JBoss application configuration during deployment time

I was looking for a mechanism to configure my application during deployment time. We have our own configuration module but it does not handle the case for deployment descriptor. For example, the application needs to connect to different JMS queues in different environment. The JMS queue name is usually specified in the jboss.xml which is wrapped in the ear file. Our old approach is to use an Ant script build the ear file during the deployment time. It is tedious and also makes it difficult to see what is actually configured. Now I discovered a new way to do it. I can actually use ${param_name} inside the jboss.xml and use JBoss's system property service to define the actual value of the parameter in a seperate property-service.xml. By doing that, I can have the ear file created during the build time and deploy it along with an environment specific property file. It works just wonderful.
To know how it is done, you can take a look at org.jboss.metadata.MetaData.java. And here is the documentation from the Javadoc:

Go through the input string and replace any occurance of ${p} with the System.getProperty(p) value. If there is no such property p defined, then the ${p} reference will remain unchanged. If the property reference is of the form ${p:v} and there is no such property p, then the default value v will be returned. If the property reference is of the form ${p1,p2} or ${p1,p2:v} then the primary and the secondary properties will be tried in turn, before returning either the unchanged input, or the default value. The property ${/} is replaced with System.getProperty("file.separator") value and the property ${:} is replaced with System.getProperty("path.separator").

Setting SSL on Apache 2.0

I have been working on Ajax and JSOD recently to prototype different ways to access a secure web service in a cross domain manner. As a result, I need to setup different SSL secure domains on my local box. I have used name based virtual host with Apache 2.0 before to setup mutiple hosts on my box. But setting SSL sites could be a challenge.

Fortunately I found a execllent guide on the web and was able to follow it through. By the end of the last week, I had three virtual SSL hosts setup on my local desktop. Here are some important configurations for it to work.

Listen 443
LoadModule ssl_module modules/mod_ssl.so

Include conf/ssl.conf

SSLMutex none
SSLRandomSeed startup builtin
SSLSessionCache none

#
# Use name-based virtual hosting.
#
NameVirtualHost *:443

SSLEngine On
SSLCertificateFile conf/ssl/tokentest.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile conf/ssl/tokentest.key
DocumentRoot C:/tmp/sites/token.test.com
ServerName token.test.com
ErrorLog C:/tmp/sites/token.test.com/error.log
CustomLog C:/tmp/sites/token.test.com/access.log common

SSLEngine On
SSLCertificateFile conf/ssl/tokentest.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile conf/ssl/tokentest.key
DocumentRoot C:/tmp/sites/www.test.com
ServerName www.test.com
ErrorLog C:/tmp/sites/www.test.com/error.log
CustomLog C:/tmp/sites/www.test.com/access.log common

SSLEngine On
SSLCertificateFile conf/ssl/tokentest.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile conf/ssl/tokentest.key
DocumentRoot C:/tmp/sites/www.tokentest.com
ServerName www.tokentest.com
ErrorLog C:/tmp/sites/www.tokentest.com/error.log
CustomLog C:/tmp/sites/www.tokentest.com/access.log common

Implementing web service on JBoss 4.0.3

My recent project involves implementing web services on JBoss platform. The current implementation (4.0.3) is based on a modified Axis code base and does not provides a good support on top-down (starts from WSDL) development approach. I ended up have to integrate Axis 1.2 with JBoss 4.0.3. It works well so far.

At the same time, I have been looking into the next generation of JBoss WS which looks like very promising. During the course, I was also able to make some contribution to the new code base, fixing two defects (JBWS 754-755). I hope I will have more time in the future to make more contributions.

A maven 1.x plug-in for Agitar

I have been spending some time to create a Maven 1.x plug-in for Agitar . It was finally done last week and I have posted it on Agitar's forum .