The Java API for XML-based RPC (JAX-RPC) was deprecated in Java EE 6 and is optional in Java EE 7. It is no longer available or supported in JBoss EAP 7. Applications that use JAX-RPC must be migrated to use JAX-WS, which is the current Java EE standard web services framework.

Use of JAX-RPC web services can be identified in any of the following ways:

In previous releases of JBoss EAP, you could customize the JBossWS and Apache CXF integration by including a jbossws-cxf.xml configuration file with the endpoint deployment archive. One use case for this was to configure interceptor chains for web service client and server endpoints on the Apache CXF bus. This integration required Spring to be deployed in the JBoss EAP server.

Spring integration is no longer supported in JBoss EAP 7. Any application that contains a jbossws-cxf.xml descriptor configuration file must be modified to replace the custom configuration defined in that file. While it is still possible to directly access the Apache CXF API, be aware that the application will not be portable.

The suggested approach is to replace Spring custom configurations with the new JBossWS descriptor configuration options where possible. The JBossWS descriptor-based approach provides similar functionality without requiring modification of the client endpoint code. In some cases, you can replace Spring with Context Dependency Injection (CDI).

Apache CXF Interceptors

The JBossWS descriptor provides new configuration options that allow you to declare the interceptors without modifying the client endpoint code. Instead you declare interceptors within predefined client and endpoint configurations by specifying a list of interceptor class names for the cxf.interceptors.in and cxf.interceptors.out properties.

The following is an example of a jaxws-endpoint-config.xml file that declares interceptors using these properties.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<jaxws-config xmlns="urn:jboss:jbossws-jaxws-config:4.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:javaee="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
  xsi:schemaLocation="urn:jboss:jbossws-jaxws-config:4.0 schema/jbossws-jaxws-config_4_0.xsd">
  <endpoint-config>
    <config-name>org.jboss.test.ws.jaxws.cxf.interceptors.EndpointImpl</config-name>
    <property>
      <property-name>cxf.interceptors.in</property-name>
      <property-value>org.jboss.test.ws.jaxws.cxf.interceptors.EndpointInterceptor,org.jboss.test.ws.jaxws.cxf.interceptors.FooInterceptor</property-value>
    </property>
    <property>
      <property-name>cxf.interceptors.out</property-name>
      <property-value>org.jboss.test.ws.jaxws.cxf.interceptors.EndpointCounterInterceptor</property-value>
    </property>
  </endpoint-config>
</jaxws-config>

Apache CXF Features

The JBossWS descriptor allows you to declare features within predefined client and endpoint configurations by specifying a list of feature class names for the cxf.features property.

The following is an example of a jaxws-endpoint-config.xml file that declares a feature using this property.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<jaxws-config xmlns="urn:jboss:jbossws-jaxws-config:4.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:javaee="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
  xsi:schemaLocation="urn:jboss:jbossws-jaxws-config:4.0 schema/jbossws-jaxws-config_4_0.xsd">
  <endpoint-config>
    <config-name>Custom FI Config</config-name>
    <property>
      <property-name>cxf.features</property-name>
      <property-value>org.apache.cxf.feature.FastInfosetFeature</property-value>
    </property>
  </endpoint-config>
</jaxws-config>

Apache CXF HTTP Transport

In Apache CXF, HTTP transport configuration is achieved by specifying org.apache.cxf.transport.http.HTTPConduit options. JBossWS integration allows conduits to be modified programmatically using the Apache CXF API as follows.

import org.apache.cxf.frontend.ClientProxy;
import org.apache.cxf.transport.http.HTTPConduit;
import org.apache.cxf.transports.http.configuration.HTTPClientPolicy;

// Set chunking threshold before using a JAX-WS port client
...
HTTPConduit conduit = (HTTPConduit)ClientProxy.getClient(port).getConduit();
HTTPClientPolicy client = conduit.getClient();

client.setChunkingThreshold(8192);
...

You can also control and override the Apache CXF HTTPConduit default values by setting system properties.

The cxf-api and cxf-rt-core JARs have been merged into one cxf-core JAR. As a consequence, the org.apache.cxf module in JBoss EAP now contains the cxf-core JAR and exposes more classes than in the previous release.

If you want to use AES encryption with Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) for symmetric encryption in XML/WS-Security, you need the BouncyCastle Security Provider.

JBoss EAP 7 ships with the org.bouncycastle module and JBossWS is now able to rely on its class loader to get and use the BouncyCastle Security Provider. Therefore it is no longer necessary to statically install BouncyCastle in the current JVM. For applications running outside of the container, the security provider can be made available to JBossWS by adding a BouncyCastle library to the class path.

You can disable this behavior by setting the org.jboss.ws.cxf.noLocalBC property value to true in the jaxws-endpoint-config.xml deployment descriptor file for the server or the jaxws-client-config.xml descriptor file for clients.

If you want to use a different version than the one that ships with JBoss EAP, you can still statically install BouncyCastle to the JVM. In that case, the statically installed BouncyCastle Security Provider is chosen over the provider present in the class path. To avoid any issues, you must use BouncyCastle 1.49, 1.51, or greater.

The default bus selection strategy for clients running in-container has changed from THREAD_BUS to TCCL_BUS. For clients running out-of container, the default strategy is still THREAD_BUS. You can restore the behavior to that of the previous release by using either of the following methods.

Containers must use JAX-WS 2.2 style constructors, which include the WebServiceFeature class as an argument in the constructor, to build clients that are injected into web service references. JBoss EAP 6.4, which ships with JBossWS 4, hides that requirement. JBoss EAP 7 ships with JBossWS 5, which no longer hides this requirement. This means that user provided service classes injected by the container must implement JAX-WS 2.2 or later by updating the existing code to use the javax.xml.ws.Service constructor that includes one or more WebServiceFeature arguments.

protected Service(URL wsdlDocumentLocation,
       QName serviceName,
       WebServiceFeature... features)

In previous releases, you could disable the HTTPS URL hostname check against a service’s Common Name (CN) given in its certificate by setting the system property org.jboss.security.ignoreHttpsHost to true. This system property name has been replaced with cxf.tls-client.disableCNCheck.

As a consequence of enabling injections into service endpoint and service client handlers, it is no longer possible to automatically load handler classes from the org.jboss.as.webservices.server.integration JBoss module. If your application depends on a given predefined configuration, you might need to explicitly define new module dependencies for your deployment. For more information, see Migrate Explicit Module Dependencies

The Java Endorsed Standards Override Mechanism was deprecated in JDK 1.8_40 with intent to remove it in JDK 9. This mechanism allowed developers to make libraries available to all deployed applications by placing JARs into an endorsed directory within the JRE.

If your application uses the JBossWS implementation of Apache CXF, JBoss EAP 7 ensures the required dependencies are added in the correct order and you should not be impacted by this change. If your application accesses Apache CXF directly, you must now provide the Apache CXF dependencies after the JBossWS dependencies as part of your application deployment.

In previous releases of JBoss EAP, you could configure the jboss-webservices.xml deployment descriptor file for EJB web service deployments in the META-INF/ directory of JAR archives or in the WEB-INF/ directory for POJO web service deployments and EJB web service endpoints bundled in WAR archives.

In JBoss EAP 7, you can now configure the jboss-webservices.xml deployment descriptor file in the META-INF/ directory of an EAR archive. If a jboss-webservices.xml file is found both in the EAR archive and the JAR or WAR archive, the configuration data in the jboss-webservices.xml file for the JAR or WAR overrides the corresponding data in the EAR descriptor file.

The proprietary HornetQ JMS resource deployment descriptor files identified by the naming pattern -jms.xml no longer work in JBoss EAP 7. The following is an example of a JMS resource deployment descriptor file in JBoss EAP 6.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<messaging-deployment xmlns="urn:jboss:messaging-deployment:1.0">
  <hornetq-server>
    <jms-destinations>
      <jms-queue name="testQueue">
        <entry name="queue/test"/>
        <entry name="java:jboss/exported/jms/queue/test"/>
      </jms-queue>
      <jms-topic name="testTopic">
        <entry name="topic/test"/>
        <entry name="java:jboss/exported/jms/topic/test"/>
      </jms-topic>
    </jms-destinations>
  </hornetq-server>
</messaging-deployment>

If you used -jms.xml JMS deployment descriptors in your application in the previous release, you can either convert your application to use the standard Java EE 7 deployment descriptor as specified in section EE.5.18 of the Java EE 7 specification or you can update the deployment descriptor to use the messaging-activemq-deployment schema instead.

If you choose to update the descriptor, you need to make the following modifications.

The modified file should look like the following example.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<messaging-deployment xmlns="urn:jboss:messaging-activemq-deployment:1.0">
  <server>
    <jms-destinations>
      <jms-queue name="testQueue">
        <entry name="queue/test"/>
        <entry name="java:jboss/exported/jms/queue/test"/>
      </jms-queue>
      <jms-topic name="testTopic">
        <entry name="topic/test"/>
        <entry name="java:jboss/exported/jms/topic/test"/>
      </jms-topic>
    </jms-destinations>
  </server>
</messaging-deployment>

For information about server configuration changes related to messaging, see Messaging Server Configuration Changes.

JBoss EAP 7 still supports the JMS 1.1 API, so you do not need to modify your code.

The default remote connector and port has changed in JBoss EAP 7. For details about this change, see Update the Remote URL Connector and Port.

If you migrate your server configuration using the migrate operation, the old settings are preserved and you do not need to update your PROVIDER_URL. However, if you run with the new JBoss EAP 7 default configuration, you must change the PROVIDER_URL in the client code to use the new http-remoting://localhost:8080 setting. For more information, see Migrate Remote Naming Client Code.

If you plan to migrate your code to use the JMS 2.0 API, see the helloworld-jms quickstart for a working example.

JBoss EAP 6 included the org.hornetq module, which allowed you to use the HornetQ API in your application source code.

Apache ActiveMQ Artemis replaces HornetQ in JBoss EAP 7, so you must migrate any code that used the HornetQ API to use the Apache ActiveMQ Artemis API. The libraries for this API are included in the org.apache.activemq.artemis module.

ActiveMQ Artemis is an evolution of HornetQ, so many of the concepts still apply.

Interceptor and MessageBody Classes

JSR 311: JAX-RS: The Java™ API for RESTful Web Services did not include an interceptor framework, so RESTEasy 2 provided one. JSR 339: JAX-RS 2.0: The Java API for RESTful Web Services introduced an official interceptor and filter framework, so the interceptor framework included in RESTEasy 2 is now deprecated, and is replaced by the JAX-RS 2.0 compliant interceptor facility in RESTEasy 3.x. The relevant interfaces are defined in the javax.ws.rs.ext package of the jaxrs-api module.

For more information about interceptors, see RESTEasy Interceptors in Developing Web Services Applications for JBoss EAP.

For more information about the new replacement API, see the RESTEasy JAX-RS 3.0.13.Final API or later.

Client API

The RESTEasy client framework in resteasy-jaxrs has been replaced by the JAX-RS 2.0 compliant resteasy-client module. As a result, some RESTEasy client API classes and methods are deprecated.

StringConverter

The org.jboss.resteasy.spi.StringConverter class is deprecated in RESTEasy 3.x. This functionality can be replaced using the JAX-RS 2.0 jax.ws.rs.ext.ParamConverterProvider class.

ResteasyProviderFactory Add methods

Most of the org.jboss.resteasy.spi.ResteasyProviderFactory add() methods have been removed or made protected in RESTEasy 3.0. For example, the addBuiltInMessageBodyReader() and addBuiltInMessageBodyWriter() methods have been removed and the addMessageBodyReader() and addMessageBodyWriter() methods have been made protected.

You should now use the registerProvider() and registerProviderInstance() methods.

Additional Classes Removed From RESTEasy 3

The @org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.cache.ServerCached annotation, which specified the response to the JAX-RS method should be cached on the server, was removed from RESTEasy 3 and must be removed from the application code.

SignedInput and SignedOuput

Security Filters

The security filters for @RolesAllowed, @PermitAll, and @DenyAll now return "403 Forbidden" instead of "401 Unauthorized".

Client-side Filters

The new JAX-RS 2.0 client-side filters will not be bound and run when you are using the RESTEasy client API from the previous release.

Asynchronous HTTP Support

Because the JAX-RS 2.0 specification adds asynchronous HTTP support using the @Suspended annotation and the AsynResponse interface, the RESTEasy proprietary API for asynchronous HTTP has been deprecated and might be removed as soon as RESTEasy 3.1. The asynchronous Tomcat and asynchronous JBoss Web modules have also been removed from the server installation. If you are not using the Servlet 3.0 container or higher, asynchronous HTTP server-side processing will be simulated and run synchronously in same request thread.

Server-side Cache

Server-side cache setup has changed. Please see the RESTEasy Documentation for more information.

YAML Provider Setting Changes

In previous releases of JBoss EAP, the RESTEasy YAML provider setting was enabled by default. This has changed in JBoss EAP 7. The YAML provider is now disabled by default. Its use is not supported due to a security issue in the SnakeYAML library used by RESTEasy for unmarshalling and it must be explicitly enabled in the application. For information about how to enable the YAML provider in your application and add the Maven dependencies, see YAML Provider in Developing Web Services Applications for JBoss EAP.

SerializableProvider

Deserializing Java objects from untrusted sources is not safe. For this reason, in JBoss EAP 7, the org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.SerializableProvider class is disabled by default, and it is not recommended to use this provider.

SPI Exceptions

All SPI failure exceptions have been deprecated and are no longer used internally. They have been replaced with the corresponding JAX-RS 2.0 exception.

InjectorFactory and Registry

The InjectorFactory and Registry SPIs have changed. This should not be an issue if you use RESTEasy as documented and supported.

The version of Jackson included in JBoss EAP has changed. The previous version of JBoss EAP included Jackson 1.9.9. JBoss EAP 7 now includes Jackson 2.6.3 or greater. As a result, the Jackson provider has changed from resteasy-jackson-provider to resteasy-jackson2-provider.

The upgrade to the resteasy-jackson2-provider requires some package changes. For example, the Jackson annotation package has changed from org.codehaus.jackson.annotate to com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.

To switch your application to use the default provider that was included in the previous release of JBoss EAP, see Switching the Default Jackson Provider in Developing Web Services Applications for JBoss EAP.

The Spring 4.0 framework introduced support for Java 8. If you plan to use the RESTEasy 3.x integration with Spring, be sure to specify 4.2.x as the minimum Spring version in your deployment as this is the earliest stable version supported by JBoss EAP 7.

The RESTEasy Jettison JSON provider is deprecated in JBoss EAP 7 and is no longer added to deployments by default. You are encouraged to switch to the recommended RESTEasy Jackson provider. If you prefer to continue to use the Jettison provider, you must define an explicit dependency for it in the jboss-deployment-descriptor.xml file as demonstrated in the following example.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<jboss-deployment-structure>
  <deployment>
    <exclusions>
      <module name="org.jboss.resteasy.resteasy-jackson2-provider"/>
      <module name="org.jboss.resteasy.resteasy-jackson-provider"/>
    </exclusions>
    <dependencies>
      <module name="org.jboss.resteasy.resteasy-jettison-provider" services="import"/>
    </dependencies>
  </deployment>
</jboss-deployment-structure>

For more information about how to define explicit dependencies, see Add an Explicit Module Dependency to a Deployment in the JBoss EAP Development Guide.

The integration classes that made it easier to use Hibernate ORM 3 in the previous release were removed from JBoss EAP 7. If your application still uses Hibernate ORM 3 libraries, it is strongly recommended that you migrate your application to use Hibernate ORM 5 as Hibernate ORM 3 will no longer work in JBoss EAP without a lot of effort. If you can not migrate to Hibernate ORM 5, you must define a custom JBoss Module for the Hibernate ORM 3 JARs and exclude the Hibernate ORM 5 classes from your application.

If your application needs second-level cache enabled, you should migrate to Hibernate ORM 5, which is integrated with Infinispan 8.x.

Applications written with Hibernate ORM 4.x can still use Hibernate ORM 4.x. You must define a custom JBoss module for the Hibernate ORM 4.x JARs and exclude the Hibernate ORM 5 classes from your application. However, it is strongly recommended that you rewrite your application code to use Hibernate ORM 5. For information about migrating to Hibernate ORM 5, see Migrating to Hibernate ORM 5.

If your application contains a persistence.xml file or the code uses the @PersistenceContext or @PersistenceUnit annotations, JBoss EAP 7 detects this during deployment and assumes the application uses JPA. It implicitly adds the Hibernate ORM 5 libraries plus a few other dependencies to your application class path and defaults to using these libraries.

This section highlights the changes you need to make when migrating from Hibernate ORM version 4.3 to version 5. For more information about the changes implemented between Hibernate ORM 4 and Hibernate ORM 5, see the Hibernate ORM 5.0 Migration Guide.

Removed and Deprecated Classes

The following deprecated classes were removed from Hibernate ORM 5.

Other Changes to Classes and Packages

Type Handling

Transaction Management

Other Hibernate ORM 5 Changes

Change the remote connection port value from 4447 to 8080 in the jboss-ejb-client.properties file.

The following are examples of a jboss-ejb-client.properties file in the previous and the current release.

remote.connectionprovider.create.options.org.xnio.Options.SSL_ENABLED=false
remote.connections=default
remote.connection.default.host=localhost
remote.connection.default.port=4447
remote.connection.default.connect.options.org.xnio.Options.SASL_POLICY_NOANONYMOUS=false

remote.connectionprovider.create.options.org.xnio.Options.SSL_ENABLED=false
remote.connections=default
remote.connection.default.host=localhost
remote.connection.default.port=8080
remote.connection.default.connect.options.org.xnio.Options.SASL_POLICY_NOANONYMOUS=false

If you are running with the new JBoss EAP 7 configuration, the default connector has changed from remote to http-remoting. This change impacts clients that use libraries from one release of JBoss EAP and to connect to server in a different release.

If you are running with the new default JBoss EAP 7 configuration, you must modify your client code to use the new default remote port and connector.

The following is an example of how remote naming properties were specified in the client code in JBoss EAP 6.

java.naming.factory.initial=org.jboss.naming.remote.client.InitialContextFactory
java.naming.provider.url=remote://localhost:4447

The following is an example of how to specify the remote naming properties in the client code in JBoss EAP 7.

java.naming.factory.initial=org.jboss.naming.remote.client.InitialContextFactory
java.naming.provider.url=http-remoting://localhost:8080

Authentication valves must be replaced manually using Undertow built-in authentication mechanisms. See the following sections for information about how to migrate authenticator valves.

For information about the changes required for SSO with SAML v2 configuration, see Changes from Previous Versions of JBoss EAP in How to Set Up SSO with SAML v2 for JBoss EAP.

For information about the differences in SSO configuration with Kerberos, see Differences from Configuring Previous Versions JBoss EAP in How to Set Up SSO with Kerberos for JBoss EAP.

The following list describes some of the new clustering features to be aware of when migrating your application from JBoss EAP 6 to JBoss EAP 7.

The remainder of this section describes how clustering changes might impact the migration of your applications to JBoss EAP 7.

JBoss EAP 7 introduces a new web session clustering implementation. It replaces the previous implementation, which was tightly coupled to the legacy JBoss Web subsystem source code.

The new web session clustering implementation impacts how the application is configured in the jboss-web.xml JBoss proprietary web application XML descriptor file. The following are the only clustering configuration elements that remain in this file.

<jboss-web>
  ...
  <max-active-sessions>...</max-active-sessions>
  ...
  <replication-config>
    <replication-granularity>...</replication-granularity>
    <cache-name>...</cache-name>
  </replication-config>
  ...
</jboss-web>

The following table describes how to achieve similar behavior for elements in the jboss-web.xml file that are now obsolete.

This new implementation also supports write-through cache stores as well as passivation-only cache stores. Typically, a write-through cache store is used in conjunction with an invalidation cache. The web session clustering implementation in JBoss EAP 6 did not operate correctly when used with an invalidation cache.

In JBoss EAP 6, you were required to enabled the clustering behavior for stateful session beans (SFSBs) in one of the following ways.

JBoss EAP 7 no longer requires you to enable the clustering behavior. By default, if the server is started using an HA profile, the state of SFSBs will be replicated automatically.

You can disable this default behavior in one of the following ways.

In JBoss EAP 6, the APIs for clustering services were in private modules and were not supported.

JBoss EAP 7 introduces a public clustering services API for use by applications. The new services are designed to be lightweight, easily injectable, and require no external dependencies.

These services replace similar APIs that were available in previous releases, namely HAPartition from JBoss EAP 5 and GroupCommunicationService, GroupMembershipNotifier, and GroupRpcDispatcher in JBoss EAP 6.

For more information, see Public API for Clustering Services in the JBoss EAP Development Guide.

In JBoss EAP 6, there was no public API available for the cluster-wide HA singleton service. If you used the private org.jboss.as.clustering.singleton.* classes, you must change your code to use the new public org.wildfly.clustering.singleton.* packages when you migrate your application to JBoss EAP 7.

For more information about how to implement an HA singleton, see HA Singleton Service in the Development Guide for JBoss EAP.