How to migrate the Stateful EJB cache configuration from JBoss EAP 5 / 4 to JBoss EAP 6

Solution Unverified - Updated

Environment

  • Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP)
    • 6.x

Issue

  • We are migrating our application from EAP 5 to EAP 6, and we try to migrate jboss.xml to jboss-ejb3.xml. So, where shoud I migrate the "container-cache-conf" tag which were configed in EAP 5 as below:
      <container-cache-conf>
        <cache-policy>org.jboss.ejb.plugins.LRUStatefulContextCachePolicy</cache-policy>
        <cache-policy-conf>
          <min-capacity>50</min-capacity>
          <max-capacity>200</max-capacity>
          <remover-period>1800</remover-period>
          <max-bean-life>1320</max-bean-life>
          <overager-period>300</overager-period>
          <max-bean-age>1260</max-bean-age>
        </cache-policy-conf>
      </container-cache-conf>

Resolution

First, create a cache configuration in the JBoss profile xml under the ejb3 subsystem. For example, we will call it my-cache as shown below. Next create a file-passivation-store in the passivation-stores section. The cache passivation-store-ref will reference the file-passivation-store name, for the example below my-cache-file. In the my-cache-file, the max-size will be set to the value that you had for max-capacity and the idle-timeout set to the value you had for max-bean-age and the idle-timeout-unit to SECONDS.

        <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:ejb3:1.4">
        ...
            <caches>
                <cache name="simple" aliases="NoPassivationCache"/>
                <cache name="passivating" passivation-store-ref="file" aliases="SimpleStatefulCache" 
                <cache name="clustered" passivation-store-ref="infinispan" aliases="StatefulTreeCache"/>  
                <cache name="my-cache" passivation-store-ref="my-cache-file" aliases="my-custom-cache"             
            </caches>
            <passivation-stores>
                <file-passivation-store name="file" idle-timeout="120" idle-timeout-unit="SECONDS" max-size="500"/>
                <cluster-passivation-store name="infinispan" cache-container="ejb"/>
                <file-passivation-store name="my-cache-file" idle-timeout="1260" idle-timeout-unit="SECONDS" max-size="200"/>
            </passivation-stores>
        ...
        </subsystem>

Next, create a jboss-ejb3.xml inside of your ejb jar's META-INF directory to configure your ejbs to use the cache you created:

<jboss:ejb-jar xmlns:jboss="http://www.jboss.com/xml/ns/javaee"
                  xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
                  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
                  xmlns:c="urn:ejb-cache:1.0"
                  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.jboss.com/xml/ns/javaee http://www.jboss.org/j2ee/schema/jboss-ejb3-2_0.xsd http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/ejb-jar_3_1.xsd"
                  version="3.1"
                  impl-version="2.0">

  <assembly-descriptor>
    <c:cache>
      <ejb-name>*</ejb-name>
      <c:cache-ref>my-cache</c:cache-ref>
    </c:cache>
  </assembly-descriptor>
</jboss:ejb-jar>

Finally, you need to configure the stateful-timeout, which corresponds to the max-bean-life that you had previously.

The JavaEE 6 specification added the ability to configure the stateful-timeout, so it can be configured via EJB3 annotations or ejb-jar.xml for EJB3 and can be configured via ejb-jar.xml for EJB2.

EJB 3.1 Annotations

@StatefulTimeout(value = 1320, unit=java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit.SECONDS) 
@Stateful
@Remote(MyStatefulEJBRemote.class)
public class MyStatefulEJB implements MyStatefulEJBRemote {
  ...
}

Configuring EJB3 or EJB2 via ejb-jar.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ejb-jar xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/ejb-jar_3_1.xsd"
         version="3.1">
    <enterprise-beans>
        <session>
            <ejb-name>HelloBean</ejb-name>
            <session-type>Stateful</session-type>
            <stateful-timeout>
              <timeout>1320</timeout>
              <unit>Seconds</unit>
            </stateful-timeout>
        </session>
    </enterprise-beans>
</ejb-jar>

Configuring EJB3 or EJB2 via jboss-ejb3.xml
The jboss-ejb3.xml extends the ejb-jar.xml, so you can configure everything via the jboss-ejb3.xml if you prefer such as:


<jboss:ejb-jar xmlns:jboss="http://www.jboss.com/xml/ns/javaee"
                  xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
                  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
                  xmlns:c="urn:ejb-cache:1.0"
                  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.jboss.com/xml/ns/javaee http://www.jboss.org/j2ee/schema/jboss-ejb3-2_0.xsd http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/ejb-jar_3_1.xsd"
                  version="3.1"
                  impl-version="2.0">

    <enterprise-beans>
        <session>
            <ejb-name>HelloBean</ejb-name>
            <session-type>Stateful</session-type>
            <stateful-timeout>
              <timeout>1320</timeout>
              <unit>Seconds</unit>
            </stateful-timeout>
        </session>
    </enterprise-beans>

  <assembly-descriptor>
    <c:cache>
      <ejb-name>*</ejb-name>
      <c:cache-ref>my-cache</c:cache-ref>
    </c:cache>
  </assembly-descriptor>
</jboss:ejb-jar>

Unavailable Configuration Items in EAP 6
EJB cache policy "LRUStatefulContextCachePolicy" has been changed in EAP 6 so it is impossible to have 1-to-1 configuration mapping in EAP 6.

  • In EAP 6 we can setup following cache properties:

  • Bean life time (with @StatefulTimeout spec. in EJB 3.1)

  • When to passivate bean to disk file ("idle-timeout" in "file-passivation-store")

  • Max size in passivation store ("max-size" in "file-passivation-store")

  • What we CANNOT setup in EAP 6:

  • Min / Max numbers in memory cache

  • Min numbers in passivation store

  • the following *-period configurations which control the frequency of cache operations

    • remover-period
    • overager-period
    • resizer-period
    • max-cache-miss-period
    • min-cache-miss-period

Related Articles

See this article for more information:
How to configure the Stateful EJB cache in JBoss EAP 6

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