The eighth release of WildFly is based on modular architecture introduced in the previous release named JBoss AS 7. It has improved on several key points, including areas of performance and management. The most important change for the developers is that this release implements the Java EE 7 standard completely. Some of the most notable improvements include the following:
WildFly 8 implements all standards presented by Java EE 7 specifications, which are also described in this chapter.
The web server module was completely rewritten under the name Undertow. It supports both blocking and non-blocking operations. Early performance tests (for example, http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r6&hw=i7&test=plaintext) show major performance improvements in HTTP request handling. Undertow is also available as a separate project and is possible to be used without WildFly.
The final WildFly release has reduced the number of used ports. Now, it uses only two of them, one (
9990) for management, JMX, and web administration, and the second one (8080) for standard services, including HTTP, WebSockets, remote JNDI, and EJB invocations.Now, it is possible to limit a user's management permissions using the Management role based access control (RBAC). All configuration changes can be tracked using the audit log.
For previous releases, any upgrade operation requires a completely new server installation. WildFly brings the patching feature, allowing to install and rollback modules using management protocols.
In the next section, we will describe all the required steps to install and start a new application server.