....

[trugbild]

Oh, Mr Fleury himself.
I work with jboss for about 1 1/2 years. After a phase of euphoria at the beginning, I became more and more frustrated.

No, jboss sure is not a free product. You can tell whatever you want, to call it "free" is just something like a marketing gag. We not only need the documentation, but also a support contract - which is really expensive.

You could expect the documentation to be good, then. But it isn't. It has uncountable lacks of information - and this forum is not half as good as you promise it in all the forewords...

I could be part of it? Sure: if I want to write a free documentation, I have the problems that a lot of important parts of jboss get changed from version to version. I'm pretty sure you do that to avert free and complete documentation to make your customers buy the documents.
And I sure will not work free on something I have to pay!!!

And this forum sure is another alibi-support-plattform. I surfed here for hours and hours and didn't get the information I need - either it is dated or you get only half of the answer.

Sorry, but I definitly disadvise using jboss.
Perhaps it's quite good - but I don't have the time to step through the whole source code and I don't want to spend oodles of money for support contracts for a product which is so-called "free".

[marc.fleury]

I get this output for both true and false for this line in jboss-service.xml:

requireSTARTTLSfalse

Is that the right property you were referring to? Maybe there's another I missed?


22:07:10,979 DEBUG [CmdSTARTTLS] STARTTLS command handler called
[junit] res was 220 Ready to start TLS
[junit] Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Time elapsed: 4.997 sec
[junit] Output:
[junit] configureMBeanServerFactory
[junit] not returning from allready run
[junit] got the server impl
[junit] done setting up properties
[junit] 22:07:08,084 WARN [Server] Caught Throwable Error, this probably means we've already set the URLStreamHAndlerFactory before

[stupiddog]

I just took a look at the jboss_3_2.dtd. In there, I can see that the mdb... elements exist, but they are not documented either.

[npdavis]

"bryanerank" wrote:
I see there is a new book due out..

Core JBoss 3.X: J2EE Application Development and Deployment
by Wellie Chao (Author) (Paperback)

I've got the money to purchase it, or the "official" jboss doc. I want to help support the effort, but after reading the quick start (guideQuickStart-30x.pdf), I had the urge to correct a bunch of casual errors, generate a new PDF, and read it again. The worst part was I couldn't trust when I was wrong vs. when the doc had an error anymore. Seems like the doc should be smarter than StupidDog and me. Shouldn't it?

Anyone that's been through the learning curve provide a little insight? Suck it up and deal with it, by the Chao book, move on to SUN, or WS?

Websphere has better documentation and support. Maybe you need to go there. Jboss is a sink or swim product. If you can't figure it out, you are sunk, unless you purchase a support contract to get help. The docs you pay for don't even tell you how to define a remote queue....

[pilhuhn]

Websphere definitively needs better documenatation. So better documentation is not really a pro for Websphere.

[acoliver]

Thanks, documentation team. ;(

guys...I'm assuming you're members of the JBoss user community and not customers. Therefore it can be stated that you are part of the documentation team. If this assumption is wrong, then accept my appologies and send me an email, I'll put you in touch with your support representative who can help set you up on the case management system.

If my assumption is correct, and you feel the documentation is lacking, please fix it, send patches, or contribute some: http://jboss.org/wiki. If that doesn't float your boat then you'll just have to pay money for documentation. If you feel the (FREE) community support is lacking, then by all means please step up and participate in it more heavily. If you feel unable to do that, then purchase support. I believe in open source (especially JBoss) and that it has an increadible value proposition, I don't believe in "free beer".

Help me write it here: http://jboss.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=ConfigureXXXForMessageDrivenBean

Thanks for your continued support,
-Andy

[dhartford]

Jboss is great, gives people an opportunity to learn, develop, and then deploy J2EE without spending the big bucks on the other guys...but....

I do agree the present lack of documentation, and the lack of consolidation of what are some great examples by non-jboss people, is frustrating when (as the title points out) you spend hours to figure out how to do something trivial.

Me, I keep all my code, all my configs, and all my jboss versions for every project I do for reference, as well as a stack of PRINTED website examples/snippets and zipped folders of other peoples examples. Even then, One example/snippet with XDoclet I have to work-around to merge in someone elses hand-written code/config and then combine with ANT/Maven/Netbeans/Eclipse.

Personally, I would recommend some standard configuration documentation, but then support dev-environment-based support sites with examples that are consistent across all the dev-environments.
http://java.sun.com/developer/releases/petstore/
http://xpetstore.sourceforge.net/

Here is J2EE.
Here is J2EE w/ Xdoclet.
Here is J2EE w/ Xdoclet on JBoss.
Here is J2EE/.NET w/ Xdoclet on JBoss with JBoss-IDE and Jboss-net-xdoclet.
Any questions?

[bwallis42]

As an owner of the jboss all docs subscription (hang on, it expired last month, must resubscribe, thanks for reminding me :-) I feel I must comment

I have found the documentation plus the absolutely fabulous support that I get from the forums and mailing list to be far superior to any (so called) commercial support that I have had to pay big bucks for in the past (I'd love to mention names but shouldn't).

But with something as complex as a J2EE server it really does come down to knowing the product as well as you are able to be productive with it. If I have a problem that the doco doesn't help with, then I do have the forums and that extra advantage of an open source server: I *have* the source and it is great quality and not that hard to follow.

As to loosing 8 hours on what seems like a simple (in hindsight) problem, all I can say is '"Welcome to software development".

It happens. I've been doing this for 25 years and it still happens. Having the source at least gives me a fighting chance!

[trugbild]

PS: ...and if you report forum-bugs, you just get the answer "report it to a nuke-forum".
Nobody @jboss seems to be interested in having a working forum.

[juha]

"ppu" wrote:

No, jboss sure is not a free product. You can tell whatever you want, to call it "free" is just something like a marketing gag. We not only need the documentation, but also a support contract - which is really expensive.

1) No one is forcing you to pay for either
2) You have misunderstood what the term 'free' means in free software. In French (and other Latin and shemic languages), the distinction is simpler, because the word free can be translated as gratuit (no cost, gratis in Latin) or libre (free of restrictions). JBoss is latter. It can be argued that no software is ever 'gratis'.

"ppu" wrote:

and this forum is not half as good as you promise it in all the forewords...

I of course disagree completely. These forums are really really good. Although I haven't found the alias 'ppu' to make any attempt at contributing to them.

"ppu" wrote:

I'm pretty sure you do that to avert free and complete documentation to make your customers buy the documents.

*sarcasm* Of course, we spend all our time planning of new ways to make things harder to use. Obviously, that must be true *sarcasm*

"ppu" wrote:

I surfed here for hours and hours and didn't get the information I need

Too bad for you. I sometimes spend hours and hours on Google and still don't get the information I need. Those bastards!

Perhaps it's quite good - but I don't have the time to step through the whole source code and I don't want to spend oodles of money for support contracts

So you want someone else to spend the time to find the answer for you. Now please explain to me why would anyone want to help you for free? You bitch to us for asking a payment for the time we spend to help -- when just seconds earlier you made it clear how *YOU* will *NEVER* do any work for free. You are a contradiction incarnate.

PS: ...and if you report forum-bugs, you just get the answer "report it to a nuke-forum". Nobody @jboss seems to be interested in having a working forum.

No, you should report it to Sourceforge bug tracker. That's what it is for. And we are a lot more interested in creating this forum software than you are.

[petino]

Yeah, good point. I would advise you go for more "commercial" appserver.

I agree:

1. documentation:
- good for newbies who have lots of time to read same paragraphs multiple times
- not good because it is always outdated (subscribed 3/4 years ago, got 2 updates :-( and last one for 3.2.2)

2. forums:
- myself I am unable to login in. My username/password combination is valid however after login I need to login, this goes forever...
[this one is resolved! wrong combination of using frames/Hotmail, cookies, and cookie-only authentication on www.jboss.org]

[juha]

"petino" wrote:

- myself I am unable to login in.

how did you log in to post this?