Re: [Asterisk-java-devel] Asterisk-JAVA JEE JCA

[Martin B. S. <ma...@mb...>]

Hi Conrad,

> I figured I could create a JCA which connects to asterisk
> and forwards the events to a Bean.

Let me first say I have not used the Java Connector Architecture as it
stands today. It rings a JDBC bell in my head, but it seems that the
spec has dramatically broadened itself from what I remember JCA meaning
in the past.

Secondly, I've combined JBoss with Asterisk, and I wrote the FAQ entry
related to hosting AGI scripts in JBoss. I've also implemented many
AMI-related solutions that end up tieing into JBoss.

> and forwards the events to a Bean.
> However, when I login with a ManagerConnection it starts a new Thread.
> On the JCA I got the worker-thread already so it mustn't start it's own.

Regardless of the threading issue, there's something much more basic
about the Manager interface that (for me) ran afoul of tieing any beans
to the Manager interface. The Manager interface is:

 (a) two way communication
 (b) a source of events
 (c) loosely session based (via lots of XxxCompleteEvent)

When I looked how this "should" integrate with JBoss, I considered:

 (1) JMS beans (both topic and queue)
 (2) Session beans
 (3) Data-oriented beans

In my opinion, (1) and (2) didn't work because of the loosely
session-oriented communication in the AMI (things like the actions that
cause a stream of data events followed by a complete event), and even if
you could wrap some basic session around an event-sequence in order to
figure out where it should go on the Java client side, sometimes you did
want to do more than just respond to events -- you want to perform
actions. Finally, (3) didn't make a lot of sense because it forces the
data (2-way events and actions) to fit a model (call -> return value)
that doesn't make sense, making it hard to write code for and support.

In the end, I chose to keep the Manager interface between individual
clients and Asterisk, outside of the J2EE environment; in my case, this
worked, simply because only a *very* small percentage (like 2 out of
every 100) needed the Manager functionality.

In closing, I think you'll find it absolutely acceptable to keep the
Asterisk-Java threading model. J2EE developers are cautioned about how
they shouldn't think in a multithreaded way about Java Beans -- but
you're not developing an app here, you're creating a new component in
the JBoss 'microkernel,' so I think you should let A-J do its own
threading. You may consider implementing a JMS endpoint that maps
clients to Manager sessions, identifying which actions are and aren't
related to a session, sharing some manager connections and
single-purposing others.

Hope that helps with your question,

Martin Smith
ma...@mb...


Conrad Wood wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> I would like to use the asterisk manager interface from my JBOSS
> application. I figured I could create a JCA which connects to asterisk
> and forwards the events to a Bean.
> However, when I login with a ManagerConnection it starts a new Thread.
> On the JCA I got the worker-thread already so it mustn't start it's own.
> I pondered over some solutions, including subclassing
> ManagerConnectionImpl and overriding connect() - but that seems somewhat
> dirty. 
> Of course, the JCA shall be open to the public and perhaps part of the
> asterisk-java distribution if so desired, so it should be somehow more
> integrated.
> Does anyone have any comments on how I should proceed here?
> 
> Conrad
> 
> 
> 
> 
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