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    JBoss Java EE 6 certification survey

    stuart_wildcat

      Based on the discussion in another thread I think there are very different opinions out there on whether JBoss Application Server should be certified for the full Java EE 6 profile or just the web profile, as is currently the plan.

       

      To help collect some constructive thoughts on this I figured I would start a survey.  This is not an official RedHat/JBoss survey but just something to find out what the opinion of the community is about Java EE 6 certification.

       

      You can take the survey here:

      http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZM3MTXX

       

      Once I collect a sample of responses I will see if I can post them back to the forum to continue the discussion.

       

      Thanks,

      Stuart Smith

        • 1. JBoss Java EE 6 certification survey
          henk53

          There were some 150 people or so who responded to the survey, but it seems something strange has happened as the survey has been reset to 0 now?

           

          Anyway, the numbers I remember were most people were surprised (some 60 to 70%), and most people where willing to wait between 0 and 6 months. Also most people wanted both AS and EAP to be certified, and quite some amount of people where "somewhat likely to switch".

           

          Hope you are able to retrieve the data or that it's just a temporary glitch, otherwise it would be a shame of all the trouble people went through participating.

          • 2. JBoss Java EE 6 certification survey
            stuart_wildcat

            henk de boer wrote:

             

            There were some 150 people or so who responded to the survey, but it seems something strange has happened as the survey has been reset to 0 now?

             

            Anyway, the numbers I remember were most people were surprised (some 60 to 70%), and most people where willing to wait between 0 and 6 months. Also most people wanted both AS and EAP to be certified, and quite some amount of people where "somewhat likely to switch".

             

            Hope you are able to retrieve the data or that it's just a temporary glitch, otherwise it would be a shame of all the trouble people went through participating.

            I had some trouble logging in to the survey but I now see all the results are there.  I'll post more details later (after work) but I think the trends you point out are accurate.

             

            Thanks,

            Stuart

            • 3. JBoss Java EE 6 certification survey
              stuart_wildcat

              Turns out the survey is popular enough that now the results are being "held hostage" unless I upgrade my account from the free type.

               

              I'm leaning that way anyway so I can share the full results and perhaps get some good ways to chart/post the results.  If people keep responding to the survey that will be even more reason! 

               

              I will wait until upgrading and getting access to the full results before suggesting the trends but there do seem to be some interesting results that indicate this is a topic of interest to JBoss users.

               

              Many thanks for the responses already as it seems just about everyone that has viewed the post has participated in the survey!

               

              Thanks,

              Stuart

              • 4. JBoss Java EE 6 certification survey
                henk53

                Stuart Smith wrote:

                 

                Turns out the survey is popular enough that now the results are being "held hostage"

                 

                bastards!

                • 5. JBoss Java EE 6 certification survey
                  nickarls

                  henk de boer wrote:

                   

                  Stuart Smith wrote:

                   

                  Turns out the survey is popular enough that now the results are being "held hostage"

                   

                  bastards!

                   

                  Indeed - I would be prepared to redo the survey on a truly free survey site just in protest.

                  • 6. Re: JBoss Java EE 6 certification survey
                    stuart_wildcat

                    I apologize to those of you who might have felt this survey was like a good first date but then you never get that call back for a second one...  Work got in the way for a little bit so I haven't had time until now to really analyze the results and post them.  Interesting that I have time this week when I'm also teaching a training class on JBoss 5.x administration !

                     

                    The good news is that the longer time period let us collect more responses and the results I have are for 269 people who have taken the survey (there are 2-3 more that have since I downloaded all the data but their answers seem to fall in line with where the averages are).  I also noticed that this thread was listed in the "Featured Discussions" so that probably helped and I appreciate if someone who has administrative rights on the forums made that happen.

                     

                    Overall I have posted a full analysis of the survey over on our company blog because I can more easily upload files and pictures.  I won't repeat the analysis here but I will give you guys the main summary of findings I think are most important.

                     

                    Overall I think the survey found:

                    • By an almost 3-1 margin people were surprised that JBoss AS 6.0 doesn’t support the full Java EE 6 profile
                    • Generally people are willing to wait several months if that is what it takes to certify JBoss AS for the full Java EE 6 profile
                    • More people are willing to wait however long it takes for full certification compared to the number not willing to wait at all
                    • By a 3-1 margin people feel both JBoss AS open source version and JBoss EAP should be certified for the full Java EE 6 profile
                    • About 40% of people would be “very likely” or “would definitely” switch to another server if JBoss AS or JBoss EAP were not certified for the full Java EE 6 profile
                    • EAP clients seem a little more sensitive to this issue and 49% of them fall into the "very likely" or "would definitely" switch servers category
                    • There was a good sample of JBoss EAP clients with 1 out of 4 indicating they were an EAP client

                     

                     

                    I think one of the big things to take away from this is that the biggest concern has been the uncertainty about JBoss plans this has caused and the position this has left some of the "early adopters" in (we even have Nicklas saying he'll eat a red hat if proved wrong that AS 7 won't slip).  I think what is sorely needed is a clear roadmap not just of what versions are coming and when (we can get most of that from JIRA) but which versions (if any) will be certified for the full Java EE 6 profile and how that will be wrapped into the supported platform products.

                     

                    I think the survey also pretty clearly demonstrates that the community finds value in the full Java EE 6 profile, at least until there is a time when an application server can be "fully certified" without supporting some of the "legacy" stuff.  Perhaps RedHat/JBoss can use their influence on the Java EE 7 specs to make sure the "legacy" stuff is removed from the "full" profile but a new "legacy" profile is perhaps defined so application servers can still provide a certified version of that support as well.

                     

                    So I guess as Dimitris suggested, this survey was our "scream in the forums".

                     

                    Thanks for the responses everybody,

                    Stuart

                     

                    PS. I will check the survey once in a while if people still respond and post updates if there appears to be a significant change in results.

                    • 7. Re: JBoss Java EE 6 certification survey
                      dimitris

                      Stuart, that's for all the effort, we will consider the outcome of the survey seriously, really appreciated.

                       

                      /D

                      • 8. Re: JBoss Java EE 6 certification survey
                        dmlloyd

                        It would perhaps have been more revealing to ask which technologies people use and expect to be supported in AS.  I strongly suspect that many of the people who are "surprised" at the lack of full profile probably don't actually need full profile.  The wording of the questions introduced some considerable bias, I think.

                         

                        Nevertheless the results are interesting...

                        • 9. JBoss Java EE 6 certification survey
                          stuart_wildcat

                          David Lloyd wrote:

                           

                          It would perhaps have been more revealing to ask which technologies people use and expect to be supported in AS.  I strongly suspect that many of the people who are "surprised" at the lack of full profile probably don't actually need full profile.  The wording of the questions introduced some considerable bias, I think.

                           

                          Nevertheless the results are interesting...


                          I think the bulk of the discussion in the other thread definitely agreed that there were some things that would not be used by many people.  The issue though really is that we were assuming that we were limiting our choices to the big groups of what is available in Java EE 6 which were the web profile and full profile.  Discussion of what "should" be in web profile or where in between JBoss should fall is not really going to resonate with decision makers which are just used to "Java EE certified".

                           

                          Also, the other thread was really started because hearing that JBoss AS 6.0 was "only" web profile certified introduced a lot of doubt since popular technologies like JMS and web services are not required for web profile.  Every answer just seemed to bring up more questions and I think the feeling by a lot of people was that if we are confused about these questions and we all know what we are talking about, how are the discussions with project managers, etc going to go where we can't make that assumption ?  It certainly would be even harder if those same project managers are hearing FUD from other application server vendors about how JBoss "isn't fully certified".

                           

                          I won't deny that some of the questions may have seemed biased.  Certainly I didn't intend them to be but being better at programming than survey design hopefully there weren't too many issues like this.  Overall hopefully the survey was accurate enough to try and capture the difference in the value people placed on any certification and the difference between web profile-only certification and full certification.

                           

                          I definitely agree that this starts discussions like "what should be in Java EE web profile?" and "should legacy stuff be removed from the 'full' profile and perhaps a 'legacy' profile created?".  Maybe those are discussions we can start about Java EE 7 once we have the kick a$$ JBoss AS 7.0!  (Just saw a little bit about the domain management and I'm really excited about that!)

                           

                          Thanks,

                          Stuart

                          • 10. JBoss Java EE 6 certification survey
                            henk53

                            David Lloyd wrote:

                             

                            It would perhaps have been more revealing to ask which technologies people use and expect to be supported in AS.  I strongly suspect that many of the people who are "surprised" at the lack of full profile probably don't actually need full profile.

                             

                            I'm not sure. This seems to be based on an implicit assumption that "Full profile" - "Web profile" = "All legacy stuff".

                             

                            But that's absolutely not the case. As the openings post of http://community.jboss.org/thread/160813 mentiond, "Full profile" - "Web profile" also contains:

                             

                            • Message driven beans
                            • Asynchronous processing
                            • Scheduling
                            • REST (JAX-RS) end-points
                            • JMS
                            • JavaMail
                            • JNDI
                            • RMI

                             

                            Those are not legacy! Some of those like Asynchronous processing (@Asynchronous), and JAX-RS are even new in Java EE 6. Scheduling has been massively improved in EJB 3.1.

                             

                            I think people would like to have "proof" that those too adhere to the spec.

                            • 11. JBoss Java EE 6 certification survey
                              dimitris

                              That's may not be too evident but whatever EE technology you include (beyond any profile, web or full) in a EE compliant configuration, it has to pass the corresponding TCK tests.

                              • 12. JBoss Java EE 6 certification survey
                                stuart_wildcat

                                Dimitris Andreadis wrote:

                                 

                                That's may not be too evident but whatever EE technology you include (beyond any profile, web or full) in a EE compliant configuration, it has to pass the corresponding TCK tests.


                                Is there any place in one of the specifications that states this for the implementations?  I see language implying this for the definition of profiles but not for implementations that choose to implement somewhere between web and full profile.

                                 

                                I think also that if this is not as apparent to those of us in the know I think those that need to make the arguments to the "higher ups" just are worried about this being a more difficult discussion.

                                 

                                After all, which is an easier answer to give to the question of "Is JBoss fully Java EE 6 certified?":

                                 

                                - "It is certified for the Java EE 6 web profile (along with the description of what that is) and these standard Java EE technologies not required of the web profile"

                                - "Yes"

                                 

                                I think only answer #2 doesn't lead to more questions.

                                 

                                Also not helping this is the fact that Oracle seems to only list the "full profile" implementations on the 'Compatible Implementations' page:

                                http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javaee/overview/compatibility-jsp-136984.html

                                 

                                Of course they also don't even have this page linked into the home page of the Java EE site so it is difficult to find this page unless you know to search for 'Compatibility'.

                                 

                                I don't think any of us are doubting that if JBoss says we have "web profile + X + Y + Z" that anything is not tested to work.  It is just how to lobby for JBoss to decision makers.

                                 

                                Thanks,

                                Stuart

                                • 13. JBoss Java EE 6 certification survey
                                  stuart_wildcat

                                  When I posted the original analysis of the JBoss Java EE 6 certification survey I promised that I would keep the survey open and update everyone if there were any interesting new trends.  The original survey analysis was done after 269 responses and there are now 281 responses so I thought I'd update just a few important notes.

                                   

                                  • Of the 12 new people to take the survey ALL felt 'Full Java EE 6 Certification' was important with 9 responding 'Extremely Important' and 3 responding 'Very Important'.  This was the biggest movement in any of the averages based on the impact of the new responses.
                                  • Almost all new responses were willing to wait some time between 0-6 months for Java EE 6 full profile certification with 7 out of 12 indicating the 3-6 month range.

                                   

                                  I'll keep the survey open and post new trends so if you haven't taken it please do so.  It is pretty short and direct with everybody who has taken it completing it with only a handful of skipped questions so thanks to everyone responding so far!

                                   

                                  Thanks,

                                  Stuart

                                  • 14. JBoss Java EE 6 certification survey
                                    henk53

                                    Thanks for the update! Interesting to see it's still getting new responses.

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