Wednesday Sep 22, 2004
Wednesday Sep 22, 2004
Here are some differences that I have noticed about this Beta release based on release notes:
1. Here are some official "what's new" from the release notes
* Admin Console GUI enhancements
* Web Services Security
* WS-I Profile 1.1
* Migration Tool
2. Beyond that I found a few other changes when comparing to Sun Java System Application Server Platform Edition 8 Update Release 1 release notes:
* NetBeans plugin for AS PE 8 2004Q4 (new)
* Updated JDK to 1.4.2_05
* Additional JDBC driver support, specifically DataDirect drivers were added.
* Oracle 10g support
This small list probably barely scratch the surface on the differences and enchancements that the product team has done. A while ago, I was told that this release will have a lot of enchancements under the surface. I'll try to write more about this when time permits.
If you are curious, then you should definitely check it out. The installation insructions can fit into my small 15" screen without scrolling, which is really short and simple to get started.
* Admin Console GUI enhancements
* Web Services Security
* WS-I Profile 1.1
* Migration Tool
2. Beyond that I found a few other changes when comparing to Sun Java System Application Server Platform Edition 8 Update Release 1 release notes:
* NetBeans plugin for AS PE 8 2004Q4 (new)
* Updated JDK to 1.4.2_05
* Additional JDBC driver support, specifically DataDirect drivers were added.
* Oracle 10g support
This small list probably barely scratch the surface on the differences and enchancements that the product team has done. A while ago, I was told that this release will have a lot of enchancements under the surface. I'll try to write more about this when time permits.
If you are curious, then you should definitely check it out. The installation insructions can fit into my small 15" screen without scrolling, which is really short and simple to get started.
Hello,
You list "NetBeans plugin for AS PE 8 2004Q4 " as a *new* enhancement. What's new about this plugin ? There's already one for AS PE 8 updt 1. The old one doesn't work with the new app server anymore ?
Plugin related, I hope you will release one for Netbeans 4 soon.
About installation: it's true the install is really easy to do. On the other hand I wouldn't say the same thing about upgrade from Sun ONE App Server 7. The upgrade didn't "just work".
Also, the "create-instance" asadmin command doesn't work anymore in PE ( probably because only one instance per domain allowed,but in the previous version you had to create an instance if you wanted a more suggestive name for it). And I didn't find this modifications documented anywhere (maybe I missed it). My old script for creating instances had to be changed
Another thing I didn't like was that with the install I didn't get man pages. Why don't you include those anymore ?
And from what I can remember this appserver didn't install as Solaris packages. I find it useful to have Solaris packages since it's easier to track what you have installed on the system. Maybe I overlooked a package based download, but I don't remember seeing one.
That said, I think Appserver 8 is nicer and better than the old one. And I'm waiting for your new release.
Posted by Vlad Grama on September 23, 2004 at 09:34 PM PDT #
Another quick comment. I saw in App server 8 you improved the administration interface: little things that make life easier - like "ping" a connection pool.
One other thing I would find useful: query the appserver about where it finds first a class. I don't know if this would be easy to do ... If you have many directories in the class path at some point you may not know exactly from what jar you get a class. What do you think ?
Posted by Vlad Grama on September 23, 2004 at 11:59 PM PDT #
Another quick comment. I saw in App server 8 you improved the administration interface: little things that make life easier - like "ping" a connection pool.
One other thing I would find useful: query the appserver about where it finds first a class. I don't know if this would be easy to do ... If you have many directories in the class path at some point you may not know exactly from what jar you get a class. What do you think ?
Posted by Vlad Grama on September 24, 2004 at 12:36 AM PDT #
I found that looking at release notes is really hard to judge the differences, which was high level and probably incomplete information for this purpose. Thaks for point out that the NetBeans plugin already exists for UR1. I'll need look into that to see what's really new about it.
There are actually some feataure and configuration differences between 7PE and 8PE such that not all upgrades "just works". Because 8PE does not have the native high performance HTTP server, associated features such as NSAPI, CGI, etc. were also removed. If you only use Java/J2EE, you probably won't even notice these specific differences. The configuration DTD has also changed a bit from 7 to 8 to accomodiate the new features. Even with these chagnges, there were still a strong emphasis for a smooth stransition from 7 to 8 through an utility that does the upgarde. If you encountered any functionalty error with the upgarde feature, submit a bug with a test case will certainly help the product team to fix it.
I can understand why create-instance doesn't work. I believe this was a decision to limit to one instance to one domain for 8PE. If you look at the directory structure of 8PE, you will find that domain1 will contain equivilent to what server1 contains in 7. That means, you will need to create a new domain instead.
It's interesting to hear Solaris Package is popular too. Package based install is definitely easier to work with when there is one version you work with. I typically work with multiple versions and preferred file based install. Thre is actually package based distribution. If you download AS8UR1 by itself only, you probably do not see the package based install. However, if you get Java Studio Creator, you will have 8PE bundled. If you get Java Studio Enterprise or Java Enterprise System, the bundled AS is in Solaris package. Solaris Package will stay because there are so many other components depends on this form of distribution.
Glad you like the "ping" feature. It definitely much better than finding your own database connection testing code, which I also had to do back in AS 7 days.
The "which" feature for finding a class in its classpath is a good suggestion. I'll try to submit a RFE on that. For more informatin on classloader, see: http://docs.sun.com/source/817-6087/dgdeploy.html#wp58491 The way that I find out which Jar a perticular class exists is using the following script on Solaris/Linux:
for i in `find . -name "*.jar"`
do
echo "--"
echo $i
tar tvf $i |grep TheClassIWantToSearch
echo "----"
done
Hope this helps.
Posted by David on September 24, 2004 at 10:00 AM PDT #
Thank you for the reply
Indeed, for development, where many users should be able to install their own appserver in their homedir, the file based install is useful. But a side-by-side package-based download wouldn't heart either :) And there's still the issue with the man pages ... either I didn't find them or they are not present. In a file based install, a man directory would be useful. Especially for commands like asadmin or similar.
I'll take another look at my upgrade and if I can create a useful test-case I'll submit a bug.
Thanks for the classloader-related URL. It is a clear explanation. And I too use something very similar to your miniscript for searching classes in JARs. However, the "which" feature would still be useful, especially if you have the same class in more than one directory. It's true that from the URL you pointed me to I could start a search in every directory and see where I find it first; but it would be a lot easier to be told directly. I've had some problems with uPortal and Xalan. At some point there was a version installed in the JRE endorsed dir and another one in the WEB-INF/lib of the webapp. And uPortal was very sensitive to the version used.
Thanks again for your reply.
Posted by Vlad Grama on September 25, 2004 at 01:33 PM PDT #