Improve support for / integration with Geronimo App Server

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Brainstorming from Ross and Aaron Mulder:

> - Mule uses Geronimo JTA/XA transaction manager
[Ross Mason] We've Done this with other AppServers and have support of
WebLogic, Websfear, Jboss and can easily added the same for Geronimo

> - Mule uses Geronimo security realms for authentication / to create a
> Subject for authentication (via JAAS, etc.)
[Ross Mason] This will need investigation, but Mule can delegate
authentication to different providers

> - Mule uses Geronimo factory to create SSL factories so all the
> Keystores, etc. are handled by Geronimo and don't need to be
> configured in multiple places
[Ross Mason] I like this feature, but we don't currently support it. We'd
need to adapt the socket transports to do this but it should be
straight-forward.

> - Mule runs in Geronimo and Mule services can be
> hot-deployed/undeployed/redeployed using the Geronimo deployer
> (command-line, web console, Maven plugin, etc.)
[Ross Mason] Does this mean we'd need write a Mule Xbean plug-in?

> - Mule uses Geronimo HTTP server for any HTTP/HTTPS endpoints (easy
> if you just want to control the URL beyond something like
> http://server:port/context/* but hard if you want to specify the port
> and/or context root)
[Ross Mason] Mule can bind to any Servlet container to receive requests
rather than using Mule's Http transport.

> - Mule uses Geronimo thread pool(s)
[Ross Mason] Easily done. You can just add a Geronimo Thread Pool factory
that exposes Geronimo managed pools. I guess the question is how does Mule
look up Geronimo Thread pools?. This sounds like a similar/same mechanism
that Resource Adapters use to share App Server resources. Are we talking
about JCA? Mule has a JCA resource adapter.

> - Expose EJBs deployed in Geronimo as Mule endpoints
[Ross Mason] This is already possible using the EJBContainerContext in Mule.

> - Expose a client API in JNDI for J2EE components so they can send
> messages to the Mule bus
[Ross Mason] Are you talking about JCA here?

> - Figure out a way for Geronimo to pass a Subject created by a secure
> web app to Mule to invoke secure services in Mule
[Ross Mason] Would need to investigate this

> - Expose Mule management, notifications, and statistics through the
> Geronimo JMX/JSR-77 management interfaces
[Ross Mason] We already expose this through JMX, I guess might just need a
clean way to integrate this with Geronimo

> - Add Mule screens to the Geronimo web admin console
>
> The basic idea is that you should be able to start/stop, manage,
> monitor, deploy to, etc. the combined system as if it was one. And
> that applications should be able to use the features of both – e.g. a
> J2EE web application sending messages to the Mule bus, or a Mule
> service dispatching messages to be handled by a J2EE session bean
> (even when using things like security and transactions on both sides).

> The basic procedure for creating a plugin is to get the services running in
> Geronimo as we want, and then use an admin console tool to export the
> Mule services as one or more plugins. Though if you use Maven to
> build Mule it's possible to eventually build plugins directly as part
> of the Mule build.
[Ross Mason] Many of the points we can already do or just require some
minimal coding. I think one place to start is with a plug-in that allows
Mule to be deployed to Geronimo and weave our Jmx support in as well.