23.4.5. JNDI Lookup Process

It will check its own static retryEnv field. This field can be set by client code via a call to RetryInterceptor.setRetryEnv(Properties). This approach to configuration has two downsides: first, it reduces portability by introducing JBoss-specific calls to the client code; and second, since a static field is used only a single configuration per VM is possible.

If the retryEnv field is null, it will check for any environment properties bound to a ThreadLocal by the org.jboss.naming.NamingContextFactory class. To use this class as your naming context factory, in your jndi.properties set property java.naming.factory.initial=org.jboss.naming.NamingContextFactory. The advantage of this approach is use of org.jboss.naming.NamingContextFactory is simply a configuration option in your jndi.properties file, and thus your java code is unaffected. The downside is the naming properties are stored in a ThreadLocal and thus are only visible to the thread that originally created an InitialContext.

If neither of the above approaches yield a set of naming environment properties, a default InitialContext is used. If the attempt to contact a naming server is unsuccessful, by default the InitialContext will attempt to fall back on multicast discovery to find an HA-JNDI naming server. See Chapter 22, Clustered JNDI Services for more on multicast discovery of HA-JNDI.