This is a really seroius issue that's negatively affecting the peformance of some complex pages in our JSF web app. 

Unfortunately, it's making JBoss look bad as well.  It's not easy to explain to management that a framework packaged with a server is something that the people who make the server aren't responsible for.

Is anyone on the JBoss team aware of this problem and/or raised the issue with the Mojarra folks?  We need to put some heat on those guys!

Stuart Douglas will probably write a new JSF implementation once he's done with the web server

But I agree - this is not the first time mojarra has seen performance issue in various areas.

Adrian Everett wrote:

 

This is a really seroius issue that's negatively affecting the peformance of some complex pages in our JSF web app. 

 

Unfortunately, it's making JBoss look bad as well.  It's not easy to explain to management that a framework packaged with a server is something that the people who make the server aren't responsible for.

 

Is anyone on the JBoss team aware of this problem and/or raised the issue with the Mojarra folks?  We need to put some heat on those guys!

In AS7, it's now very easy to replace Mojarra with MyFaces.  The MyFaces SPI's are implemented and do ship with AS7. 

As part of the effort to make AS7 JSF-agnostic, I've been hoping that the community could do more of the manner of testing you have done and tell us which implementation is truly better.  But also note that "better" changes over time.  I think if you took a survey a few years ago people would say that the nod goes to Mojarra.  Perhaps today it would go to MyFaces.

We've even toyed with the idea of shipping both implementations.  Perhaps we should revisit that idea.

Stan

Thanks for your input Stan.

That's great to hear that it's going to be much easier to incorporate MyFaces into AS 7.1 than in AS 7.0.  Packaging both implemenations with a release would definitely be useful and time saving. 

Would this be the best and most current guide to plugging Myfaces into JBoss AS 7.1?

https://community.jboss.org/wiki/DesignOfAS7Multi-JSFFeature#comment-11484

Regarding the back and forth between Mojarra and MyFaces:

I suspect that most people don't care one way or another if the latest and greatest version of MyFaces or Mojarra is better than the other by 10 or 15% for a particular task, because in most circumstances that's not enough difference to significanty decrease the responsiveness of a JSF page.

However, this time I feel that it's a bit different for large pages; the best analogy I can use is that MyFaces is racing along in a Ferrari and Mojarra is putting along in a golf cart.  The reason that some developers, myself included, are making such a big deal over the current advantage that MyFaces has over Mojarra is because the AJAX performance difference for large and complex pages isn't trivial - it's massive; it's the kind of performance difference that an end-user is able to notice and rightfully take issue with.

Thanks,
Adrian

Adrian Everett wrote:

 

Thanks for your input Stan.

 

That's great to hear that it's going to be much easier to incorporate MyFaces into AS 7.1 than in AS 7.0.  Packaging both implemenations with a release would definitely be useful and time saving. 

 

Would this be the best and most current guide to plugging Myfaces into JBoss AS 7.1?

 

https://community.jboss.org/wiki/DesignOfAS7Multi-JSFFeature#comment-11484

 

Yes, that's it.

Adrian Everett wrote:

 

Regarding the back and forth between Mojarra and MyFaces:

 

I suspect that most people don't care one way or another if the latest and greatest version of MyFaces or Mojarra is better than the other by 10 or 15% for a particular task, because in most circumstances that's not enough difference to significanty decrease the responsiveness of a JSF page.

 

However, this time I feel that it's a bit different for large pages; the best analogy I can use is that MyFaces is racing along in a Ferrari and Mojarra is putting along in a golf cart.  The reason that some developers, myself included, are making such a big deal over the current advantage that MyFaces has over Mojarra is because the AJAX performance difference for large and complex pages isn't trivial - it's massive; it's the kind of performance difference that an end-user is able to notice and rightfully take issue with.

 

Thanks,
Adrian

When I say "better" I'm talking about much more than performance.  And of course, "better" might depend on exactly what kind of app you are developing and what you think is important.

Right now, Mojarra is "better" than MyFaces when it comes to JSF 2.2.  MyFaces doesn't have a 2.2 release completed yet.

I'm hoping that our agnostic stance on JSF will be popular and I'm also hoping that this will be a very easy sell to management.  If you just stick to the JSF spec you should be able to easily test your app against both and then pick the one that is best for your situation.  To me, that seems better than other vendors who lock you into one impl or the other.

Stan

I took a look at your guide Stan, but it doesn't really address JBoss 7.1.1.  Is adding MyFaces to 7.1.1 as a module even possible?

Adrian Everett wrote:

 

Thanks for your input Stan.

 

That's great to hear that it's going to be much easier to incorporate MyFaces into AS 7.1 than in AS 7.0.  Packaging both implemenations with a release would definitely be useful and time saving.

 

Would this be the best and most current guide to plugging Myfaces into JBoss AS 7.1?

 

https://community.jboss.org/wiki/DesignOfAS7Multi-JSFFeature#comment-11484

 

Yes, that's it.

Adrian Everett wrote:

 

I took a look at your guide Stan, but it doesn't really address JBoss 7.1.1.  Is adding MyFaces to 7.1.1 as a module even possible?

 

For all practical purposes, no.  Multi-JSF was added in 7.2.  For earlier 7.x AS versions you are better off using WAR_BUNDLES_JSF_IMPL with MyFaces.

Stan

If you don't mind hacking AS7, you can just replace the jars with the latest Mojarra 2.1.x.  Just put the impl jar in modules/com/sun/jsf-impl/main.  Then update modules.xml accordingly.

Do the same with the API jar.  It goes in modules/javax/faces/api/main.

For Mojarra 2.2.x, you need AS8/WildFly.  The same hack will work.

The difference in the jars we ship is that it sometimes includes bug fixes that are critical to AS/WildFly, but aren't yet in the upstream release.  For Mojarra 2.1.22, everything should be up to date.

Stan