Comments on: Some musings on JCA (Java Connector Architecture)

By: ral

ral — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 09:53:34 +0000

Lucas, your impressions and descriptions over JCA are very interesting.

In the last days i have configurated Sun’s JCA, to use it within ServiceMix.

The JCA was used for inbound & outbound communications between ESB(ServiceMix) and Sun’s Application-Server (Business-Intelligence).

With ServiceMix the JCA was used outside of the J2EE-Container, using Jencks-Container, Spring and POJO’s.

This was my first configuration of JCA outside of a J2EE-Container and maybe a little bit stony – but the results and demonstrated potentialities was very impressiv for me.

By: Randy

Randy — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 17:50:46 +0000

Lucas, I understand. My point was that once you start adding transaction and resource management to the bbasic Spring IoC (as the statement in your article seemed to imply), you’ve brought in a large part of the “complexity” as you put it, of what a JavaEE container does.

I’d agree that basic Spring IoC is “lightweight” and is great for what it does. Where I start to scratch my head is when people throw in the “transaction and resource management” aspects of Spring and still call it lightweight…when somehow a JavaEE container that’s doing the same jobs (and requiring similar configuration) is called “heavyweight.”

Peace

By: Lucas Jellema

Lucas Jellema — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 07:44:18 +0000

Randy, You are right of course in your assessment that Spring is a Container. An IoC (inversion of Control) Container. However, Spring is not itself a formal container such as a J2EE container. When I say out of container, I mean out of the J2EE Container with its complexity, adminisrtation overhead and frequently license fees. Leveraging the Spring IoC Container is pretty easy: add a jar to the CLASSPATH and instantiate (certain) objects through the Spring Container (aka BeanFactory).

To leverage JCA from a standalone Java Application, having to use a fullblown J2EE container is extreme overkill, while bringing in Spring is quite lightweight. As of course would be using Apache WSIF.

best regards,
Lucas

By: Randy

Randy — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 23:55:45 +0000

“The Spring Framework, since release 1.2, provides support for out-of-container access to JCA conectors…”

“The aim of the Spring CCI support…leverating Spring’s general resource and transaction management facilities.”

Hmm, isn’t Spring then just another type of “container”? What exactly about accessing a JCA connector from within Spring causes it to be “out of container”?

By: Lucas Jellema

Lucas Jellema — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 06:49:12 +0000

The Server Side: I just stumbled across a reference to this article on The Server Side. It’s nice to be referenced in this way. See: http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=39376