After switching from JBoss 3.2.1 to 3.2.3, a jUnit test for equivalence between two stateless session beans is now failing. (Code at bottom!)

Previously, under 3.2.1, this assertion test passed:

assertEqual("catalog same", catalog, newCatalog); // TRUE

as do these:

assertTrue("catalog same", newCatalog.equals(catalog)); // TRUE
assertTrue("catalog same", newCatalog.isIdentical(catalog)); // TRUE

But under 3.2.3 (& 3.2.2) none of the following evaluate to true (...unless we change the session beans to stateful):

assertEqual("catalog same", catalog, newCatalog);
assertTrue("catalog same", newCatalog.equals(catalog));
assertTrue("catalog same", newCatalog.isIdentical(catalog));

After brushing up on EJB equivalence rules, I can understand why 'equals()' fails (although, I'm now uncertain why it works under 3.2.1) , but as far as I can tell, these two stateless beans should be Identical.

Code snippits:

The Action Class

public class EventListAction extends ProtectedAction {

 LocalEventCatalog eventCatalog;

 /** Initializes the servlet.
 */
 public LocalEventCatalog getCatalog() {
 if ( eventCatalog == null ) {
 try {
 Context ctx = new InitialContext();
 LocalEventCatalogHome home =
 (LocalEventCatalogHome)ctx.lookup("java:comp/env/EventCatalog");
 eventCatalog = home.create();
 }
 catch ( NamingException ne ) {
 throw new ServletException(
 "naming exception looking up LocalEventCatalogHome", ne );
 }
 catch ( CreateException ce ) {
 throw new ServletException(
 "create exception creating LocalEventCatalog", ce );
 }
 }
 return eventCatalog;
 }
...

The Test Class

public class TestEventListAction extends ServletTestCase {
...
 public void testGetCatalog() {
 EventListAction action = new EventListAction();
 LocalEventCatalog catalog = action.getCatalog();
 assertNotNull( "catalog not null", catalog );

 LocalEventCatalog newCat = action.getCatalog();
 assertNotNull( "new cat not null", newCat );
 assertEquals( "catalog same", catalog, newCat ); // FAILS!
 assertTrue( "catalog same", newCat.equals(catalog)); // FAILS!
 assertEquals( "catalog same", newCat.isIdentical(catalog)); // FAILS!
 }
...

We've alse tried (for testing purposes) pre-creating the Bean in the Action, along with a simplified getCatalog() method to return it:

public LocalEventCatalog getCatalog() {
 return this.eventCatalog;
 }

and then changing the Test Class to make successive calls to the Action:

LocalEventCatalog catalog = action.getCatalog();
 LocalEventCatalog newCat = action.getCatalog();

But even this evaluates to FALSE equality in all three cases.

Only when we change the Bean to "stateful" do they all evaluate to TRUE, under JBoss 3.2.2+ And this appears to be at direct odds with the EJB spec, for the case of stateless beans. Are we missing something here?

-Logan