LinkageError on WebSphere 9 for javax.transaction.* classes - websphere

I have a web application that used to run fine on many web servers (tomcat, jboss, weblogic and websphere). Now, however, it has an error when deploying on WebSphere 9.
The app contains the jar javax.transaction-api-1.2. Some of its classes, e.g., javax.transaction.xa.XAResource, are also included in Java SE, but not all of them. Some are specific to Java EE and are required by some 3rd-party libraries in my app. The app is always deploying with child-first (parent-last) classloader.
WebSphere 9 throws this error during startup when the app tries to load the Oracle JDBC driver:
java.lang.LinkageError: loading constraint violation: loader "com/ibm/ws/classloader/CompoundClassLoader#7157be44" previously initiated loading for a different type with name
"javax/transaction/xa/XAResource" defined by loader "com/ibm/oti/vm/BootstrapClassLoader#422c7b1b"
Note that we aren't actually using XA transactions in the app, we are using regular transactions.
On other servers, and previous versions of WebSphere, it was never a problem. The server didn't care that we load XAResource from inside the war, even if it was previously loaded somewhere in the server. Now WebSphere 9 is different, it says that the app classloader already loaded this class from the server, but I don't know why or when did this happen.
Any idea how to solve this?

Remove the transaction API from your application. JTA 1.2 is already included in the server and provides no value in your applications. It's always risky to bring Java EE/SE APIs in a parent-last class loader unless you are 100% certain that they are technically necessary, because they can lead to issues like this one.
I can't say how this worked in previous server versions (there have been some Java-level changes in enforcing linkage issues like this), but the solution is reasonably straightforward.

At the end we did two things to solve this problem.
1) We upgraded the jta jar to version 1.3 (link here). This jar solves the problem by avoiding duplicate classes - it contains only J2EE classes and omits the J2SE classes that are already included in the JVM.
2) We upgraded WebSphere server from 9.0.0.7 to 9.0.0.11.
At the time, I suspected just upgrading the jar should suffice, but our QA had some issues with it and they also upgraded the server. Due to lack of time, we didn't investigate it further and just decided to do both.

Related

Plug and Play Java EE Application

I Wanted to create Java EE application in JSF+Spring Framework with WildFly AS. One of the hot requirements is:
Plug and Play Modules This means if I update my application Or Add new module into my Application.
(Obviously Update bean.xml, web.xml, pojo classes , jars etc)
Then without redeployment of my *.war file and with out restarting my Wildfly AS changes occurs.
This is a complicated requirement for a few reasons. How will you handle changes to your DB schema/entity model? How will you handle sessions which are in progress at the time of the upgrade and are actively using the 'old' code? How do you handle changes to container managed code, code that is managed by the container only at deployment time, for example new EJBs etc?
One approach I have seen used in production to achieve some of these requirements is to do rolling updates with application versioning and full schema backwards compatibility. This is done in a clustered environment which is fronted by proxy servers that can allow active sessions using the old version of the application to continue until finished and ensure that new sessions go to servers/contexts containing the new version of the code. So you end up still deploying WARs which contain the new version of your code, and eventually undeploy the old versions when all old sessions have ended/expired. To do this you have to assume the burden in your code to fully support working against two simultaneous versions of your model when new versions introduce changes to it. This is not a trivial burden. You also have to assume the burden of the extra infrastructure to route sessions appropriately.
I know a product like JRebel will let you do hot deploys of code (even things like EJBs) with the idea being that it shortens the develop/test cycle but I haven't seen it used outside of a development environment. Also you would still have to deal with active sessions that were started on the old version /model.

WebSphere7 classloading Issues

I am just wondering, if the below is possible with Websphere or not?
I have an Enterprise application using Websphere 7 and with PARENT_LAST classloading mode. I am now trying to use a third party feature namely, gemfire in the application. My application with gemfire runs perfectly in PARENT_FIRST classloading mode. But, I can see some linkage errors occuring because of PARENT_LAST setting. Temperarly, I could solve them by removing the classes that are conflicting from gemfire jar(By this, I am actually asking those removed classes to be loaded from web app server). But, I am not sure if this will create some bigger issues as my appliaction grow to its fullest.
My question is : Suppose we have abc.jar in both web app server and also in gemfire.jar, with PARENT_LAST loading mode.Is it possible to solve the above class conflicts by not removing any class files from jars, instead tell the classloading mechanism to use the class loaded from web app server at a particular case and use the same class loaded from gemfire jar(meaning load from application) at another case?
Thanks
Yes, it is possible. We are using a similar setup. You should be very careful though and only use the exact same jars (or at least the same classes) in all the places you need to have them.

Releasing Hibernate Resources On Redeploy

I have a web app running on Tomcat 6.0.35, which makes use of Spring 3.1.2, Hibernate 4.1.8 and MySQL Connector 5.1.21.
I have been trying to figure out what is causing Tomcat to keep running out of memory (Perm Gen) after a few redeploys.
Note: Don't tell me to increase Tomcat's JVM memory because that will simply postpone, the problem
Specifically, I made use of the VisualVM tool, and was able to eliminate some problems, including some mysql and google threads issues. I was also able to discover and fix a problem caused by using Velocity as a singleton in the web app, and also not closing at the correct time/place some thread local variables I was having. But I still am not completely able to eliminate/figure out this Hibernate issue.
Here is what I'm doing:
Deploy my webapp from my development IDE
Open a tomcat manager window in my browser
Start VisualVM and get the HeapDump on the tomcat instance
Go the tomcat manager and redeploy my webapp
Take another HeapDump in VisualVM
My first observation is that the WebappClassLoader for the original webapp is not garbage collected.
When I scrutinize the retained objects from the second HeapDump, the class org.hibernate.internal.SessionFactoryImpl features prominently which leads me to believe that it IS NOT being destroyed/closed by Spring or something along those lines (and hence the WebappClassLoader still having a reference to it).
Has anyone encountered this problem and identified the correct fix for it?
I don't currently have an idea what could be amiss in your setup but what I know is that using Plumbr you'll most likely find the actual leak(s).

Application Server for non-Web Spring/Hibernate Application

We are developing a open source trading platform based on Springframework and Hibernate http://code.google.com/p/algo-trader/ and http://www.algotrader.ch. The application consists of a trading framework and several strategies that can be started independently. So far, these different parts have been running in separate JVM's communicating through RMI and JMS.
To avoid unnecessary serialization and network overhead we would like to run the entire application within some sort of container (potentially an application server). We do however have the requirement, that the individual parts of the application can be deployed, started and stopped independently.
We have looked into OSGi, but a lot of the libraries that we use are not OSGi ready yet, so this is not currently an option. Also please note, there is no web-GUI in our application.
Any suggestions on this?
Thanks
Andy
If OSGI is not an option then functionality can be broken into smaller units and then deploy them as utility jar, if deployed as utility jar they can be managed independently.
For application server I feel either glassfish or Jboss will be a good option considering they are open source and free.
Though at a later point in time you can check with Weblogic (Dev free).
So in your case you would like to break the static data configuration(Counterparty, Currencies), Dealing(Pricing, Quoting, Booking) as two separate feature.
For your choose of an application server i advise you Jboss and specially in his version 7.1 which is faster and more stable!

Glassfish tuning

We have here an application developed using Java EE 5 stack (using JSF, RichFaces, EJB, JPA, Hibernate, JAAS) that runs inside Glassfish 3.1! The thing is we are in need to run it as an installable deploy (actually many deploys =]).
My question is: What can we do to have the smallest footprint for the system?
I've already studied about:
uninstalling thing through upgrade tool (e.g. the admin parts),
run the application using embedded glassfish (but using the already existent domain),
configuring domain.xml to erase features (but at a trial and error way),
found some work on how to configure glassfish for production environment.
But as the system will be used by one user at a time, I would like to listen from you about options in this environment.

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