A long time ago we did (TomEE 7 days). We currently run a lot of "backend" apps, but we have typically deployed on them on the Tomcat based container. We're actually looking to move some of these to openejb-standalone for less exposure surface (no Tomcat CVEs for things that dont actually need Tomcat). We don't have a use for EJBs anymore except for MDBs, singletons, and timers, all which execute locally; none of those require remote invocation or coordination.
As a side note, sure be cool if TomEE had a "invoke this interface" and have TomEE locate it locally or remotely. Be a cool portable extension to write! On Sun, Sep 13, 2026 at 1:41 PM Markus Jung <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey all, > > I’ve been discussing with Richard lately in private about dropping > openejb-http and think we should be bringint it to the list. Looking at > openejb-http we noticed it's really two things in one module: the embedded > HTTP server ("httpejbd") and the HttpListener / request / response / > servlet adapter types that CXF, tomee-jaxrs and tomee-webservices plug into. > > On TomEE the server never runs. TomEEServiceManager skips httpejbd (along > with ejbd, ejbds and admin) and Tomcat's connectors handle all HTTP [1]. > The only things that still start it are: > > - the openejb-standalone assembly, where it's the HTTP transport for > remote EJB calls > - ApplicationComposer tests with @EnableServices("jaxrs"/"jaxws"), ~80 > test classes, most of them in openejb-cxf-rs (57) and openejb-cxf (10) > - openejb.embedded.remotable and the arquillian-openejb-embedded adapter > - ~19 examples (simple-rest, rest-cdi, the jsonb ones, > applicationcomposer-jaxws-cdi, the webservice-* ones) > > So the only real runtime user is openejb-standalone, the rest is test > tooling. IMO we should drop both httpejbd and the openejb-standalone > assembly and move the affected tests/examples over to a Tomcat based setup > (tomee-embedded / arquillian-tomee-embedded). The adapter types would stay > since TomEE needs them, so this is more a split of the module than a > removal. > > Independent of that: the Jetty backend in openejb-http checks for > org.mortbay.jetty.Connector (Jetty 6) while the pom pulls Jetty 12, so it > always falls back to the OpenEJB server and can never run [2]. I'd remove > that in any case. > > Does anyone still use openejb-standalone or rely on httpejbd outside of > tests? WDYT? > > > Thanks > > Markus > > [1] > https://github.com/apache/tomee/blob/main/tomee/tomee-catalina/src/main/java/org/apache/tomee/catalina/TomEEServiceManager.java > [2] > https://github.com/apache/tomee/blob/main/server/openejb-http/src/main/java/org/apache/openejb/server/httpd/HttpServerFactory.java -- Jonathan | [email protected] Pessimists, see a jar as half empty. Optimists, in contrast, see it as half full. Engineers, of course, understand the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
