This Blog entry is part two of the series; writing JBoss Customer Services. This Blog  assumes that you have completed
all the coding tasks detailed in the previous blog entry. To review the previous Blog entry; we set-up an Eclipse development project and coded an MBean interface and ServiceMBeanSupport class. Next, we created and modified the jboss-service.xml file for our BlogExampleService. An Ant build.xml file was used to compile, assemble, and deploy the SAR File. Once the SAR File was deployed, the JBoss JMX-Console was used to access our service and invoke lifecycle methods. Now we are ready to extend the JBoss service to utilize other JBoss’s Scheduling services.

This Blog entry is the first part of a two part series. I wanted to share knowledge gained on my current project. The project required that the application be written utilizing JBoss service technology. A JBoss service is a JMX (Java Management Extensions) compliant MBean. JBoss uses JMX as its component bus. JMX is a standard for managing and monitoring all varieties of software and hardware components from Java. An MBean is a Java object that implements one of the standard MBean interfaces and follows the associated design patterns. Enough background, let’s write a simple JBoss service. I’ll be using Eclipse 3.1 to create the service.

Recently, I was designing a several J2EE servlets and needed express my thoughts in a scenario diagram. The diagram would be distributed and used by the rest of the development team. Unfortunately, I don’t have an industrial standard Unified Modeling Language (UML) software design tool such as Rational Rose, TogetherJ, or Microsoft Visio installed on my new laptop. And so, I searched for an open source solution on SourceForge.

After downloading and trying two other applications, I discovered UMLet. The design tool is described as follows:

If you are developing J2EE Applications with Eclipse IDE to be run in the JBoss Container, there is a new open source Eclipse Plug-in for you. The JBoss IDE Plug-in 1.5 has been recently release by JBoss Inc. This plug-in is designed to be used with the JBoss Enterprise Middleware System (JEMS). This JBoss IDE Plug-in 1.5 extends Eclipse and enables programmers to develop, deploy, test, and debug their JEMS-based applications without leaving the IDE.

The JBoss IDE 1.5 plug-in is really a bundle of several JBoss projects, specifically: