What AOP really does for JBoss
I mentioned some time ago that i really like that the JBoss people were trying to do more than just implementing the J2EE standards. Too often people complain that open source is just copying existing stuff, and that there is no innovation in open source. So I’m glad to see JBoss trying to innovate.
However, I also know that out of ten so called innovations nine will probably fail, and only one will really prove worthwhile. And after reading this thread on the serverside, I’m not so sure JBoss’ so called AOP implementation is going to be that one worthwhile innovation. But i don’t want them to stop. They have to either be extremely successful, or fail misserably, but we need to get this sorted out. And when it proves to be a success, i guess it’ll end up in more EJB containers, and even the j2ee specs.
But i think for production environment i really don’t want to use a playground for innovative ideas, which means that i’ll probably look elsewhere for a production level j2ee server (jonas, openejb, apache j2ee/geronimo?)...
August 29th, 2003 at 9:15 am
I agree to some extent that using AOP probably won’t be the mainstream way to develop enterprise java applications for some time to come. However, JBoss has since Rickard’s time been designed as a modular j2ee implementation, and changing the module composition internally to an AOP model really won’t matter to those only interested in j2ee.
Your comment on the innovation side is on the spot – perhaps these things will be used, perhaps not, but in any case they are pushing the envelope and thus bringing important innovations into the java and open source communities.
August 29th, 2003 at 1:05 pm
Your thoughts about using JB4 with the whiz-bang AOP stuff is spot on: I wouldn’t use it myself in production, why would I recommend customers to use it? Use of this bleeding edge AOP stuff makes me nervous – the app server is something that’s supposed to be rock-solid.
August 29th, 2003 at 2:29 pm
We’re using AOP as a means of testing our code in a production system – specifically to check we’re opening and closing connections properly. I think this is how AOP might become more mainstream. It will get used during testing and debugging and as it matures and understanding increases it might make it into live production code. Hope so, it’s a useful technique (in some circumstances).
August 29th, 2003 at 9:32 pm
We all know how rock solid other venders .0 releases are