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We are using SpringSource-TC-Server and we are considering upgrading to java7. (Currently using java6).

We have not seen any reports on SpringSource-TC-Server not working well with java7 but we do not know of any name worthy projects that have migrated to such an environment.

I'm looking for answer(s) about the following:

Are there any known issues?

Are there any projects who migrated and can report on how it went?

Brian Clozel
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RonK
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1 Answers1

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Java 7 is officially supported since vFabric tc Server 2.7.0:

http://www.vmware.com/support/vfabric-tcserver/doc/vfabric-tcserver-rn-2.7.0.html#whatsnew

Since you're using tc Server instead of plain Tomcat probably due to commercial support, it's reasonable only to migrate the underlying Java JDK to the latest version when it is officially supported by the employed version of tc Server. Otherwise, you'd be running it in an unsupported configuration, which isn't far from running a plain unsupported open source version of Tomcat.

Operating tc Server on Java 7 in an officially supported arrangement of versions gives you 2 advantages:

  1. It would have been thoroughly tested by vmWare for any incompatibilities so that you wouldn't have to deal with testing by yourself.
  2. If any problems do occur, you can always get support from vmWare in resolving them.

I know it doesn't directly address your questions, as we in my company also haven't upgraded yet and are only planning to do so.

I just had an impression that your approach makes no sense for a commercially supported product and wanted to outline the reasonable (IMO) approach that is in wide use.

As to any known issues, Java 7 is known for its backward incompatible changes to the XML stack, especially the migration to JAXB 2.2 which changes handling of java.lang.Boolean objects (see the other question - What are the pitfalls when upgrading to Java 7). This can spring up in many different places, I've seen it cause problems in Apache CXF's cxf-codegen-plugin that generates Java stubs from WSDL since the wsdl2java tool it launches makes use of JAXB - the generated method names for boolean elements were no longer in the form of java.lang.Boolean isSomeBooleanProperty() but in the form of java.lang.Boolean getSomeBooleanProperty() which broke code depending on those stubs.

So perform thorough testing if you deal with SOAP web services or XML in general.

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Aleksander Adamowski
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