[hibernate-dev] CDI integration in Hibernate ORM and the Application scope

Hello all, TL;DR: Application-scoped beans cannot be used as part of the @PreDestroy method of ORM-instantiated CDI beans, and it's a bit odd because they can be used as part of the @PostConstruct method. I've been testing the CDI integration in Hibernate ORM for the past few days, trying to integrate it into Search. I think I've discovered something odd: when CDI-managed beans are destroyed, they cannot access other Application-scoped CDI beans anymore. Not sure whether this is a problem or not, so maybe we should discuss it a bit before going forward with the current behavior. Short reminder: scopes define when CDI beans are created and destroyed. @ApplicationScoped is pretty self-explanatory: created when the application starts and destroyed when it stops. Some other scopes are a bit more convoluted: @Singleton basically means created *before* the application starts and destroyed *after* the application stops (and also means "this bean shall not be proxied"), @Dependent means created when an instance is requested and destroyed when the instance is released, etc. The thing is, Hibernate ORM is typically started very early and shut down very late in the CDI lifecycle - at least within WildFly. So when Hibernate starts, CDI Application-scoped beans haven't been instantiated yet, and it turns out that when Hibernate ORM shuts down, CDI has already destroyed Application-scoped beans. Regarding startup, Steve and Scott solved the problem by delaying bean instantiation to some point in the future when the Application scope is active (and thus Application-scoped beans are available). This makes it possible to use Application-scoped beans within ORM-instantiated beans as soon as the latter are constructed (i.e. within their @PostConstruct methods). However, when Hibernate ORM shuts down, the Application scope has already been terminated. So when ORM destroys the beans it instantiated, those ORM-instantiated beans cannot call a method on referenced Application-scoped beans (CDI proxies will throw an exception). All in all, the only type of beans we can currently use in a @PreDestroy method of an ORM-instantiated bean is @Dependent beans. @Singleton beans will work, but only because they are not proxied and thus you can cheat and use them even after they have been destroyed... which I definitely wouldn't recommend. I see two ways to handle the issue: 1. We don't change anything, and simply document somewhere that beans instantiated as part of the CDI integration are instantiated within the Application scope, but are destroyed outside of it. And we suggest that any bean used in @PostDestroy method in an ORM-instantiated bean (directly or not) must have either a @Dependent scope, or a @Singleton scope and no @PostDestroy method. 2. We implement an "early shut-down" somehow, which would bring forward bean destruction to some time when the Application scope is still active. #1 may be enough for now, even though the behavior feels a bit odd, and forces users to resort to less-than-ideal practices (using a @Singleton bean after it has been destroyed). #2 would require changes in WildFly and may be a bit complex. In particular, if we aren't careful, Application-scoped beans may not be able to use Hibernate ORM from within their @PreDestroy methods... Which is probably not a good idea. So we would have to find a solution together with the WildFly team. Also to be considered: Hibernate Search would have to be shut down just before the "early shut-down" of Hibernate ORM occurs, because Hibernate Search cannot function at all without the beans it retrieves from the CDI context. Thoughts? Yoann Rodière Hibernate NoORM Team yoann(a)hibernate.org