[jboss-jira] [JBoss JIRA] (AS7-4697) Support general XML Entities in AS boot configuration

[Michael Epley (JIRA)]

Michael Epley created AS7-4697:
----------------------------------

             Summary: Support general XML Entities in AS boot configuration
                 Key: AS7-4697
                 URL: https://issues.jboss.org/browse/AS7-4697
             Project: Application Server 7
          Issue Type: Feature Request
          Components: ConfigAdmin
    Affects Versions: 7.1.1.Final
         Environment: Fedora 16, plenty of memory, disk, etc; feature is not related to environment
            Reporter: Michael Epley
            Assignee: Thomas Diesler


The parser for the AS7 boot configuration (tested with standalone.xml) does not permit the use of general XML entities, as it fails [1] on the parsing of the entity declaration [2]. This appears due to the use of a low level parser enforcing certain expectations in the XML file layout.

Use of XML external entities is a method that allows the single boot configuration file to be broken into multiple, independent pieces so that they can be independently contributed (by different developers/teams), controlled (by different developers/teams), configuration managed, or use substituted (for different dev/test/stage/prod) configurations. This is a common business requirement, with larger applications, different developers or sub teams usually contribute or have ownership over different subsystems, or that each contribute some portion of a subsystem.

For example, two developers may each use a different JDBC datasource, and a third deployment engineer may be responsible for controlling the main boot configuration to ensure application integrity. Use of XML entities would allow the deployment engineer to write portions of the boot configuration (eg. standalone.xml) such as:

...
		<subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:datasources:1.0">
			<datasources>
				&developer1datasource;
				&developer2datasource;
			</datasources>
		</subsystem>
...

where &developer1datasource &developer2datasource might be declared as 

<!ENTITY developer1datasource SYSTEM "alicesDatasource.xml" >
<!ENTITY developer2datasource SYSTEM "bobsDatasource.xml" >

and the file alicesDatasource.xml is owned/maintained by developer Alice, and the the file bobsDatasource.xml is owned/maintained by developer Bob.


____________________________________________________________________

[1] For example, on boot, the following is reported:
08:52:51,181 ERROR [org.jboss.as.server] JBAS015956: Caught exception during boot: org.jboss.as.controller.persistence.ConfigurationPersistenceException: JBAS014676: Failed to parse configuration
	at org.jboss.as.controller.persistence.XmlConfigurationPersister.load(XmlConfigurationPersister.java:141) [jboss-as-controller-7.1.1.Final-redhat-1.jar:7.1.1.Final-redhat-1]
	at org.jboss.as.server.ServerService.boot(ServerService.java:268) [jboss-as-server-7.1.1.Final-redhat-1.jar:7.1.1.Final-redhat-1]
	at org.jboss.as.controller.AbstractControllerService$1.run(AbstractControllerService.java:155) [jboss-as-controller-7.1.1.Final-redhat-1.jar:7.1.1.Final-redhat-1]
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:679) [rt.jar:1.6.0_24]
Caused by: javax.xml.stream.XMLStreamException: ParseError at [row,col]:[6,4]
Message: found: DTD, expected START_ELEMENT or END_ELEMENT
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLStreamReaderImpl.nextTag(XMLStreamReaderImpl.java:1246) [rt.jar:1.6.0_24]
	at org.jboss.staxmapper.XMLMapperImpl.parseDocument(XMLMapperImpl.java:67) [staxmapper-1.1.0.Final-redhat-1.jar:1.1.0.Final-redhat-1]
	at org.jboss.as.controller.persistence.XmlConfigurationPersister.load(XmlConfigurationPersister.java:133) [jboss-as-controller-7.1.1.Final-redhat-1.jar:7.1.1.Final-redhat-1]
	... 3 more

08:52:51,185 FATAL [org.jboss.as.server] JBAS015957: Server boot has failed in an unrecoverable manner; exiting. See previous messages for details.

[2] Tested with the following entity declaration in standalone.xml (and various other combinations):

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE server [
<!ENTITY datasources SYSTEM "datasources.xml" >
<!ENTITY cacheDefinitions SYSTEM "caches.xml" >
] >
<server xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:1.3">
	<extensions>
...
		<subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:datasources:1.0">
			&datasources;
		</subsystem>
...
		<subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:infinispan:1.3" default-cache-container="local">
			&cacheDefinitions;
		</subsystem>
...
	</socket-binding-group>
</server>


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