Is there any significant performance enhancement from JBoss

[arthurchn]

Hi,

We are considering migrating from JBoss 4.2.3GA to 5.0.1GA and now are in evaluation phase.
In one tech chat with Sacha Labourey on DZone (http://java.dzone.com/videos/tech-chat-sacha-labourey-jboss), we noticed some exciting statement about the new transaction engine in JBoss 5 as below:

We also included the new transaction monitor engine as part of the app server. If you remember back in 2004 or 2005 - I think it was back in 2005 - we acquired the Arjuna Transaction Monitor both from Arjuna and Hewlett-Packard.

Now, we have integrated those components as part of the application server. This transaction engine is rock solid. It has more than 20 years of expertise in transaction management. It was the first JTA and the first JTS transaction management implementation on the market. So, we have amazing expertise there.

It is also extremely fast. It provides again JTA and JTS behavior. That is going to be a pretty important change, especially for the banking industry.

This looks fantastic and we are very interested in this enhancement. Unfortunately we couldn't find any detailed description of this enhancement except for this tech chat.

I checked release notes of JBoss TS (4.2, 4.2.3.Sp7, 4.3GA, 4.4GA and 4.6) and found some great features enhancement and bug fixing there. BUT nothing about the performance improvement. :(

From the release notes we knew that coming with JBoss 4.2.3GA is the JBoss TS v4.2.3.SP7 while 5.0.1GA is accompanied with JBoss TS 4.4.0GA.

So my first question is, does the term "GA" means 4.4.0GA is a more mature release than v4.2.3.SP7 ?
Besides of that, could anybody here help me clarify the performance enhancement on JBoss TS in JBoss AS 5?

Best regards,
Arthur

[jhalliday]

> So my first question is, does the term "GA" means 4.4.0GA is a more mature release than v4.2.3.SP7 ?

GA releases are basically x.x.0 ones - the first stable, fully tested release for a particular version. The SP (service pack) releases are bug fixes to the same line. 4.2.3.SP7 is the 7th community bug fix release on the 4.2.3.GA base. In so far as 4.4.0.GA has all the relevant fixes from the 4.2.3.SP line and a bunch of new stuff too, it is more mature. On the other hand 4.4. has been out in the world for less time and there may be new issues we've not spotted and squished yet. By the way, you should prefer AS 5.1.0 which uses JBossTS 4.6.1 rather than the 5.0.1 release.

The big changes in the transaction system as far as the app server is concerned are the introduction of full support for the JTS and XTS. We do keep an eye on performance, both between our own releases and relative to alternative products, but it's not our main focus for this release. Of course the performance of the app server is also affected by changes in other components, such as the EJB container and JCA. The only way you are going to know for sure how things have changed is to run the same app in both versions of the server and see what happens. Drop by the performance tuning forum if you have specific questions.

[arthurchn]

Thank you very much for quick response, the information is very useful!
I am also reading posts in performance tuning forum. :-)

Best wishes.