Replay of the webinar “WildFly for Innovation and Red Hat JBoss EAP for commercial support” is now available.

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The webinar was very well attended with hundreds of viewers and there were lot of questions asked. I’ve captured some of those here:

• Is it safe (or very bad idea) to develop on WildFly and run in production on EAP?

  The recommended model is to use JBoss EAP for development, testing, and production for an application. There are always differences between WildFly and EAP with former offering bleeding-edge technologies and latter providing a lot more stability with bugfixes and patches. WildFly would be appropriate only for development/evaluation/contribution of new innovative features such as Java EE 7 in the upstream project.

• If you develop on Wildfly and deploy on EAP  is there a risk Wildfly will move ahead too quickly and EAP will fall behind in capabilities supported?

  WildFly is focused on innovation and moves at a rapid pace. This allows WildFly to easily implement new technologies and provide a platform for enterprise developers to try them out. New features can be added or older features may be removed to provide a better experience for that particular release. There is no requirement to provide a patch release and any support is only through community.

  JBoss EAP is derived from a particular WildFly release and is focused on long term stability and predictability. It is battle tested on a variety of operating systems, JDK, and databases. It goes through rigorous performance testing, regression testing, scalability testing, and other means to ensure that a military-grade product is delivered. API level compatibility is guaranteed across different versions of EAP, this is not a requirement for WildFly. Enterprises that want stability and predictability should look at JBoss EAP. Developers that want bleeding edge technology should look at WildFly.

• Isn’t JBoss EAP an open source product as well ?

  Yes, JBoss EAP binaries and source code are made available under open source licenses.

• When will JBoss EAP provide support for Java EE 7 full platform ?

  We’re currently in the planning stages for EAP 7. More details and the roadmap will be presented at Red Hat Summit in San Francisco, April 14-17.

• EAP 6 would be supporting JEE7?

  EAP 6 will not be fully certified for Java EE 7. Although some selective features, such as WebSocket, may be backported. We’ll have more detail on that at Red Hat Summit in April.

• Is EAP an alternative to WebSphere?  Why or why not?

  Absolutely. JBoss EAP is a compelling alternative to WebSphere. https://engage.redhat.com/forms/jboss-v-websphere provides all the details. And don’t just take Red Hat’s word for it – JBoss EAP has been a leader (along with WebLogic and WebSphere) in Gartner’s Enterprise Application Server Magic Quadrant for the last five years and many customers have made the migration to JBoss from more expensive proprietary alternatives like WebSphere and WebLogic. You could also reference Get Unstuck with JBoss if appropriate. It contains quite a few resources on this topic.

• How do you compare Wildfly with alternative open source servers such as  VMWare VFabric  and wso2 app server ?

  Red Hat EWS (Red Hat | JBoss Web Server) is vanilla Tomcat and fully supported by Red Hat. This offering is very comparable to tcServer. VMWare vFabric is optimized for running Spring applications. Spring is one of the technologies supported by WildFly, in addition to many others. WSO 2 supports many Java EE technologies but not a Java EE compliant app sever. WildFly provides full Java EE 7 compliance and EAP 7 will provide commercial support for that in future.

• So if I recompile the EAP sources I can do whatever I want with the compiled binary ?

  No – you can’t do “whatever”. The open source licenses governing JBoss EAP source code, principally the LGPL, grant you certain permissions subject to conditions that you must comply with. In addition, you may not brand your recompiled EAP sources as “JBoss” or any other Red Hat-owned trademark. This means, for example, that if you distribute or publicly deploy your recompiled binary you must first remove all JBoss and other Red Hat branding, such as logo files. Any recompilation of EAP sources is not JBoss EAP and must not be presented as being a Red Hat or JBoss product.

• We are using JBoss 5 EAP. Is there any guide for migrating to WildFly or EAP version?

  EAP 5 is based on Java EE 5. WildFly is a Java EE 7 compliant container. Application would need to be manually ported by learning the new Java EE 7 programming capabilities. Migration Guide provides complete details on how to migrate your applications from EAP 5.x to 6.x. JBoss Migration Center offer additional tools that provide configuration migration across different versions of EAP. We strongly encourage you to locate a Red Hat partner and work with them on this.

• Do Red Hat Engineers commit new features into WildFly before committing into EAP  e.g. WebSockets?

  WildFly is the upstream project which JBoss EAP is based on. All features are committed into WildFly first and allow developers to try the cutting-edge technologies in their development cycles. A version of WildFly is the basis for JBoss EAP, where all the features are battle tested for production deployments.

• Are no extra ports (random) used for EJB communication and what about hornetQ ports?

  Only two ports are exposed: 8080 for application and 9990 for management in the default profile. All other technologies will handshake over these two ports.

• Will it support Scala?

  WildFly and JBoss are polyglot application server. Scala (just as many other languages Ruby, Clojure, etc.) can easily be incorporated with Java applications, and even standalone Scala applications are possible on JBoss. There is a number of frameworks that could be useful for developers using JBoss and having a need for building applications using Scala. For example, Escalante is a Scala application server based on JBoss AS 7. Spray provides a REST/HTTP-based integration layer over Scala and Akka and supports any Servlet 3.0 compliant container.

• Does undertow allow session management using Infinispan ?

  Yes, it does.

• Where can we see approximate price-list for EAP production deployments in numbers?

  Contact Red Hat sales at http://www.redhat.com/contact/sales for a price list of JBoss EAP.

• Why has JBoss performance metrics never been published to SpecJ?

  We do performance benchmark testing in our regular test suite and really care about it. We are planning to submit SPECjEnterprise 2010 benchmark numbers on a fully open source stack in future.

• How CentOS relates to JBoss EAP?

  CentOS is not related to JBoss EAP. CentOS is a community project providing a distribution of Linux, while JBoss EAP is an enterprise-class application server product provided by Red Hat. Red Hat is involved in and contributes to a wide range of open source communities including CentOS and JBoss.org. Complete list of JBoss supported configurations can be found here.

• When EAP will support websockets as WildFly does

  We are investigating back porting WebSocket support to EAP 6.x. EAP 7 is planned to be Java EE 7 compatible and will support WebSocket. Stay tuned for more details at Red Hat Summit.

• Is it possible to have a customized JBoss EAP version  that addresses a specific need?

  You can customize the JBoss EAP by manipulating subsystems in configuration files. But we recommend talking to sales so that they can understand your needs better and offer a comprehensive solution.

• Which version of JBoss EAP 6.x.x will be based on Wildfly 8 ?

  JBoss EAP 6.x will continue to be derived from JBoss AS 7.x.x. We are considering backporting some features of WildFly to EAP 6.x. JBoss EAP 7 will be derived from a future version of WildFly.

• What will be approximate cost for 8 processor single instance deployment? for EAP 6.2?

  Contact sales for an exact quote.

• We are moving some of application servers from WL to JBoss. But i find it hard to do it  is there is seamless process which can help in migration ?

  Red Hat has recognized the importance of supporting a first-class program around migration that kicked off in 2013. One of the key enablers in our migration story is Windup, which we are working with several customers and partners to enhance in order to have a more effective and streamlined migration process. More details about migration tools is available here.

• Does EAP use standard JPA artifacts??

  Yes, JBoss EAP is Java EE 6 compliant and so provides support for JPA 2.

• Is some presentation comparing WildFly and liberty profile?

  We have competitive content for JBoss EAP and Liberty. Slides are available at https://engineering.redhat.com/pnt/p-347807/Comparing_JBo…eo_slides.pdf and a video is also available at http://www.redhat.com/resourcelibrary/videos/focus-on-not-apples-to-apples-comparing-jboss-enterprise-application-platform-and-ibm-websphere-liberty-profile

  The above video and slides are for an older version of WebSphere Liberty profile. Both are being updated with new versions expected to be released in March 2014.

• Will Tomcat still be supported in WildFly 8?  If not  does Undertow support the AJP Connector interface? Or will it have a different connector interface?

  Undertow is the new web server for WildFly 8 and Tomcat will not be supported in WildFly 8. AJP Connector is already supported.

• Is it easy to migrate from JBoss AS 7.1.1 to JBoss eap 6.2?

  As a general rule, we provide seamless migration from upstream projects to corresponding products. Migrating from AS 7.1.x to JBoss EAP 6.2 should be very straight forward. Guides are provided across major versions, for example Migration Guide from EAP 5.x to EAP 6.2 is here. You should also look at JBoss Migration Center for additional tools in this area.

• Are Wildfly and EAP different installations?  i.e. How to go from Dev evaluation to Production with support?

  Yes, you can’t automagically update a WildFly installation to become EAP – they are separate installations. You need to redeploy your applications and recreate your resources from community projects like WildFly to products like JBoss EAP.

• Can we pay less for licensing  if we don’t want any support  only right to deploy and documentation?

  Red Hat only charges for subscriptions, there is no licensing cost.

• OEM licensing? Can we deploy wildfly & EAP depending on customer paying or not paying for EAP?

  Contact sales for an exact quote.

• Please elaborate: Red Hat JBoss BRMS

  Red Hat JBoss BRMS is a comprehensive platform for business rules management and complex event processing. More details here.

• Is there a good quickstart for migrating glassfish to EAP from a JMS perspective??  like setting up JMS ConnectionFactory

  Stay tuned, a white paper is coming soon on this topic.

• How about WildFly with eclipse?

  http://blog.arungupta.me/2013/12/getting-started-jboss-tools-wildfly-techtip-5 shows WildFly and Eclipse integration.

• paper on JBOSS Clustering vs. Weblogic Clustering. Some module to use on Apache for three tier implementation  like we have mod_weblogic similar for jboss ?

  mod_cluster is a cluster-aware plugin for Apache HTTPD that can be used to provide software-based load balancing for clustered JBoss EAP deployments.

• What is next for WildFly?

  WildFly 9 feature set and scope is still being discussed. If there are any particular features that you need then please file issues in JIRA. You can also follow the community at @WildFlyAS. We’ll provide more details at JUDCon and Red Hat Summit.

• Can JBoss EAP be used for evaluation and development without buying a license
  ?

  JBoss EAP is licensed royalty-free. In particular, JBoss EAP can be downloaded from jboss.org and used for evaluation and development without payment of a license fee. If you download JBoss EAP from jboss.org and use it in production you are obligated to purchase a subscription — otherwise you are in breach of the agreement covering the download.

• What major companies are using EAP currently?

  Mitsubishi, E*Trade, Sprint, GEICO and many others listed here.

• Are all the features in JBoss 7.1.2 in wildfly 8?

  This is generally true. However the specifications pruned by Java EE (JAX-RPC (JSR 101), JAXR (JSR 93), EJB Entity Beans (part of JSR 153), and Java EE Application Deployment (JSR 88)) are removed from WildFly. Also, JBoss Web is now replaced by Undertow as the web server.

• If you use WildFly for dev and EAP for production  how do you make sure that the JEE versions are compatible?

  First of all, there is no such thing as “JEE”

  JBoss EAP 5.x is downstream from JBoss AS 5.x and both are Java EE 5 compliant. JBoss EAP 6.x is downstream of JBoss AS 7.x and both are java EE 6 compliant. JBoss EAP 7 will be based on a future version of WildFly and both will be Java EE 7 compliant. Java EE N+1 compliant application server will support Java EE N applications as well. So make sure to choose your development and deployment environments accordingly.

• Can you please provide some Java EE 7 code samples tested on WildFly ?

  github.com/javaee-samples/javaee7-samples provide a comprehensive source of Java EE 7 samples that runs on WildFly.

• Does a subscription for JBoss EAP 6 include the ‘JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform’ or similar SOA Platform?

  A subscription for any individual JBoss Enterprise Middleware product includes development use for all of the products in the JBoss Enterprise Middleware portfolio. Please refer to the Red Hat JBoss Subscription Guide for details.