4 Replies Latest reply on Feb 18, 2004 5:36 PM by ejbnewbie

    Surely you're joking, Mr Boss ?

    frederickj

      I'm certainly missing something here, hope someone can place things back into perspective.

      My three questions are :

      1) After downloading Tomcat, Ant, PostgresSql, Tcl, JUnit, several libs and assorted paraphernalia, the whole J2EE /JDK jazz and JBoss ...
      After fighting my way though an unbelievable series of little unexpected stoppers just to create and run a silly example (you bet : the crime thing ...) I am a little more than slightly fed up !
      All I get to see is a test suite that never passes one single test and a thing called the jmx console, which frankly I simlply don't understand.
      Now the question is : What in the round world is this thing good for ? Is there ANY sample web app that I can look at BEFORE I buy any book or software ? (Not a matter of the book's cost, It just seemes to me that I'm about to trade licence costs for commercial software against extremely costy training and consulting fees ... that's definitely not where I want to go !)

      Is this really what I get from JBoss ? Is there more ? Can anyone tell me(or rather show me) what exactly is the good stuff ?

      2) Since I started questioning paradigmas, let's go the whole way:
      What exacly is the advantage of using enterprise beans altogether ? I could set up some Jsp /Asp/Php stuff, code my persistency and connection pooling the exact way I want it (maybe with one of the zillion Delphi / Java / c++ libs and tools out there) and do without this whole bean busines...

      3) In practise I have little time to crack some code that works ... I don't really see how generating/ compiling / building / verifying / deploying / restarting and maybe not beeing able to inspect and debug at every iteration will help productivity ...

      In the end of the month if I don't deliver the goods I don't get paid, it's really as simple as that.

      Can anyone convince me that I should not give up yet ?
      Does anyone share my doubts out there ?

        • 1. Re: Surely you're joking, Mr Boss ?
          paulmoore100

          welcome to the world of free software - you get what you pay for. I am in the same steep learning mode but can offer some thoughts
          1. you get the source code - the ultimate docs if you have a lot of time and commitment
          2. There is a reasonable electronic book for $10, in the buy doco section - > 600 pages of pdf
          3. There is a free getting started guid which is OK. plus the o reliyy work book looks good (free downloads)

          My main gripe about the docs is that it cannot decide who its audience is
          a) developers of the jboss core, they need architecure details
          b) admins of jboss system, they need answers to such things as, setting up a system, config differnt databases, where do I put the war, etc.
          c) Developers writing web apps to run in jboss
          d) developers writing mbeans to run inside jboss

          The current docs mix all this up, even on the same page

          Stick with it - I think (?) that jboss is what I need (but then I'm building MBeans not web apps).

          • 2. Re: Surely you're joking, Mr Boss ?
            ggealy

            Yep, your post just about sums up my experience so far with JBOSS to a 'T'.

            -GmG-

            • 3. Re: Surely you're joking, Mr Boss ?
              mathimagix

              Their doc is useless in describing deployment details, like setting up a JDBC realm for security. It does not give a clear picture of the various jboss specific xmls, their roles, and where each belongs in the "Context hierarchy" if you'll excuse the bs jargon.

              Instead the doc gives xml fragments and you have to figure out what xml files these fragments belong in by studying dtds, which give no clues about where to place the xmls!

              I've deployed EJBs and web-apps on Weblogic, Orion, Tomcat and never had a problem modifying sample deployment descriptors. But this is unreal.

              • 4. Re: Surely you're joking, Mr Boss ?
                ejbnewbie

                hope this helps and is not too late ;)

                http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=34561

                -peace