Can varargs in SessionBeans be deployed in WL9.2? modifier transient

Question

Hello,
We're trying to deploy an ear onto an AdminServer in development mode. We want to declare some local stateless session beans with vararg input parameters.
e.g.
public String[] getValidIDsOfType(String validOnDate, String... filterTypes);
It compiles fine and we can create an ear file.
Try to activate a deployment, however, and the error we get is An error occurred during activation of changes, please see the log for details......Compiler failed executable.exec...
modifier transient not allowed here public transient java.lang.String[] getValidIDsOfType(java.lang.String arg0, java.lang.String[] arg1)
That doesn't make much sense until you go into the domain's
servers\AdminServer\cache\EJBCompilerCache\randomName\<packagePathToEJB>
directory and look at the <EJBName>Local_<blah>Intf.java and <EJBName>Local<blah>_ELOImpl.java
This shows that WL9.2's AppC translates the original EJB to:
public transient java.lang.String[] getValidIDsOfType(java.lang.String arg0, java.lang.String[] arg1)
in the Local_<blah>_Intf.java extends WLEnterpriseBean interface.  Similarly for the ELOImpl class.
I suppose the workaround for now is to remove the varargs parameter and for each client call to pass in an array, even where there's only one object.
Has anyone else come across this, or have any BEA guys there got a fix for it? Is there any way to remove the transient modifier that WL9.2 inserts?
Thanks and Best Regards,
ConorD

Answer 1

For anyone with the same problem, there's no full fix at present...I used a workaround instead and changed the input parameter from varargs to an ArrayList, which worked fine.
Then I contacted BEA support listing it as a bug and gave them a chunk of code and and ant build file to replicate it. BEA support were able to replicate it, and very quickly assigned a team to it, but informed me that it can't be fixed at present, and that I should use my workaround.
The problem is actually with the spec; the bit positions used to signify that a parameter is transient is shared with those that signify that a parameter is a vararg. It's implemented giving the same effect on both Sun's JDK and JRockit. I don't know about IBMs JDK. Unfortunately BEA have no plans to change this and it occurs in WLS 10 too. I suppose the only way to fix it would be to give a "best guess" on whether the user wanted transient or varargs. For example, if it's an area where varargs are allowed but transient not, then assume the user wanted varargs and mark them so (like with an EJB), otherwise assume the user wanted transient. But I was told by BEA that they have no plan to add those smarts into their AppC, and maybe that's not even possible, given that the spec has overloaded those bit positions.
Here's a link to the bug filed with Sun that BEA sent on to me:
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6516895
This includes a link to the the relevant part from the spec:
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/vmspec/2nd-edition/ClassFileFormat-Java5.pdf
I hope that this helps anyone with the same problem.
Best Regards,
ConorD