The idea was folks could use this little library if they wanted to load or mess with the XML config files & then hide the XML stuff and just use Java beans. Also for folks wishing to do dynamic deployments of EJBs or Servlets or MDBs or whatever they could just make a few Java beans and invoke the right operation on some Geronimo component / MBean etc.
Xmlbeans purely an experiment right now. I tried Castor and it choked on the schema (have left the Maven goal in case anyones any bright ideas). I tried JAXB and after some fighting it could do ejb-jar.xml & the j2ee schema but couldn't do all of them in one go. Due to the distribution issues of JAXB today (which is apparently gonna be fixed soon as it moves to Java.Net with a real open source licence) and its large dependency list at runtime - maybe an alternative is in order.
We could extend / hack JAXB to make simpler beans with less dependencies. Or there's other tools to try yet - like XMLBeans or Zeus. Or we could do XSLT on the schema documents to take the stuff out of them that breaks Castor.
So various options really. Just thought I'd give folks a heads up of my little experiment. Any input / ideas / patches welcome.
James ------- http://radio.weblogs.com/0112098/
