How difficult is it to set up and configure JBoss?

[Alex]

As a software developer, I must admit that I'm not thrilled when it
comes to twiddling many knobs in order to make a software product
work. I'm always in favor of choosing the typical configuration right
out of the box, and trying to work with it. Only if I determine that
the vanilla configuration won't cut it for me, would I roll up my
sleeves and start twiddling the knobs (i.e. configuring the product).

Many promising products (mostly the ones coming from the open source
community) unfortunatelly tend to adopt exactly the opposite approach.
Products such as Jetspeed, for example, require you to devote days to
learning how to even get it to start and display the simplest portal
you've built. In other words, these products bear the signs of being
developed by the propeller-heads for the propeller-heads (or, in more
dignified terms, by the engineers for the engineers).

Since my time is precious (I get hired to developing applications, not
to tweak the configuration files), I don't intend to waste it on
playing with the knobs that come with the majority of such products.
Imagine if every morning, in order to start your car, you're expected
to go through a complicated ritual of rewiring and messing with the
internals of your car's engine. That wouldn't be deemed very
practical, wouldn't it? Besides, it would definitelly not boost the
car sales overall.

But for some reason, when it comes to software products, such
complications are deemed almost desirable.

Anyhow, my question is this: how intuitive is it to install and set
JBoss up? Do I need to turn it into a career, or can I expect to have
it up and running (and serving the apps) in one afternoon?

I always like to compare a product, such as Resin web server, to some
other less friendly products. Resin comes with only one configuration
file (resin.conf), which is very straightforward, as opposed to dozens
of config files that come bundled with open source products such as
Turbine (just to give an example off the top of my head). To me,
Turbine is a very hostile product, as it expects me to remember to
visit all those fractured XML files and edit them. It is very taxing
on my short term memory, which is why I've decided to ditch it after
spending some hellish time with it.

Can I expect JBoss to be more friendly and understanding towards my
limited free time and short term memory? What's your experiences?

Thanks.

Alex

 

[Neil Campbell]

Anyhow, my question is this: how intuitive is it to install and set
JBoss up? Do I need to turn it into a career, or can I expect to have
it up and running (and serving the apps) in one afternoon?

I don't think it's as bad as some products. I used JBoss (a slightly older
version) for my 3rd year projcet at University, when I had no experience of
enterprise applications, and it didn't cause me too much grief.

As I recall, it was relatively straightforward to get it going, although it
was a bit more complicated to get specific settings working with it. It
may have become more difficult since I last used it though.

If you're familiar with this type of application though, I don't think it
should cause you too many problems.

 

[Jeff]

JBoss comes with a default configuration that will run just
about everything you need right out of the box. No tweaking
required. However, in a production environment, you really
do need to examine the configuration more closely. The
default config launches many services that you will not likely
need.

Things you may need to tweak depending on your use:
- mail server configuration for JavaMail
- database connectivity if you are connecting to an external RDBMS.

Personally, I can't stand having a bunch of services running that I
don't need, so I spent a full day examining all of the services that
are deployed in the default config and removed as many as I possibly
could to leave me with a lean, mean EJB machine. The redeeming part
about this is that services are deployed by dropping single files or directories
into the 'deploy' directory in JBoss. So you just have to figure out which
ones can be deleted. There is no master config file for all of them. Likewise,
deployment of your own stuff is accomplished by dropping it into the deploy
directory. Each deployed service contains it's own configuration info.

JBoss is a great product. I can't see any reason why someone would pay
thousands of dollars for a J2EE server when JBoss can be had for free.
No, there isn't anybody there to hold your hand. But I prefer to know what
I'm doing instead of paying for answers that may or may not be correct.

My $0.02

 

[znôrt]

Anyhow, my question is this: how intuitive is it to install and set
JBoss up? Do I need to turn it into a career, or can I expect to have
it up and running (and serving the apps) in one afternoon?

My 0.02$, in the time it took you to write this post you could have
downloaded and fired up jboss a couple of times

Give it a try.

regards
znôrt