This position is an Application Administrator to support operations within our client’s department. This position has a critical role in delivering our services to clients and ensuring successful ongoing operation of our applications and services. It services a highly interactive software development build/release process as well as a rich operational environment with many interrelated applications/database services. The candidate should be self-motivated, detail oriented, adaptable to change and must work well in a flexible team environment with developers, QA, operations staff, system administrators and managers.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Application and database support

• Provide on-going database administration in both back-end and front-end with application infrastructure support for our client’s administration systems, including the deployment of new applications.
• Review the physical design of existing databases for optimal database structures, database performance tuning, security, database backup/recovery strategy, implementing high-availability, and pro-active and reactive performance analysis, monitoring, troubleshooting and resolution of issues, capacity planning, monitoring data growth and system utilization, trend analysis and predicting future database resource requirements.
• Install web-base applications from ground up to full-ballooned implementation and support, including configuration at Unix/Linux/Windows system level, back-end integration with database, front-end integration with user-interface, final delivery to users to fulfill users’ requirement and on-going maintenance.
• Take the lead in ensuring that application and web services are configured and tuned according to application needs; provide troubleshooting as needed.
• Work with System Administrators to ensure test and production boxes conform to the software application configuration needs.
• Support the department-wide infrastructure application for database management, system monitoring and notification, job scheduling, deployment, provision and patching automation, application topology and service level management for campus-wide system performance.

Build/release activities

• Manage the build, tagging and release processes for a number of interdependent Java web applications and background processes in the QA and production environments. Ensure the build and release process is scalable and repeatable.
• Work with the development team to ensure efficient and understandable build procedures are adhered to and conform to a standard process for configuration and release management
• Develop and maintain tools that automate the building of software releases for an Agile-based development process. This is one of continuous integration, where the automated build process can be run many times a day if necessary.
• Work with and support the QA team to ensure automated test suites run as part of the continuous integration build process.

REQUIREMENT FOR SKILL AND COMPETENCIES:

• Expert hands-on with shell scripts, other scripting languages, preferably Perl, and tool automations
• Minimum 2 years database administration experience in Oracle and 3 years Application administration experience in Unix/Linux infrastructure environments is required.
• Hands-on experience of Oracle databases 10g for 24/7 database operations and tool automation in installation, configuration, backup/recovery, startup/shutdown, data refresh, and application integrations.
• Experience with OEM/Grid Control is highly desired.
• Knowledge and understanding of large scale ERP implementation and support like Oracle Financial and PeopleSoft systems.
• Expert knowledge of Apache and Tomcat, and other web/application servers such as JBoss
• Strong Unix and system administration skills with basic network and security knowledge
• Strong experience and ability in web applications deployment, configuration and integration from both OpenSource and Commercial based systems with or without sophisticated vendor support.
• Java/J2EE based programs
• Java/servlet/JSP based web applications
• Experience with Subversion, PVCS or similar source code repository
• Experience with Maven and familiarity with automated build processes
• Experience with the Agile development methodology and concepts of extreme programming and continuous integration
• Understanding of the layers/tiers of web applications and the communication protocol between the tiers with networking protocols (TCP/IP, HTTP, SSL, DNS, FTP, etc.)
• Ability to multi-task and work in a team environment is critical and should have excellent communication skills in both verbal and written forms.
• Ability to manage multiple competing priorities and work under pressure in high stress situations
• Excellent communication skills in both verbal and written
• Ability to work under pressure and to deliver results in a complex and dynamic operational environment

Qualifications

Minimum 5 years as an IT professional in build/release and application/database administration, plus one or more of the following areas: IT infrastructure operations 24/7, systems analysis and design, or application development.

Education
Bachelors Degree in Computer Science, Engineering or related field or equivalent experience

If you are interested, please send your resume to tsotelo@mindsource.com.

There are lots of options available for deploying #juby on #rails apps, from glassfish, to mongrel, to jboss. Along came an excellent solution for #jruby on #rails developers called #torquebox. It’s an enterprise level deployment environment for #jruby on #rails apps built ontop of #jboss, with several nice features built into it. These currently include support for job scheduling outside of cron that actually deploys with your application, task queues built on top of JMS topics, and even SOAP & SIP (telecom) integration.

Torquebox can be installed two different ways:
1) Download the entire #torquebox package and follow the instructions on torquebox.org. This includes jruby, JBoss AS 5 and torquebox gems and jars for deploying apps.
2) Modify an existing JBoss AS 5 with a single jar.

Since most users of ruby on rails already have some version of ruby on their system, but most don’t have jboss, I’ll provide an easy way to get started with option #1. I know this is only a small contribution back to the j/ruby community, but I think it will help provide the lowest cost to entry for most #ruby on #rails developers wishing to transition to a stable #jruby on #rails deployment environment.

To help get you started, I’ve put together a script to download #torquebox, unzip it, add a symlink, append the .bash_profile, & install jruby-openssl.
I put together a script to download #torquebox, unzip it, add a symlink, append the .bash_profile, & install jruby-openssl.

require 'rubygems'
require 'net/http'
require 'logger'

class TorqueboxInstaller

  def initialize( torquebox_version = '1.0.0.Beta18' )
    @torquebox_version = torquebox_version
    yield self if block_given?
  end

  def download
    if File.exist?( torquebox_zip_file )
      logger.info "#{torquebox_zip_file} already exists."
    else
      logger.info "About to download #{torquebox_zip_file}..."
      uri = "http://repository.torquebox.org/maven2/releases" +
               "/org/torquebox/torquebox-bin/" +
              "#{@torquebox_version}/#{torquebox_zip_file}"
      `curl #{uri} -O #{torquebox_zip_file}`
      logger.info "Downloading of #{torquebox_zip_file} complete."
    end
  end

  def unzip
    if File.exist?( "#{torquebox_directory}" )
      logger.info "#{torquebox_directory} already exists.  Not unzipping."
    else
      logger.info "Unzipping #{torquebox_zip_file}"
      `unzip #{torquebox_zip_file}`
    end
  end

  def symlink
    logger.info "Creating symlink torquebox-current " +
         " for #{torquebox_directory}"
    `rm torquebox-current` if File.exist?( "torquebox-current" )
    `ln -s #{torquebox_directory}/ torquebox-current`
  end

  def append_bash_profile
    logger.info "Append the bash profile"
    File.open("#{ENV['HOME']}/.bash_profile", "a") do |file|
      file.puts("# environment variables for torquebox ")
      file.puts("export TORQUEBOX_HOME=#{ENV['PWD']}" +
                                "/#{torquebox_directory}")
      file.puts("export JRUBY_HOME=$TORQUEBOX_HOME/jruby")
      file.puts("export JBOSS_HOME=$TORQUEBOX_HOME/jboss")
      file.puts("export PATH=$TORQUEBOX_HOME/bin:" +
                    "$JRUBY_HOME/bin:$JBOSS_HOME/bin:$PATH")
    end
  end

  def install_dependencies
    logger.info "Installing SSL support"
    exec "source ~/.bash_profile && jruby -S gem install jruby-openssl"
  end

  def torquebox_zip_file
    torquebox_zip_file = "torquebox-bin-#{@torquebox_version}.zip"
  end

  def torquebox_directory
    "torquebox-#{@torquebox_version}-bin"
  end

  def logger
    @logger ||= Logger.new( STDOUT )
  end
end

TorqueboxInstaller.new do |installer|
  installer.download
  installer.unzip
  installer.symlink
  installer.append_bash_profile
  installer.install_dependencies
end

If you need to show SQL in JBoss debug screen (console) from your JPA / EJB project:

<properties>
<property name= “hibernate.dialect”value=”org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect” />
<property name= “hibernate.show_sql” value=”true” />
</properties>

in persistence.xml should do the trick.

Salve a tutti, in questi giorni mi sono addentrato ancora nel mondo del continuous integration perchè sto lavorando su un progetto in Java, gestito in outsourcing, dove aiuto un gruppo di sviluppatori ad utilizzare strumenti di sviluppo che facilitano il lavoro quali un sistema di continuos integration.

Sono partito da un progetto con subversion installato su una macchina e so che nel progetto usano Jboss con JDK 1.5 (ancora non so perchè)

Su un’altra macchina remota vado e installo JDK 1.5.0.22, Ant 1.7.1, Maven 2.2.1 (fino ad ora (2 mesi di progetto) hanno usato solo Ant e vorrebbero passare a Maven), Jboss 5.1.0, Webclient for SVN 3.1.0 e Artifactory 2.1.2.

Piccola nota: volevo usare Sventon ma l’ultima versione aveva problemi con le librerie e le precedenti mi davano anch’esse problemi.

Non sapete cosa è Artifactory ??? Allora è possibile che siete ancora freschi su Maven (non è che io non lo sia )

Artifactory è una applicazione web che permette di gestire repository Maven, sviluppata in Java e rilasciata con licenza LGPL 3.0. L’applicazione è realizzata da JFrog Ltd, una società privata isreliana.

Strutturalmente si poggia su Apache Jackrabbit per l’implemetazione delle specifiche JSR 170 per il cosiddetto Java Content Repository (anche altri content manager come Nuxeo si appoggiano su Jackrabbit).

Piccola nota: la JSR 170 (rilasciata nel 2005) è seguita dalla JSR 283 da poco rilasciata (25 Settempre 2009) ed entrambe sono condotte da David Nuescheler, CTO della società svizzera Day Software.

Inoltre Artifactory si basa su Apache Lucene per indicizzare i file e Apache Wicket per l’interfaccia utente.

Ora l’applicazione è rilasciata come standalone ma esiste la versione war che può essere deployata su un application server e quindi l’ho messa su Jboss insieme ad Hudson e Webclient for SVN (questi 2 li ho poi legati con il plugin di hudson per Polarion che permette di linkare la lista di file modificati ai file presenti sul webclient e si possono anche vedere le differenze con le versioni precedenti).

La struttura è basata anche su database, di default Apache Derby ma che può essere cambiato (vedi anche qui).

A parte il fatto che Artifactory permette di base una autenticazione LDAP, quello che lascia senza parole è la semplicità di uso (andrebbe confrontato con Nexus ma non ne ho tempo, di sicuro nella versione base manca LDAP (anche se ho scoperto di recente che esiste un plugin di terze parti) e di sicuro gli sviluppatori hanno realizzato una bella guida a maven e un plugin per Eclipse). Una volta andato su

http://localhost:8080/artifactory

e loggato, sono andato sul pannello amministrativo e nella sezione repository ho creato un repository locale dove fare il deploy dei propri jar file e un repository virtuale in cui aggiungo quello locale più tutti i remoti quali quello di Maven, Jboss ecc ecc. Fatto ! Ora potete generare anche la sezione del file settings.xml da aggiungere nel vostro progetto Maven.

Per una vecchia guida vi rimando qui. Per un confronto con Nexus e Archiva vi rimando a questo link (attenzione è scritto dallo stesso autore della guida su Artifactory ma sembra serio)

Buon maven a tutti !

Nota: Webclient for SVN si basa su Subversion 1.4 (con versioni successive ho avuto problemi perchè usa un SVNKit vecchio che non posso aggiornare perchè c’è una particolare classe non più presente nelle ultime versioni), potete trovare Subversion 1.4 qui:

http://downloads-guests.open.collab.net/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=6

1.2 INSTALLAZIONE

• Ci sono due modi di installare jboss via zip o via JEMS installer. Via zip si ottiene una installazione subito funzionante con alcune funzionalità di sviluppo già attive come l’hot deployment. Lo svantaggio dello zip rispetto al JEMS installer sono le funzioni di sicurezza tutte spente. Con l’installer inoltre si decide quale funzioni attivare e quali no senza doversi preoccupare delle dipendenze.
• In JBoss non ci sono file nascosti o altre risorse poste fuori la dir di installazione, ma tutto è contenuto all’interno. In questo modo si può spostarlo dove si preferisce e si può replicare l’esatta installazione in un altra macchina.
• Se si segue l’installazione via JEMS si può poi copiare manualmente la dir di jboss in un’altra macchina in modo da avere due installazioni identiche

1.2.1 Prepararsi per l’installazione

• Alcune sigle: JDK Java Development Kit contiene sia l’ambiente di compilazione che di esecuzione, JRE Java Runtime Enviroment, SDK Sun Development Kit
• Nelle versioni precedenti alla 5 era necessario avere la JDK perchè bisognava compilare , dalla 5 in poi basta la JRE perchè JBoss viene fornito con una libreria di Eclipse JDT che compila codice a runtime
• Molti usano l’ambiente della SUN  SDK ma si vedrà più avanti come utilizzarne anche altri
• Per l’installazione basta settare la JAVA_HOME in linux

set JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.5.2

export JAVA_HOME

• In windows andare nelle schermate delle variabili d’ambiente

1.2.2 Installarlo dalla distribuzione binaria

• jboss viene eseguito in cima alla JVM, ma alcune operazioni vengono eseguite meglio con funzionalità di sistema operativo native. Per esempio le pagine web vengono servite con migliori performance se utilizzano librerie native. Ecco il link per scaricarlo

1.2.3 Usare JEMS installer

• bisogna eseguire un jar file questo si fa con il comando

java -jar jems-installer-X.X.X.jar

• L’installer dovrebbe riconoscere il s.o. e quindi usare la versione native di jboss più adatta
• Durante l’installazione si può scegliere quale configurazione usare (default, minimal ecc) e quali packs all’interno dell’installazione scelta abilitare. Si possono settare i data source per i database ed eventualmente abilitare l’isolamento per valore per caricare differenti versioni dello stesso file class.
• Si possono rimuovere diversi sevizi che non sono sicuri come il tunnel http o JMX management console

1.3 Esploriamo l’installazione

1.3.1 La dir di bin

• twiddle: una jmx console a linea di comando
• probe: una utility usata per scoprire jboss AS cluster
• wsconsume, wsprovide, wsrunclient , wstools: una serie usata per i web service

1.3.2 La dir di client

• ci sono le librerie per far interagire applicazioni client con jboss, tutte le altre applicazioni che non siano i browser. Per maggiori dettagli guardare il capitolo.

1.3.7 Esploriamo la struttura di ogni configuration

• la dir di conf viene controllata al boot di jboss e poi non viene più letta. Vi sono questi file xml che servono per: bootstrap.xml definisce i servizi che partono all’avvio del server , jboss-service.xml definisce i servizi jmx che partono all’avvio, jboss-log4j.xml configura il logging , login-configuration.xml configura autenticazione e moduli di autorizzazione per la sicurezza , standardjboss.xml usati per configurare vari ejb containers
• la dir deployers contiene tutti i servizi di jboss AS che sono necessarie per fare il deploy delle applicazioni e dei tipi di archivi
• vi sono delle directory generate la prima volta che si esegue jboss: data serve per memorizzare dati temporanei; log ha tre file boot.log per log prima che il servizio di loggin sia abilitato, server.log è il file principale di log4j , audit.log è usato per i log di sicurezza, tmp , work usato dal web container per memorizzare e compilare jsp file e altri dati temporanei

1.4 Starting e stopping the server

• ./run.sh    lancia il default
• ./run.sh -c all  lancia la configurazione di all
• ./shutdown.sh -S  per fermarlo , oppure CTRL+C o si killa il processo

1.5 Deploying  to the server

• attenzione con l’hot deploy perchè se si copia un’applicazione in maniera esplosa (una dir con postfisso .war o .ear) lui può cominciare a fare il deploy prima che l’intera struttura sia copiata, generando inevitabilmente errori.

O JBoss Tools  é um conjunto de ferrramentas,  que tráz inúmeras facilidades para quem está desenvolvendo projetos utilizando JSF(Java Server Faces), Hibernate , JBoss AS entre outros.
Ela auxilia o desenvolvedor em diveras tarefas, trazendo assim maior produtividade e facilidade no desenvolvimento de sistemas que utilizam a plataforma JavaEE e JSF.
Ele pode ser obtido em http://labs.jboss.com/tools/download, lá podemos observar que os downloads dos plugins são dividos por áreas: Update Site e Download.  E  mais,  dentro dessas áreas  encontramos mais algumas divisões: Stable Update,  Development Updates e Nightly Updates. Vamos ver o que significa cada uma dessas áreas:

• Update Site: Nessa área encontramos os links para instalação dos plugins que são gerenciados pelo eclipse via Update Manager. Então essa seria a opção mais recomendada para instalação dessas ferramentas.
• Download: Nessa área encontramos arquivos geralmente no formato ZIP ou JAR. Pode-se instalar os plugins manualmente utilizando esses arquivos.
• Stable Update: Nessa área estão os links ou arquivos dos plugins com versão estável, ou seja que podem ser utilzados em produção.
• Development Updates: Nessa área estão os links ou arquivos dos plugins que se encontram em desenvolvimento para atualização das versões stables.
• Nightly Updates: Nessa área estão os links ou arquivos dos plugins que se encontram na fase de desenvolvimento, que digamos assim são atualizados todas as noites(Nightly) direto da fonte(Developers).

Então vamos instalar esse bendito plugin!  No Eclipse Galileo vá em  Help e em Intall New Software… clique em add. E preencha name : JBoss Tools e em url : http://download.jboss.org/jbosstools/updates/development/.
Siga as instruções seguintes e reinicie o eclipse. Pronto! Agora a IDE possui ótimos recursos para desenvolvimento de paginas JSF, utilzando tecnologias como Hibernate, JBoss, entre outras.

Bom é isso, até a proxíma!

Red Hat APAC just launched a new offer for JBoss Administrators who take the JB336 course this month.

Free JBCAA certification exam if you enroll in the JBoss Administration course in November

This training and certification combination packs quite a punch. JBoss training builds on your existing administration experience so that you can get the most out of your application stack. Having JBCAA certification will give you ability to install, configure, monitor, ..

Now, don’t wait, go online to benefit from this promotion!

If you encounter a problem where you generate a new primary key value through a persisted JPA entity and it seems to change to a larger value than it’s suppose to. E.g. you add a new row of data to a table that has a primary key field called “id” and there’s only one value currently in that table which contains the “id” value 0 (zero). And yet the next value you add to the table through EJB / JPA jumps to a greatly larger value like 5000. SO to the chase. How to fix this problem:

Make sure you’re mapped @Id field is as follows:

@Id
@GeneratedValue( strategy=GenerationType.SEQUENCE, generator=”generatorName” ) // name of the generator
@SequenceGenerator( name=”generatorName”, sequenceName=”nameOfTheSequenceInYourDatabase”, allocationSize=1) // name of the sequence in the db
@Column (name=”id”) // name of the column in the db
private Integer id;

The most important part of that being: “allocationSize=1″ this prevents the hibernate layer from trying to optimize this process so that when creating a new entry the server doesn’t have to go to the database to get this value. To quote my guru colleague: “This kind of optimization provides only marginal benefit.”

Wie man sieht, ist hier lange nichts passiert… das bedeutet aber keinen Projektstillstand…

zwei Umzüge haben mich etwas zurückgeworfen – ein häuslicher und ein Betriebssystemumzug auf Windows 7. Dadurch hat sich die Serverarchitektur etwas geändert: Jboss läuft nun nicht mehr auf Windows, sondern wurde mit in die virtuelle Debian-Maschine portiert. Dabei sind mir ein paar Kleinigkeiten aufgefallen, die hier erwähnenswert sind.

Als JDK sollte die Java Version 1.6 verwendet werden. Eine Installationsanleitung dafür findet man hier. Lädt man dazu allerdings den JBoss Server (5.1.0GA) auf JDK 1.6 Basis, meldet JBoss den Fehler “jmx-remoting.sar” kann nicht geladen werden. Diesen Fehler kann man durch Verwendung des Servers auf JDK 1.5 Basis beheben.

Der Mail Server wurde durch exim ersetzt (apt-get install exim4). Damit Mails rausgehen müssen noch folgende Einstellungen gemacht werden:

dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config –> Dabei einstellen, dass Mails nicht nur im lokalen Netz verwendet werden sollen und die loopback adress (127.0.0.1) rauswerfen… Voila, es läuft

Nähere Infos zur exim Konfiguration findet man aber auch hier.

So, happy coding – good to be back

One of the largest municipal electric distribution utility in Canada deploys JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform to eliminate proprietary lock-In and cut costs

FAST FACTS

Customer: Toronto Hydro Corporation

JBoss Advanced Business Partner: Int3s Corp.

Industry: Utilities: Electric Power

Geography: Toronto, Canada

Business Challenge: To build a service-oriented architecture (SOA) as the foundation for future-looking strategic initiatives designed to support enablement of smart metering and smart grid integration, reduce operational costs, promote energy conservation, and improve IT productivity

Solution:Deployed JBoss Enterprise SOA and Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the platform for innovative Smart Meter program and has successfully completed the initial phases of its program to create a customer-focused cost and energy-saving initiative

Software: JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform (including JBoss ESB), Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Benefits: Leveraging Int3s expertise in SOA and Red Hat / JBoss open source Enterprise Framework, Toronto Hydro was able to successfully complete the initial phases of its groundbreaking Smart Meter program and plan other customer-focused cost- and energy-saving initiatives going forward.

Download the case study [PDF]

“Toronto Hydro’s technology strategy required experienced resources to supplement internal staff in delivering complex custom development projects. The JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform is a comprehensive toolset that comes with everything we need to build a solid SOA for facilitating easy integration of disparate systems and data. It was the perfect solution to meet our current needs – and we trust Red Hat to meet our future ones.”– Nicholas Yee, Chief Technology Officer, Int3s

BACKGROUND
Toronto Hydro is one of the largest municipal electric distribution utility in Canada and operates two wholly owned affiliates with a combined workforce of over 1,400 people. It serves 697,000 residential and commercial customers across the greater Toronto Area, representing 18.5% of electricity consumers in the province of Ontario.

Toronto Hydro’s technology strategy required experienced resources to supplement internal staff in delivering complex custom development projects and they partnered with Int3s, a Red Hat Advanced Business Partner, to help implement JBoss Enterprise SOA platform, including JBoss ESB.

Int3s designs, develops, and implements IT solutions for energy and utility, financial, and telecommunications organizations. By automating key business processes, Int3s is able to cost-effectively improve the overall business performance of its clients. A Red Hat Advanced Business Partner, Int3s has two distinct practices: one dedicated to service-oriented architecture (SOA) development and implementation, and one focused on business intelligence (BI) solutions. In both of its lines of business, Int3s is committed to using open source products for strategic client initiatives.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
In late 2006, the Vice President of IT & Chief Information Officer of Toronto Hydro-Electric System, Eduardo E. Bresani, called in Nicholas Yee, the Chief Technology Officer of Int3s, to help him with an ambitious new five-year strategic initiative. His goal was to implement a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to replace his organization’s traditional IT infrastructure.

“The new CIO was focused on modernizing the technology infrastructure, and developing a plan to build next-generation systems that would enable the firm to be more agile and efficient,” said Yee. “One of the most attractive features of an SOA is that it allows companies to build composite services in which business processes can be extended over a number of different applications. “Using an SOA to integrate a number of disparate systems was one of the primary goals of the new CIO,” said Yee.

A key business driver for the change was the firm’s availability of IT resources. “Toronto Hydro continuing issue was that system integration and support activities were using more and more resources over time,” said Yee. “The CIO wanted to free up his personnel to focus on more strategic and value-added matters.”

A key business driver for the change was the firm’s availability of IT resources. Specifically, building point-to-point interfaces between all the various systems Toronto Hydro had put into place over the years – legacy as well as client-server and Web-based systems – was proving too costly and complex. “All the custom coding was proving very expensive to develop and maintain,” said Yee.

The new SOA implementation was part of Toronto Hydro’s groundbreaking “Smart Meter” initiative. The initiative had three primary business goals: to help the firm be more customer-focused; to provide its residential and business customers with tools to do a better job of conserving energy while managing their own electricity costs; and to meet regulatory mandates to use less energy, especially during periods of peak usage.

In the case of Toronto Hydro’s Smart Meter program as mandated by the province of Ontario, the intention was to program variable pricing into the system based on the time of day that electricity was consumed (Time-Of-Use billing). The goal was to price electricity higher during peak times to encourage people and businesses to conserve energy during periods of high demand.

SOLUTION
Toronto Hydro and Int3s selected JBoss Enterprise Middleware for the Smart Meter program due to the size and stability of the technology and the toolsets that JBoss provided, including JBoss Hibernate, Rules, and jBPM Frameworks, to simplify the migration from Mule to the JBoss platform.

One of Toronto Hydro’s most important applications uses the JBoss SOA platform as a mashup framework to allow customers to view their consumption data on the Web.

“We didn’t want to be dependent on proprietary products for our SOA framework. What JBoss gives me is a solution that works with other products as long as they meet open source standards,” said Eduardo Bresani, Chief Information Officer, Toronto Hydro.

The second reason Toronto Hydro went with JBoss was the flexibility of the subscription model. “JBoss doesn’t charge for the product itself, but for the support – and we valued the enterprise level support that JBoss provides,” said Bresani.

Moving to an SOA was an essential first step in implementing Toronto Hydro’s Smart Meter initiative, as multiple diverse systems and data sets needed to be integrated to collect, process, and disseminate all the relevant customer and operational information. “Building custom APIs between each of the many systems involved simply wasn’t an option,” said Yee.

From the very beginning of the project, open source was the answer. “With open source, we could avoid vendor lock-in, and standardize everything related to business logic, business processes, and data models,” said Yee.

In a previous solution, Yee had led the team that developed the Rosetta Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), which was acquired by Red Hat’s Middleware Business Unit in 2006 and incorporated into the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform. After running an evaluation program with the Mule ESB, the JBoss SOA Platform was selected and implemented as part of the Early Adopter Program in early 2008.

Although Toronto Hydro is not the largest utility in North America, it currently has the largest production deployment of smart meters on the continent which stands at over 600,000. The firm is also reaffirming its leadership position by rolling out its Time-Of-Use billing initiative that will bill customers higher rates at peak times, and lower rates at off-peak times.

“From a strategic point of view, Toronto Hydro’s commitment to open source made it an imperative to look at the size and stability of the technology vendor we chose for the long-term,” said Yee. “Based on our technical evaluations, we realized it was a much better fit to align ourselves with JBoss.” In addition to other functional advantages, there were the toolsets that JBoss provided, including JBoss Hibernate, Rules, and jBPM Frameworks. “These were all powerful tools that made migration from Mule over to the JBoss platform a very straightforward process,” said Yee.

Since the initial smart meter implementation, Int3s has expanded the use of the JBoss SOA Platform at Toronto Hydro in multiple projects including the development of an ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) framework for a new Enterprise Data Warehouse and integration to Google’s PowerMeter project. The SOA Platform has also simplified large system implementations such as Oracle’s Customer Information System and the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) using SAP.

BENEFITS
The support provided by Red Hat has been superb. “As an Advanced Business Partner, we’ve had terrific access to some of the best development professionals at JBoss,” said Yee. “Not only were they very responsive when we called, but they asked us to help prioritize what functionality should be incorporated in future releases of the platform, ensuring that JBoss will continue to meet our evolving needs.”

From a global perspective, utilities have moved from focusing on simply “keeping the lights on” to better matching supply to demand.

“Ultimately, it comes down to developing new applications that can be integrated with existing systems, and consolidating the huge amounts of complex data that comes from the household as well as the utility company,” said Yee. “Although we’re still in the infancy of that effort at Toronto Hydro, the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform will enable us to do that.”

“JBoss technology comes with everything we need to build a solid SOA for facilitating easy integration of disparate systems and data. It was the perfect solution to meet our current needs – and we trust Red Hat to meet our future ones,” said Yee.

Toronto Hydro is also very pleased with the relationship its firm has forged with Red Hat. Other Red Hat utilities clients can now leverage the experience Int3s gained during its work with Toronto Hydro. “It’s a win-win situation for us both,” said Yee.

“Our relationship with Red Hat has been very good, everything has always gone very smoothly. In meetings with Red Hat at the headquarters in Raleigh, Bresani discussed the innovative deployment with executives. Bresani recalls the meetings, “We discussed how we were using the products and how we could work together closely to make their products more successful. The meeting gave me confidence that we’d made the right choice of technology and vendor.”

“We’ve succeeded because of the combination of the leadership of Toronto Hydro, the innovation of the Red Hat products, and the expertise of Int3s integrating systems. Together they allowed us to leverage the power of JBoss and really make the technology work for us.

Getting a thread-dump is one of the first steps in troubleshooting a misbehaving Java application. There are a few good ways todo this task but the easiest of them all is

kill -3 <PID>

This will send the thread-dump to your stdout logs.

I have used the ports collection to install JBoss 5.1 on my FreeBSD 7.2 Box. The installation went well and as usual, the ports installation process did all the downloading and compiling of the package and its dependencies.

After installation, I need to test it to start developing. So I did a command to start it
/usr/local/jboss5/bin/run.sh

All works well and JBoss starts. I opened a browser in my local machine and visited http://127.0.0.1:8080 and the JBoss start page is loaded.

Next thing I have to do is to access JBoss on a different machine.

I then used my netbook to access http://192.168.0.***:8080 to my surprise, I didn’t get a response and an error message was displayed in my browser. I then searched the web for an answer. After a couple of links I was able to get an answer. I need to start JBoss with the option -b 0.0.0.0 supplied to the script run.sh. By default JBoss is binded to 127.0.0.1, meaning only the local machine can access it. So I have to find a way to start JBoss passed with that option.

Here are the steps to make JBoss automatically started on boot:
1. Add these lines at the end of /etc/rc.conf
jboss5_enable="YES"
jboss5_flags="-Djboss.bind.address=0.0.0.0"

2. The default jboss5 script in the /usr/local/etc/rc.d directory does not work with -b 0.0.0.0. Therefore, you have to replace it by the /usr/local/jboss5/bin/run.sh script. After replacing it, the “start” “stop” and “restart” options does not work with the script, but if you want to, you are free to edit the script to include it.
mv /usr/local/etc/rc.d/jboss5 /usr/local/etc/rc.d/jboss5-original-script
cp /usr/local/jboss5/bin/run.sh /usr/local/etc/rc.d/jboss5

3. Create a bin directory at the /usr/local/etc/
mkdir /usr/local/etc/bin

4. Make a symlink for /usr/local/jboss5/bin/run.jar inside /usr/local/etc/bin
ln -s /usr/local/jboss5/bin/run.jar /usr/local/etc/bin/jbossrun.jar

5. Edit /usr/local/etc/rc.d/jboss5 so that jbossrun.jar will be the file needed to start it
vi /usr/local/etc/rc.d/jboss5

6. Find the line runjar=”$JBOSS_HOME/bin/run.jar” and replace it with runjar=/usr/local/etc/bin/jbossrun.jar

7. Run jboss by using (this does not include the start, restart, and stop options, again if you want to, you are free to edit the script to fit your needs)
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/jboss5

8. On your next restart of FreeBSD, JBoss will start and will be accessible to other machines.

Enjoy!

One of the uses of JMX is for exposing any data across remotely.
If you need to use Jboss and Hyperic for JMX configuration then following configurations are required:

1. Select a property to be exposed. To test: take Catalina:type=StringCache , this is existing by default.
2. In Hyperic you can create the plugin .xml file either in the /hq-plugins folder or in the /hq/agent-4.1.3/bundles/agent-4.1.3-1067/pdk plugins folder.

3. The plugin xml file for String cache jmx  attr named: cacheSize in the file customjmx-plugin.xml  is below:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<plugin name="customjmx" package="org.hyperic.hq.product.jmx">
  <classpath>
    <include name="pdk/lib/mx4j"/>
  </classpath>

  <config name="jmx" type="global">
    <option name="jmx.url"
            description="JMX URL to MBeanServer"
            default="service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://machineName:12345/jmxrmi"/>
  </config>

<property name="BEAN_NAME"
            value="Catalina:type=StringCache"/>
<server name="jboss_jmx">
          <property name="PROC_HOME_PROPERTY" value="program.name=testJboss.sh"/>
          <property name="PROC_MAIN_CLASS" value="org.jboss.Main"/>
	  <plugin type="autoinventory"
		class="org.hyperic.hq.product.jmx.MxServerDetector"/>
	<plugin type="measurement"
			class="org.hyperic.hq.product.jmx.MxMeasurementPlugin"/>
          <metric name="cacheSize"
                  template="${BEAN_NAME}:cacheSize"
                  alias="cacheSize"
                  indicator="true"/>
 </server>
</plugin>

Hyperic uses SIGAR for discovering processes and the PTQL is the process table query language used.
Launch sigar using java -jar sigar.jar and test the ptql in this prompt.

The important thing to know is that arguments to ps command can be seen through pargs <process_id> and then knowing that -D is appended by default when the main class is defined and then the final sigar cmd becomes:

ps  State.Name.sw=java,Args.*.eq=org.jboss.Main,Args.*.re=-Dprogram.name=testJboss.sh

Where the value program.name=testJboss.sh is defined in the customjmx-plugin.xml in the PROC_HOME_PROPERTY value.

Also, recall that if you need to associate your custom Mbean with jboss mbean viewer – then you need to register your mbean in the jboss specific mbean server whose instances can be found through the following defined ways.

Also, to expose the jboss mbeans – to jconsole – follow the steps detailed here.

I modified the run.conf with the following java opts.

JAVA_OPTS=”-Xms128m -Xmx512m -Dsun.rmi.dgc.client.gcInterval=3600000 -Dsun.rmi.dgc.server.gcInterval=3600000 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=12345 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false  -Djboss.platform.mbeanserver -Djavax.management.builder.initial=org.jboss.system.server.jmx.MBeanServerBuilderImpl “

To test if your plugin works:

java -jar /home/hyp/hq/agent-4.1.3/bundles/agent-4.1.3-1067/pdk/lib/hq-product.jar -Dplugins.include=customjmx  -m discover -a metric -Dlog=DEBUG

It took some time – to identify this – mainly because of incomplete(and incorrect!_) documentation which is the evil part of using open source – the good thing was – the hyperic forum is definitely alive

As I am currently working with JBoss seam, I had to install JBoss Tools on my Fedora Eclipse 3.4.2 – Fedora 11 -.

So in order to share the procedure to every one and mostly to avoid to forget or lose it I decided to write it on this blog.

In addition, it permit to avoid eclipse/JBoss Tools problems dependence such as :

And Errors such as :

Cannot complete the request.  See the details.
Unsatisfied dependency: [org.hibernate.eclipse.feature.feature.group 3.2.4.v200909151014R-H192-GA] requiredCapability: org.eclipse.equinox.p2.iu/org.eclipse.wst.xml.core/1.1.0

So these are the steps :

I] Install Eclispe on your Fedora.

I.I] Open a terminal as standard user – here mine “fhornain” – and be root.

[fhornain@localhost ~]$ su -

[root@localhost ~]# yum install java-1.6.0-openjdk-devel

[root@localhost ~]# yum install eclipse-platform

II ] Launch eclipse.

II.I] Indeed you should select in you Fedora main menu bar  Applications > Programming > Eclipse

If not, launch a terminal and run the following command :

[fhornain@localhost ~]$ eclipse -vm /usr/bin/java

Rem: Change the path /usr/bin/java if it is not your java default location

Then you should see the eclipse starting banner – see below -

II.II] Then eclipse should ask you where you would like to save your projects – see image below -

The default location should be fine – well, for me -

II.III] Then Welcome screen appears – see below -. Close it with a click on the top left cross.

III ] Install JBoss Tools

III.I] When Eclipse starts, go to Help > Software Updates. The following window should appears :

III.II] Then click on the tab named “Available Software” – see below -

III.III] Then click on button “Add Site” on the right of the window – see above – :

III.IV] You see appear a new window where you are going to past the following URL : http://download.jboss.org/jbosstools/updates/stable/ which is the offcial JBoss Tools URL – see below -

Then click the OK button.

III.V] Then do the same with http://download.eclipse.org/releases/ganymede/ and http://download.eclipse.org/birt/update-site/2.3/ as mentioned for JBoss Tools in points III.III] and III.IV]

III.VI] You should see appear a new line in the “Software updates and add-ons” window – see below -

III.VII] Then click on the link “Ganymade Update Site” as show in the above picture :

III.VIII] Then go down and choose “Web and Java EE Development”

And click on the install button – see above -.

Then the installation start – see above – :

Then click on next button, accept the term of the licence and click on  the finish button.

The packages installation starts – see above – :

Finally the installation finish and the following window appear in order to reboot the eclipse IDE application – see below -

Click on the Yes button

III.IX ] Now we’ll do the same steps for JBoss Tools and Bitr as we did for Ganymed “Web and Java EE Development”.

You should see the entered JBoss Tools links done during III.III] and III.IV] steps then click on the JBoss Tools arrow and select JBoss Tools line – see above -

And do the same procedure as we did for Ganymed “Web and Java EE Development” at step III.VIII].

Let’s hope it clear.

Now you can play with seam and other JBoss projects…

IV] Launch Seam project with Eclipse and Jboss Tools.

IV.I] Indeed you should select in you Fedora main menu bar  Applications > Programming > Eclipse

If not, launch a terminal and run the following command :

[fhornain@localhost ~]$ eclipse -vm /usr/bin/java

Rem: Change the path /usr/bin/java if it is not your java default location

You should see appear the following window :

IV.II] Then click on the main menu bar File > New > Project and the following window appears – see below -

Then Choose your new JBoss Seam Project and name it.

BTW, do not forget BIRT otherwise you will not have JDBC Connectors

Enjoy !

Related links : http://www.jboss.org/community/wiki/InstallingJBossTools

Nevermind the solution below, the actual problem was that in my persistence.xml I had wrong jta-datasource:

RIGHT: jta-data-source>java:/jdbc/DataSourceName</jta-data-source>
WRONG: jta-data-source>jdbc/DataSourceName</jta-data-source>

If you get the error below when deploying an EAR to JBoss:

javax.naming.NameNotFoundException: jdbc not bound

Try adding the following line under jndi-name tag in your xxxx-ds.xml in JBoss’ deploy folder:

<use-java-context>false</use-java-context>

Hostname: name of machine where jboss is running
portnumber : is the port of jmxremote property and NOT jni and NOT RMI port defined in jboss-service.xml file.

So if you need to connect to jboss mbean through jconsole: add the following the run.conf file JAVA_OPTS

-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=12345 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false -Djboss.platform.mbeanserver -Djavax.management.builder.initial=org.jboss.system.server.jmx.MBeanServerBuilderImpl

And then you can connect either remotely: localhost:12345

OR

through the JMX service url

service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://HostName:portnumber/jmxrmi

HornetQ es el nuevo producto de mensajería que está siendo desarrollado para reemplazar JBoss Messaging en su stack de aplicaciones. Si bien está basado en JBoss Messaging está completamente desarrollado desde cero tomando las mejores características de este y agregando un nuevo diseño basado en POJO lo que permite ejecutarlo standalone dentro de tu aplicación con unas pocas líneas de código, entre otras características. Desde su sorpresivo anuncio en el JBoss World está teniendo muchísima atención como una buena alternativa para reemplazar a otros productos open source como ActiveMQ, que desgraciadamente está dando muchas decepciones a la comunidad, a tal punto que varias empresas están empezando a migrar a HornetQ sin siquiera existir una versión final.

Características principales:

• Open Source y desarrollado en Java 1.5, aunque hay planes para migrar a 1.6 dejando retrocompatibilidad
• Soporte JMS y una API propia de mensajería (que elimina el overhead de JMS), además existen planes para agregar otros protocolos como AMQP, STOMP, etc.
• Diseñado con POJOs y con una mínima dependencias de libreria de terceros (practicamente nula)
• Alta disponibilidad, clustering y alta performance a partir de su propio journaling de alta performance (libaio/Java NIO)

Se espera que esté integrado en la próxima release del AS 5 y una versión GA dentro de las próximas semanas. Si bien se puede instalar en un AS 4 no es lo óptimo, pero se puede hacer mediante los scripts de integración que viene en la distro.

Precisamente en esa tarea estuve involucrado estas últimas semanas junto al team de desarrollo. Lo que realice fue básicamente unos scripts y un par de  Standard MBean que permiten instalar una instancia de HornetQ en cualquier versión del AS 4 de forma transparente al usuario y de forma similar a la que se realiza ahora en un AS 5. Esta funcionalidad está disponible en el trunk de proyecto y en los nighty builds, mientras se espera que esté disponible la CR1.

Es una buena oportunidad de ayudar a la comunidad en tus tiempos libres, si alguien está interesado los developers están buscando activamente nueva gente para involucrarse y te lo van a agradecer.

Por último dejo el sitio oficial del proyecto, donde pueden ver la documentación, las FAQs y hacia donde se dirigen

http://www.hornetq.org

This is a mean f****r. Seems to be occurring quite often. Sometimes it’s because application.xml has modules in the wrong order, for example if your web module depends on your EJB module and the web module is deployed first, you might get this error.  This time I encountered it, the workaround or MacGyver™ fix was fixing my <jta-data-source>java:/jdbc/DataSourceName</jta-data-source> in persistence.xml to what it is in my -ds.xml file in JBoss’ deploy folder. Usually the real error is in the end of the long error stack.

Like this:

— MBEANS THAT ARE THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM —
ObjectName: jboss.jca:name=DataSourceName,service=DataSourceBinding
State: NOTYETINSTALLED
Depends On Me:
persistence.units:ear=NameEAR.ear,jar=NameEJB.jar,unitName=unit-name-ejb

Integrare spring in un ejb 3 è possibile usando la classe SpringBeanAutowiringInterceptor. La documentazione di spring ne riporta un esempio sufficientemente esplicativo. Tuttavia se ad esempio il nostro ejb si trova in un ear con classloader condiviso (questo è il default su jboss 4.2 se non esplicitamente configurato nel jboss-app.xml come specificato nella documentazione di jboss), l’interceptor di spring potrebbe trovare nel classpath un file beanRefContext.xml di un’altra applicazione, con conseguenze inattese.

Per fare in modo che l’interceptor di spring trovi il file giusto, è necessario definire un file xml di configurazione di spring con un nome univoco all’interno dell’application server ed usare una classe custom che estenda l’interceptor di spring:

public class MySpringBeanAutowiringInterceptor
    extends SpringBeanAutowiringInterceptor {

    private static final String CONTEXT_FILE = "my-ejb-context.xml";

    @Override
    protected BeanFactory getBeanFactory(Object o) {
        return SpringBeanFactoryManager.getBeanFactory();
    }

    private static class SpringBeanFactoryManager {
        private static final SpringBeanFactoryManager instance =
            new SpringBeanFactoryManager();
        private final ClassPathXmlApplicationContext context;

        private SpringBeanFactoryManager() {
            // singleton
            context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(CONTEXT_FILE);
        }

        public static BeanFactory getBeanFactory() {
            return instance.context.getBeanFactory();
        }
    }
}

In questo modo l’ApplicationContext configurato nel file my-ejb-context.xml verrà caricato una sola volta su ogni singolo nodo del cluster e sarà possibile iniettare i bean di spring nel nostro ejb 3 semplicemente usando l’annotazione @Autowired, come nell’esempio:

@Stateless
@Interceptors(MySpringBeanAutowiringInterceptor.class)
public class MyEjb {

    @Autowired
    // my spring component defined in my-ejb-context.xml
    private MySpringBean mySpringBean;

}

Una matriz de comparaciones entre los distintos frameworks de la capa web más utilizados (principalmente Java y Rails), entre los que destacan Apache Myfaces, JBoss SEAM, Spring MVC, Shale o Rails:

http://olex.openlogic.com/wazi/2008/web-framework-comparison-matrix/