Note: I should carefully qualify what I just said in #2:
"Unfortunately, WAS/LP will not accept any non-IBM ActivationConfig
properties in this jmsActivationSpec"
This implies that an error will occur. I should have said: "WAS/LP will
cheerfully ignore any resource adapter configuration properties that you
specify here, so long as they're in the form properties.<adapter ID>"
Also, my example of supplying a null property for adapter-binding purposes
should have been:
<jmsActivationSpec id="sampleMDB/tibcosample/MessageBean">
<properties.GenericJMSRA/>
</jmsActivationSpec>
On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 8:53 PM, Larry McQueary <mcqueary_at_tibco.com> wrote:
> I'm moving rather slowly on packaging this up as an example, but I want to
> describe the essential elements of making a simple JMS MDB work with
> WebSphere Liberty Profile Beta (via GenericJMSRA). At the time of this
> writing, the WebSphere App Server Liberty Profile is in its
> August/September 2014 beta. The successive summer 2014 beta releases of
> Liberty Profile have introduced support for JCA, MDB, and other
> EJB-friendly features.
>
> While I'm not providing a step-by-step setup procedure, I will provide
> some notes on the essential elements that deviate somewhat from the
> GenericJMSRA deployment examples I've seen for other app servers/versions
> (i.e. Sun and JBoss):
>
> 1. Resource Adapter Configuration: For WAS/LP, configuration of the basic
> adapter properties is through a <resource-adapter> element in the main app
> server config file: server.xml. Here, you would specify the necessary JNDI-
> or bean-based configuration parameters as described in the GenericJMSRA
> documentation. There is no GUI provided for these custom properties, so
> you'll be editing the XML directly in either Eclipse or your favorite XML
> editor. The documentation of both GenericJMSRA and of WAS/LP are sufficient
> to get you through this part.
>
> 2. Binding your MDB's ActivationSpec to the GenericJMSRA adapter: WAS
> Liberty Profile requires the use of "jmsActivationSpec" in server.xml to
> bind your MDB to the JCA adapter. Unfortunately, WAS/LP will not accept any
> non-IBM ActivationConfig properties in this jmsActivationSpec. In our case
> (with GenericJMSRA and a non-IBM JMS provider), the use of
> "jmsActivationSpec" does nothing more than this simple binding. It is not
> possible to specify any GenericJMSRA properties here. WAS/LP only
> understands properties/attributes of its own messaging providers -- either
> the internal JMS provider, "wasJms" or MQ JMS "wmqJms"). Ironically,
> however, you MUST specify a property here, even a null one (as seen below),
> in order to properly bind the MDB activationSpec to the adapter. Example:
>
> <jmsActivationSpec id="sampleMDB/tibcosample/MessageBean">
> <GenericJMSRA/>
> </jmsActivationSpec>
>
> 3. Configuring the ActivationSpec: Given the above, the only way to
> configure your MDB's ActivationConfig properties is through Annotations in
> the code. Unlike the resource-adapter-mid element in
> sun-ejb-jar.xml/glassfish-ejb-jar.xml, the provider-specific deployment
> descriptor/binding file for IBM (ibm-ejb-jar-bnd.xml) does NOT provide any
> way for you to specify/override any activation-config-property. In fact,
> although the <jca-adapter> element in this file allows you to specify a
> non-default ActivationSpec binding name, it does nothing else that will
> affect (in a positive way) the deployment of your MDB, therefore there
> appears to be no benefit in using ibm-ejb-jar-bnd.xml at all for our
> purposes here. It does have a destination-binding-name element, but there
> is no way to bind this name to the ActivationSpec properties.
>
> As I reflect on my experience with this, I'm trying to decide whether
> anything I've learned would suggest a change to either GenericJMSRA or WAS
> Liberty Profile would be warranted. I don't feel that I have the depth of
> understanding of either in order to make a strong suggestion. I do feel
> that WAS Liberty Profile imposes some IBM-centric assumptions on their
> implementation of JCA support. The fact that a Message Driven Bean requires
> a "jmsActivationSpec" (vs. an activationSpec) , and that the
> "jmsActivationSpec", in turn, only supports configuration of IBM JMS
> activation config properties (Liberty messaging or MQ), puts JCA connectors
> for external JMS providers at a distinct disadvantage, eliminating any
> deployment-time configurability.
>
> If I take this up with IBM (which I will), I suspect I'll get the response
> "well, WAS Liberty Profile only supports Liberty embedded JMS, EIS, or MQ"
> -- but that misses the point of having a JCA resource adapter altogether,
> doesn't it?
>
> I hope this information is of help to others. I'll post my working example
> to GitHub and link it here once it's done.
>
> If anyone can suggest something I've missed or gotten wrong, I'm all ears.
>
> Cheers,
> Larry M.
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 4:39 AM, Nigel Deakin <nigel.deakin_at_oracle.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Larry,
>>
>> Once you have got this all working (and assuming it does indeed work to
>> your satisfaction) it would indeed be very helpful if you could write up
>> what you have learned. We could either add it to genericjmsra.java.net
>> or add a link to an article hosted elsewhere.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Nigel
>>
>>
>> On 06/08/2014 21:49, Larry McQueary wrote:
>>
>>> Nigel,
>>>
>>> Very kind of you to respond. I hear you might know a thing or two about
>>> JMS! ;-)
>>>
>>> I'm happy to report that the source of my issues was chiefly, as you
>>> suggest, in getting the WebSphere-specific bindings
>>> right. IBM's documentation is formidable, in both positive and negative
>>> ways. It lays out quite a bit of information
>>> about both the standard bindings and non-standard bindings, but doesn't
>>> give a lot of help understanding in which cases
>>> one applies vs. the other. Further, much of WebSphere's JMS JCA and MDB
>>> related documentation assumes you're using
>>> either MQ or WebSphere's internal messaging (with even more non-standard
>>> binding/notation!), therefore the examples
>>> require some translation as well.
>>>
>>> Once I sorted out the fact that <jmsActivationSpec> is the exclusive way
>>> to specify the binding parameters in the
>>> server.xml, and sorted out the non-standard notation in
>>> ibm-ejb-jar-bnd.xml, I was able to drive my request-reply MDB
>>> via GenericJMSRA (and EMS) without issue.
>>>
>>> As the steps for configuring for WebSphere Liberty Profile are a bit
>>> different from those for JBoss, SJSAS/GlassFish,
>>> and even WebSphere "Full" Profile, I will submit my configuration steps
>>> in a separate posting so they can (I hope) be
>>> included in the site and/or SVN.
>>>
>>> Thanks again for the thoughtful response.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Larry
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 5:24 AM, Nigel Deakin <nigel.deakin_at_oracle.com
>>> <mailto:nigel.deakin_at_oracle.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Larry,
>>>
>>> I don't have any experience of the combination of app server and JMS
>>> provider you are trying to use. However
>>>
>>>
>>> On 31/07/2014 02:03, mcqueary_at_tibco.com <mailto:mcqueary_at_tibco.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I am using the genericra.rar package as provided, with no
>>> modifications
>>> (other than adding my provider jars to it), and attempting to
>>> configure
>>> via the MessageDriven/__ActivationConfigProperty annotations in
>>> my MDB,
>>>
>>> along with the resourceAdapter and activationSpec elements of my
>>> server.xml. I can't seem to concoct the right activationSpec, or
>>> possibly my resourceAdapter element/properties are wrong. I have
>>> tried
>>> lots of things I see in the IBM documentation, but generally my
>>> results
>>> are that a) I enter a property in the activationSpec that the
>>> server
>>> doesn't understand (resulting in the activation spec being
>>> ignored/),
>>> or I enter an "empty" property, resulting in a
>>> NullPointerException/invalid property exception.
>>>
>>>
>>> The EJB spec defines that you can set activation properties either
>>> using <activation-config> elements in ejb-jar.xml
>>> or using @MessageDriven(__activationConfig = ... on the bean class.
>>> This should work for any app server.
>>>
>>>
>>> The app server should pass these straight through to the resource
>>> adapter.
>>>
>>> Note however that the way you actually specify that a given MDB
>>> should use a particular resource adapter is always
>>> non-standard and will be in some IBM-specific descriptor. This will
>>> be in the WebSphere docs. It looks as if you
>>> have got this part working. If you have you should see GenericJMSRA
>>> startup messages in the log when you start your
>>> application (and GenericJMSRA error messages if it fails).
>>>
>>> An IBM-specific descriptor may also provide an alternative,
>>> non-standard way to specify activation properties. I
>>> think <jmsActivationSpec> is an example of this. Again this will be
>>> in the WebSphere docs, and would use some other
>>> file than ejb-jar.xml. I didn't see mention of <activationSpec>.
>>>
>>> Obviously, once you have worked out how to pass activation
>>> properties to GenericJMSRA the next step is to work out
>>> what they should be set to...
>>>
>>> Hope this is of some limited help.
>>>
>>> Nigel
>>>
>>>
>>>
>