1.4. About this Release

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.2.0, while not a major release, is nonetheless a non-trivial iteration of the product.

This release aggregates the contents of prior patches and Cumulative Patches (CPs), and adds functionality and updated components. Subsequent patches and Cumulative Patches will assume the installation of this update.

During the life cycle of a product's major version, Red Hat makes commercially reasonable efforts to maintain API-level compatibility across all minor releases and asynchronous patches, ensuring that, for example, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.2.0 maintains API-level compatibility with JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0.0, the initial release of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5. Possible exceptions to this rule include fixes addressing critical security issues.

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5 customers are advised to update to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.2.0.

However, since the release of Enterprise Application Platform version 5.1.1 it is not possible to perform an upgrade from version 4.3. Specifically, updating to 5.2.0 from 4.3 using RPMs is not supported, and will result in platform failure.

Refer to http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/jboss_notes/ for more information about the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Product Update and Support Policy.