M B E A N   C O N F I G U R A T I O N   A N D   D E P E N D E N C Y   M A N A G E M E N T   P A G E   1 0 8  

MBean Class Dependency Management 

JBoss manages the dependency between an mbean and its class. If you attempt to deploy an 

mbean whose class is not loaded, the configuration information is put on a waiting list.  

When the class becomes available due to some additional deployment, your mbean will be 

deployed.  If the class of an existing mbean is undeployed, the mbean will also be undeployed 

and its last configuration put on the same waiting list, so if the class is redeployed the 

mbean will be resurrected. 

MBean MBean Dependency Management 

JBoss manages dependencies between mbeans using the depends and depends list attribute 

styles.  An mbean will wait to progress through the create and start steps until all the 

mbeans it depends on have been created and started.  Similarly, stopping or destroying an 

mbean will stop or destroy mbeans that depend on it.  Circular dependencies are not 

handled.  You can use this to assure that mbeans are started in the correct order, even if 

they are in separate configuration files deployed in the wrong order. 

SAR file format and package nesting 

* service.xml files may be deployed alone or packaged into a sar (service archive) file.  In a 

sar, the file must have the name jboss service.xml and be located in META INF (note case).  

The sar file may also contain classes, jars, or any other deployable package such as ear, war, 

rar, or (ejb) jar.  In addition, all of these packages may include additional nested deployable 

packages.  These packages are deployed from inside (most deeply nested) out.  Note that 

most of these combinations are JBoss specific and not j2ee compliant.  Generally, although 

manifest classpath entries can be used, they are usually unnecesary in JBoss. 

Classpath Element 

The *service.xml file may also contain one or more classpath elements, of the form 

.  The codebase attribute indicates 

where the packages are to be found, and the archives attributes contains a comma separated 

list of packages to be deployed.  JBoss will attempt to deploy these before processing the 

mbean configurations.  This dependency management can usually be left to the automatic 

Mbean Class dependency management. 

LocalDirectory Element 

The *service.xml file may also contain one or more local directory elements, of the form 

.  This can only be used in a sar file.  This will result in 

whatever is located at some path within the sar being copied verbatim to the "db" directory 

in your JBoss installation.  If a file is already present, it is not overwritten and these files 

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