WAS Liberty doesn't read JNDI-defined bpm-platform location

This issue was imported from JIRA:

Field	Value
JIRA Link	CAM-14761
Reporter	@koevskinikola
Has restricted visibility comments	false

Environment (Required on creation):

WebSphere Liberty 22.0.0.3

Description (Required on creation; please attach any relevant screenshots, stacktraces, log files, etc. to the ticket):

Camunda Platform 7 allows defining a custom location of the bpm-platform.xml configuration file through a JNDI entry with the label java:comp/env/bpm-platform-xml

Steps to reproduce (Required on creation):

Define a jndiEntry in the server.xml of the Camunda Platform 7 WAS Liberty installation.

<jndiEntry jndiName="java:comp/env/bpm-platform-xml" value='"${server.config.dir}/bpm-platform.xml"' />

<enterpriseApplication id="camundaBpmPlatform" 
                 name="camunda-bpm-platform"
                 location="${server.config.dir}/apps/camunda-ibm-websphere-ear-7.18.0-SNAPSHOT.ear" >
        <classloader commonLibraryRef="Camunda"/>
        <ejb-jar-bnd moduleName="camunda-ibm-websphere-service">
            <session name="EjbBpmPlatformBootstrap">
                <resource-ref name="java:comp/env/bpm-platform-xml" binding-name="bpm-platform-xml" />
            </session>
        </ejb-jar-bnd>
    </enterpriseApplication>

The JNDI entry must be added in the ejb-jar-bnd application section (or the ibm-ejb-jar-bnd.xml) to be available through the java:comp/env/ namespace.

Observed Behavior (Required on creation):

A NameNotFoundException is thrown when the engine attempts to look-up a JNDI entry called java:comp/env/bpm-platform-xml.

Expected behavior (Required on creation):

The JNDI entry is successfully found.

Root Cause (Required on prioritization):

Solution Ideas (Optional):

Hints (optional):

WAS Liberty had a bug related to comp/env JNDI entries, but it was resolved (ref, ref2).

Links:

is related to https://jira.camunda.com/browse/CAM-13102

This comment was imported from JIRA and written by user @koevskinikola

Internal note:

The bpm-platform.xml JNDI entry is java:comp/env/bpm-platform-xml (src). In WebSphere Liberty, JNDI entries in the java:comp/env/ context are not directly available, and a JNDI reference must be made in one of the application's descriptor files (e.g. ibm-ejb-jar-bnd.xml}} (see ref). This should be easily doable through the server.xml using application bindings (see ref) to a WAS Liberty admin.
An alternative is to define the system environment variable BPM*PLATFORM*XML in the server.env file.

Note

The failure to detect the java:comp/env/bpm-platform-xml JNDI entry is not a bug in Camunda Platform 7. WAS Liberty requires additional configuration to be able to pass JNDI entries in the java:comp/env context. This "additional configuration" is currently not clear.

We also need to make clear that while Tomcat defines the java:/comp/env/ context, in Liberty it is java:comp/env.

camunda / camunda-bpm-platform