Hi!
We are observing random NullPointerExceptions when our application is under heavy load. The NPE happens in the Javassist class RuntimeSupport$DefaultMethodHandler which is called from a proxy:
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at javassist.util.proxy.RuntimeSupport$DefaultMethodHandler.invoke(RuntimeSupport.java:37)
at at.co.xss.fdb.ui.admin.StaffManager_$$_javassist_seam_32.setPerformRefresh(StaffManager_$$_javassist_seam_32.java)
Research showed, that this NPE was related to a bug in Javassist (JASSIST-66) that was reported and fixed 3 years ago! (Note, that there may be other fixed bugs like JASSIST-97 that may also cause troubles.)
Unfortunately Seam brings it's own copy of Javassist's ProxyFactory: org.jboss.seam.util.ProxyFactory. It seems bug-fixes from Javassist didn't make it into Seam's copy of the class :(
You can verify that Seam's class is used in favour for Javassist's class by having a look at the name of the generated class. Classes generated by Javassist have names like some.package.MyClass_$$_javassist_xx, while classes generated by Seam's version of the ProxyFactory are named some.package.MyClass_$$_javassist_seam_xx. Note the additional seam
in the name!
A search showed, that some others are observing the same problems, but so far nobody seems to care about the problem. I'm going to create a Bugreport in Seam's JIRA and will link back to it here when done.
hth,
- martin
