Throughout the last three years and especially after publishing my post JBoss minimal configuration with Tomcat I’ve been asked many times what is actually the idea behind JBoss AS Minimal Configuration profile. So what exactly you’ll get with following command?           ./run.sh -c minimal As the name implies, minimal profile consists only from bare configuration set needed to start everything what makes JBoss AS - the microkernel itself. To benefit from its dynamic loading functionality, three services need to be started from JBoss AS code itself:

• Service Controller to manage dependency and service lifecycle management
• Main Deployer responsible for deployment process delegation
• SAR Deployer that accepts JBoss Service Archives (SAR), both packaged and *-service.xml files for already loaded MBean classes.

Although this is enough to call the newly started java process ‘JBoss’, to make it usable, more is still required. From this point rest of the control is handed over to the main configuration file ./conf/jboss-service.xml (via SAR Deployer). Minimal profile has following services configured:

• Logging service (log4j)
• Basic Thread Pool
• Naming service (JNDI)
• Deployment scanner

As you can see, modulary developed from it’s bones, the JBoss server and all its services are implemented using the component-based approach. For version 4.X this effort is based on Java Management Extensions (JMX). Easy to use MBeans with extended lifecycle, dependency and injection support are registered to the MBean Server, which acts as invocation bus providing ideal decoupling of services. Having minimal profile allows developers to start developing regular application with added benefit of dynamic redeployment. You can think about this functional set as an powerful application framework. Deployment scanner discovers new archives and Main/SAR deployers will deploy them. What else do we need? For more information, please, check JBoss JMX Microkernel documentation. Sounds interesting? It kind of does, but writing this at the end of the year 2008, we need a little bit more to get the right thrill. More...

Ouch, this article seems to be cut off just before the interesting bits: the JBOSS 5.0 microcontainer with POJO support, and OSGi. Read the full article before complaining about: old news, that's so 2006, no OSGi, etc. Greets, Geert

It seems like their design is heading toward the original OO ideals of message passing between totally encapsulated entities. That's exciting. But the amount of overhead and code required today, detailed at http://java.dzone.com/articles/a-look-inside-jboss-microconta , is not.

It seems like their design is heading toward the original OO ideals of message passing between totally encapsulated entities. That's exciting. But the amount of overhead and code required today, detailed at http://java.dzone.com/articles/a-look-inside-jboss-microconta , is not.

I think the issue you perceive is because the article aims to show the flexibility with which integration problems can be solved rather than a user manual for the example features. e.g. the Guice integration shown in all its gory details is already written by JBoss. A user would just tell it what module(s) to use. :-)

Well, they are not explaining themselves very well then.

This is very similar to what Apache Geronimo has been doing for years. Check it out on the website WAS CE developer space. There is a video webcast and an article about it. Good to see JBoss follows the trend of modular architecture.

This is very similar to what Apache Geronimo has been doing for years. Check it out on the website WAS CE developer space. There is a video webcast and an article about it.

Good to see JBoss follows the trend of modular architecture.

This is flamebait correct? :-) JBoss had .sar many years before Geranium (sorry couldn't resist) even existed. http://www.mail-archive.com/jboss-development at lists dot sourceforge dot net/msg06680.html

What should I do to enable the jmx-console.war as well? How can I track the jmx-console dependencies on other libraries?