Upgrade libraries to make NextGen Connect compatible with latest Apache-POI

[is-simon]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

We have an home made extension that uses Apache-POI and we are trying to upgrade our Apache-POI dependencies to the latest one (currently 5.1.0) and came accross conflicted dependencies with the NextGen connect ones. We would like to suggest an upgrade of 2 libraries that could make NextGen Connect compatible with the latest Apache-POI version.

Describe your use case
We need to upgrade our Apache-POI (3.17) dependencies to the latest one (5.1.0), and cannot because of 2 NextGen Connect libraries, commons-io-2.6.jar (server lib) and xbean-fixed-2.4.0.jar (ws extension lib)

Describe the solution you'd like
The latest version of Apache-POI requires commons-io-2.7.jar and later (compile dependency is 2.11) , and xbean-3.1.0.jar and later (compile dependency is 5.0.2) .

[tonygermano]

This can likely be resolved by using an isolatedClassLoader

[is-simon]

This can likely be resolved by using an isolatedClassLoader

I don't think so (but maybe I'm wrong). Our extension is a "ServicePlugin" extension and the libraries appear in the plugin.xml file of the extension:

<library type="SERVER" path="lib/curvesapi-1.04.jar" />
<library type="SERVER" path="lib/poi-3.17.jar" />
<library type="SERVER" path="lib/poi-ooxml-3.17.jar" />
<library type="SERVER" path="lib/poi-ooxml-schemas-3.17.jar" />
<library type="SERVER" path="lib/poi-scratchpad-3.17.jar" />

So they are loaded by the extensions initialization mechanism, not by us.

Also, the extension offers a userutil package with functions that can be called from a Filter/Transformer in a channel.

[tonygermano]

You are correct. I overlooked the part that said it was an extension. The request is somewhat related to this issue I opened a couple years ago. #4350.