Michael Yuan

UPDATE: Several people commented that Seam works just fine with the TopLink JPA provider. I stand corrected. Thanks guys.

Here is what I posted to TSS today …

First, we try very hard to make Seam as generic as possible — so it would not require JBoss AS to run. The proof of this effort is that Seam runs on plain Tomcat (using RESOURCE_LOCAL transactions). So, in theory, it should run on all application servers out there. However, since all Seam developers use JBoss AS on a daily basis (we happen to believe that JBoss AS is the best AS out there :)), it is natural that Seam is tested most extensively on JBoss AS. Also, as an open source project, we do not have access to commercial WLS, WAS, ORA licenses, and do not have access to their support. So, our testing on those servers is not very comprehensive. I have personally installed the trial versions of those servers multiple times since they expire all the time. It is extremely time consuming …

So, the testing on commercial app servers is not very good at this moment. If you encounter issues with non-JBoss servers, raising them on the Seam forum is your best bet. Now here is a breakdown of what works and what not (to the best of my knowledge).

* Tomcat 5.5 and 6: Seam applications work out of the box on those servers if you use the RESOURCE_LOCAL transaction (see examples/jpa). You can use EJB3 features if you install JBoss Embeddable on top of Tomcat.

* Glassfish: Glassfish v2 is known to work with Seam (see examples/jee5 for an example). But we strongly recommend you use Hibernate as the JPA provider — not the default TopLink.

* Oracle: Oracle 10 is known to work with Seam (see examples/jee5 and examples/jpa). Again, choose Hibernate as the JPA provider.

* WebLogic: WebLogic 9.2 and 10 can be made to work with JPA + JTA transaction (see examples/jpa). However, EJB3 on WLS 10 does not yet work. There is a reflection error from the EJB proxy the last time I checked.

* WebSphere: I think the examples/jpa can work against WAS 6.1.0.9. You do need to tweak stuff a lot to make JSF 1.2 and Facelets work on that server. We have not tried WebSphere EJB3. However, anything beyond a simple CRUD app might have problems on WAS. One of the reasons is that the IBM JVM5 has a bug that complains about unknown annotations (the correct way is to ignore unknown annotations as the Sun JVM does). Unless IBM fixes this, you will have problems running Seam on WAS.

So, that’s it. If any of you can help us testing this stuff, please let us know!