There are notable differences between the JBoss EAP product and the continuous delivery release for JBoss EAP.

Enable SASL Authentication for the Management Interfaces Using the CLI Security Commands

SASL authentication can now be enabled for the management interfaces using the security enable-sasl-management CLI command. This command creates all of the non-existing resources necessary to configure authentication.

For more information, see Enable SASL Authentication for the Management Interfaces Using the CLI Security Command in How to Configure Server Security.

Enable HTTP Authentication Using the CLI Security Commands

HTTP authentication can now be enabled for the Undertow security domain and the management interfaces using the security CLI commands.

For more information, see Enable HTTP Authentication for Applications Using the CLI Security Command and Enable HTTP Authentication for the Management Interfaces Using the CLI Security Command in How to Configure Server Security.

Java EE 8 Preview Mode

By default, this continuous delivery release for JBoss EAP uses Java EE 7 APIs.

You can preview Java EE 8 functionality by setting the ee8.preview.mode system property to true on the JAVA_OPTS_APPEND environment variable. The following is an example of how to set Java EE 8 functionality when using the oc new-app command.

$ oc new-app IMAGE_STREAM~PATH_TO_SOURCE_CODE -e JAVA_OPTS_APPEND=-Dee8.preview.mode=true

For more information about how to configure environment variables, see Getting Started with JBoss EAP for OpenShift Container Platform.

This enables support for the following Java EE 8 standards:

Java EE 8 Security Support

Java EE 8 includes support for JSR 375, which defines portable, plug-in interfaces for authentication and identity stores, and a new injectable-type SecurityContext interface that provides an access point for programmatic security. You can use the built-in implementations of these APIs, or define custom implementations.

JBoss EAP Continuous Delivery 13 now supports JSR 375.

New Datasource Attribute

The datasource-class-info attribute provides the list of datasource connection properties that can be set for the datasource class.

For more information, see the Datasource Attributes table in the Configuration Guide.

Scattered Cache Mode

The infinispan subsystem now supports scattered cache mode. Scattered mode is similar to distributed mode in that it uses a consistent hash algorithm to determine ownership. However, ownership is limited to two members, and the originator, or node receiving the request for a given session, always assumes ownership for coordinating locking and cache entry updates. The cache write algorithm used in scattered mode guarantees that a write operation results in only a single RPC call. This can potentially reduce contention and improve performance following a cluster topology change.

For more information, see Clustering Modes in the Configuration Guide.

Externalize HTTP Sessions Using the Remote Cache Store

A new method of externalizing HTTP sessions to JBoss Data Grid is included in this release. This method utilizes a remote cache container in the infinispan subsystem of JBoss EAP that has a client SSL context defined for security.

For more information, see Externalize HTTP Sessions to JBoss Data Grid in the Configuration Guide.

New Worker Attribute

In previous releases of JBoss EAP, the core threads size was always equal to the max threads size. This meant that threads would never die, even if the task-keepalive attribute was set. In this release, the number of threads for the core thread pool can be configured separately using the task-core-threads attribute, allowing the keepalive setting to work as expected.

For more information, see Configuring a Worker and IO Subsystem Attributes in the Configuration Guide for JBoss EAP.

JSON and XML Formatter

You can use the JSON and XML log formatters to format log messages in JSON and XML.

For more information, see Log Formatters in the Configuration Guide.

Connect to Red Hat AMQ Using the Integrated Artemis Resource Adapter

You can configure the integrated Artemis resource adapter to connect to a remote installation of Red Hat AMQ 7, which then becomes the JMS provider for your JBoss EAP 7.1 applications. This allows JBoss EAP to be a client for the remote Red Hat AMQ 7 server.

For more information, see Configuring the Artemis Resource Adapter to Connect to Red Hat JBoss AMQ 7 in Configuring Messaging for JBoss EAP.

Printing CLI Output in Color

You can now configure the management CLI to print the CLI log output in color based on the log message output type. For more information about the available colors and how to enable and disable color printing, see Configuring the Management CLI in the Management CLI Guide.

Undertow Byte Buffer Pools

You can now use Undertow byte buffer pools to allocate pooled NIO ByteBuffer instances. All listeners have a byte buffer pool and you can use different buffer pools and workers for each listener. Byte buffer pools can be shared between different server instances.

For more information, see Configuring Byte Buffer Pools in the Configuration Guide.

Setting the Default Cookie Version

Undertow now provides a way to set the default cookie version to use for cookies created by the application. For information about the new default-cookie-version attribute, see servlet-container Attributes in the Configuration Guide.

Allowing Unescaped Characters in a URL

You can now configure Undertow to allow non-escaped characters in a URL by setting the allow-unescaped-characters-in-url attribute for the HTTP, HTTPS, and AJP listeners. When this attribute is set to true, the listener processes any URL containing non-escaped, non-ASCII characters. When set to false, the listener rejects any URL containing non-escaped, non-ASCII characters with an HTTP Bad Request 400 response code.

For more information about listener attributes, see Undertow Server Attributes in the Configuration Guide.

PROXY Protocol

Undertow now supports the PROXY protocol Version 1, as defined by The PROXY protocol Versions 1 & 2 specification. This option is disabled by default and must only be enabled for listeners that are behind a load balancer that supports the same protocol. It is configured using the new proxy-protocol attribute on the Undertow HTTP and HTTPS listeners.

For more information about listener attributes, see Undertow Server Attributes in the Configuration Guide.

EJB and JNDI over HTTP/HTTPS with HTTP Load Balancer

Performing EJB and JNDI invocations using the HTTP protocol, so that requests are mapped directly to HTTP requests, is now fully supported in JBoss EAP Continuous Delivery 13. In addition, you can invoke EJBs over an HTTP load balancer. For more information, see EJB Invocation Over HTTP in the Developing EJB Applications.

KUBE_PING Integrated Natively In JBoss EAP

Previously, the KUBE_PING JGroups discovery protocol was implemented only in the JBoss EAP OpenShift image. KUBE_PING is now implemented natively in JBoss EAP, so users creating their own custom container images are now able to natively use KUBE_PING for clustered applications. For more information on using KUBE_PING, see the Clustering reference in Getting Started with JBoss EAP for OpenShift Container Platform.

Predefined Modules

A set of predefined modules, org.jboss.modules, which includes all of the JBoss Modules API, is supported in JBoss EAP Continuous Delivery 13 when you use the default module loader. This special module is always available and is provided by JBoss Modules. The standard Java Platform Module System (JPMS) modules, which are provided in Java 9 and later, are also available by their standard names. When using JDK 8, the JDK 9 modules are emulated by JBoss Modules.

For more information, see Predefined Modules in the Configuration Guide.

Support for some technologies are removed due to the high maintenance cost, low community interest, and better alternative solutions. The following features are not supported in this continuous delivery release for JBoss EAP.

Some features have been deprecated with this release. This means that no enhancements will be made to these features, and they may be removed in the future, usually the next major release.

Red Hat will continue providing full support and bug fixes under our standard support terms and conditions. For more information about the Red Hat support policy, see the Red Hat JBoss Middleware Product Update and Support Policy located on the Red Hat Customer Portal.

For details of which features have been deprecated, see the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Component Details located on the Red Hat Customer Portal.

IO Subsystem

Platforms and Features

Support for the following platforms and features is deprecated: