A: To be certified Geronimo needs to fully support JMX and JNDI. So the current plan is to follow the direction of Tomcat 5, Jetty & JBoss and to use MBeans to register & wire the services together along with JNDI.
Has this decision already been taken to base it entirely on JMX ala JBoss?
So far yes. Right now like Tomcat 5, Jetty & JBoss we're using the JMX component model for the foreseeable future along with our own lifecycle mechanism closely tied with the J2EE deployment & classloader mechanisms. Just because another services framework exists it doesn't mean we have to use it. Though things may change in the future.
Remember our aim is to build a kick ass J2EE container - not reuse every bit of code we can find.
I really don't think that's the right way forward.
Thats a convincing argument :) Why? I wonder why Tomcat 5, JBoss & Jetty haven't jumped on Avalon either. Until we get going over here why not start there first then come back here later when we're a little more up to speed & things are documented & described a little better & you've managed to convince Tomcat, Jetty or JBoss to ditch JMX and use Avalon instead?
I ought to be clearer in my posts ;-) I didn't necessarily advocate Avalon over Xxx; that was in response to a previous post.
What I was saying, and had made a post to before, was that I can't see why we should be basing it on JMX [just because that's how Tomcat 5, Jetty, JBoss uses]. My opinion was that a kick-ass J2EE container would probably not be built on JMX, but instead provide an interface for JMX access on top (instead of underneath).
My reasoning behind the JMX issue is that it forces the development down one particular path, with a lot of JMX-intermediary-layer messages being bounced between different components. Removing that layer, and having direct messaging instead is bound to be faster, though this is a subjective observation rather than having detailed analysis to back that up. I'll do some tests and report back.
Although having a JMX interface is needed, it doesn't need to be based on JMX, in much the same way that in order to interoperate with CORBA it doesn't need to be built on top of CORBA.
These were the thoughts behind the original post, and the follow on from the Avalon post led me to the FAQ answer with the 'We are using JMX' answer, hence this query.
Alex.
