Connecting from JBoss 4.2 to JBoss 7.1

Question

We would like to create a completely new service using JBoss 7.1 with modern technologies such as JPA, Java EE 6, etc....
Alas, we have a legacy system running on a JBoss 4.2.2 that is definitely NOT portable to JBoss 7. The old system will have to access the new system, i.e. call methods via RMI.

Unfortunately, that is not possible out of the box:

• JBoss 7 does not support the old JNP protocol anymore that was usually used in JBoss 4 for JNDI lookups. (See https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/AS71/JNDI+Reference)
• We cannot just add the new JARs needed for the new protocol to, say, default/lib, because this will cause version conflicts (logging, e.g.) and simply does not work.

I see two possible solutions, which are both complicated and error-prone:

1. We add a new Deployment to JBoss 4 that is packaged with all necessary libraries to access JBoss 7 using and try to use JBoss' class loader magic in jboss-app.xml to make it work.

2. We retrofit the old JNP server which can be found in jnpserver.jar as a new JBoss 7 module.

In both cases we would have to bind a Bridge/Adapter object to the JNDI context via JNP that forwards all requests.

Does anyone have experiences in bridging the gap (rather a snake pit in fact) between JBoss 4 to JBoss 7 or a better idea?

Thanks in advance.

Markus

Answer 1

Make your life easier and use web services between them as this will also avoid and classloader / serialization hell