JBoss released JBoss 5 GA on December 5th, 2008. This major release is the culmination of years of work on the part of the JBoss team (Beta 1 was released in November of 2006 and Release Candidate 1 was released on Jun 30th, 2008). It includes significant refactoring of the kernel and many other improvements. JBoss is now JEE 5 certified and while JBoss 4 contained most of the important features in JEE 5, it was officially certified only on level J2EE 1.4.
WHAT’S DIFFERENT
JBoss is now JEE 5 certified. In truth, it’s had most of the significant features of JEE 5 for a long time, but if you’re one of Those People who’s been waiting on the official certification, your wait is over.
Another significant change is that the components of the JBoss Application Server are more modular than before, and developed as separate projects (e.g. JBoss Messaging, JBoss Transactions, JBoss EJB3). The JBoss AS 5 distribution includes all those separate projects already grouped together. The modular nature of these components will probably allow for easier development, resulting in a shorter release cycle.
This version introduces a new microcontainer that replaces the JMX-based microkernel . This lightweight container manages POJOs, but it allows for “multiple personalities”, continuing to support the old JMX model for backward compatibility while paving a way for OSGi support. The microcontainer integrates with JBoss AOP, and JBoss 5 uses AOP heavily. The new deployment layer is heavily influenced by AOP, too.
And that’s just the tip o’ the old icy burger…
TALK OF THE TOWN
Here’s some other stuff to be excited about:
- This new JBoss can be embedded much more easily. Nice feature if you need a container available in your JUnit tests, or want to use EJBs in an app server that doesn’t support them.
- JBoss 5 is probably the largest software system heavily using AOP. If you are using aspects in your software or are just curious how are they used on very large and highly visible project, JBoss 5 and JBoss AOP is worth a look.
- At the time of this writing, documentation about JBoss 5 is still in the fairly early stage but is getting better by the day.
- If you’re particularly interested in JBoss and JDK 6, take a look at the release notes.
JBoss 5 was available in Beta and Release Candidate form for the long time, so GA release likely benefited from user feedback. Some of the new features that it offers are extremely useful and there is no doubt that JBoss 5 represents the future of JBoss. If you are using JBoss in your development environment or just starting to develop your application, consider the move to JBoss 5 soon.
If you are thinking about use in production environment, our take is that you should plan for moving to JBoss 5 in the next few months and start your internal testing with that in mind. But for immediate production use, we would recommend testing and learning about JBoss 5, but waiting a bit before you migrate it to production. This will give developers a chance to improve the documentation, you a chance to get experience with it in non-critical environment.
DIG DEEPER
