Question

Our business case needs us to call a shell script from a Message Bean. Other than the obvious portability issues, and the standards compliance, what is the problem with calling a shell script from a bean? Technically speaking, the container, WebLogic, will allow me to, but it sure seems like a bad practice. What would a good alternative be? It is a synchronous call in this case.

Answer 1

Other than the obvious portability issues, and the standards compliance, what is the problem with calling a shell script from a bean?

You have covered the most important ones.

The only others I can think of are:

• the engineering issues of maintaining a “mixed” solution
• potential performance issues; e.g. if the task could be done significantly faster if coded in Java and (typically) run in the main JVM.

Technically speaking, the container, WebLogic, will allow me to, but it sure seems like a bad practice.

Bad practice should not be equated with inelegance. Good / bad practice is about things that will / would have a measurable impact according to some objective criterion … if you could measure them.

What would a good alternative be? It is a synchronous call in this case.

The general alternative is to code the task in Java. You should be able to do that in the awk/sed case. In the case where you are using ps to look for an external process, you probably can’t do the task at all in pure Java, and that means that your current approach is best.