The Future of JBoss AS
You can’t really question the inertia behind enterprise development using POJO’s and lightweight frameworks. Rod Johnson (of Spring framework fame) wrote the book about this approach, effectively putting the last nail in the heavy framework’s coffin. This morning’s presentation by JBoss covered their take on this from a 5000-ft level and also described some of the new things afoot in v5 of JBoss AS.
JBoss is mutating their MicroKernel (heavily JMX based) into what they call the MicroContainer. The MicroContainer architecture could be described by reading the outline of Spring’s core container and subtituting “Spring” for “JBoss”. Indeed, they are not only building a lightweight DI framework; they are building their entire app server on it. Cool.
JBoss has always been good about letting the developer/integrater customize the footprint of the server through configuration. It looks like this is going to be even cleaner and better in v5, since the same DI engine which builds the server innerworkings can also assemble application components — all the way up through the presentation tier using Seam/JSF.