Some notes from Sun GlassFish portfolio tech talk, London

Sun GlassFish and GlassFish portfolio - Sun talk London, Regis House 25-03-2009

Some notes that I managed to take whilst at the talk.

www.glassfish.org

Claimed to be the fastest Java EE AS

V2.0 -> reference implementation for Java EE 5
V3.x -> reference implementation for Java EE 6

Java EE standard 10 years old

Metro -> Interop between MS and Java WS.* standards

GlassFish is Open Source under CDDL and GPL 2 license

java.sun.com/javaee

Transparent development

Organic growth into middleware areas

First appearance 2005
V2 in 2007
Current v2.1 in Feb 2009

www.beta.glassfish.java.net:81/maps

6-700 downloads per month, 8 million in the last year / ~28k per day

GlassFish portfolio is a set of related technologies including the AS

• Enterprise server (including support for SNMP)
• Web space server (joined with Life Ray - social networking & portal technologies)
• Web sack (a complete (L)(S)(?)AMP stack)
• GlassFish ESB (SOA platform) for integration, connectors, adaptors

Java EE + Ruby on Rails, PHP and other frameworks

(note - what is SFA?)

Enterprise version adds:

• Performance advisor, performance monitor, SNMP, self management and alert manager
• Update center
  

Example / reference sites:

• wotif.com - Glassfish & OpenMQ
• www.travelmuse.com GlassFish, message queue and mysql (started by using community edition)
• North american Nationwide Health Information Network - connect (NHIN- Connect)
• OpenESB
• ESB.SOA framework
• Facebook - large mysql based system ~70million users

GlassFish has same levels and structure in terms of support and licensing as MySQL


Web Services: WS.*

• Metro is core in GlassFish AS
• Project Metro Web services stack provides high level WS stack with security, reliability etc -> .NET 3 interoperability (incorporates project tango - MS .NET interop)

REST

• JAX-RS JSR-311 Java API for RESTFul Web Services
• Annotation based server side API
• HTTP Centric
• Server Side only
• Servlet or SE deployment

Jersey project provides implementation for JSR-311

Performance:

Similar / faster than Weblogic and Websphere


GlassFish V3:

• OSGi: Apache Felix as default (origins in JSR-8)
• 1 sec startup
• 21Mb download
• admin and update tool downloaded on demand

Add-ons, modules available from update center:

• EJB 3.1 (preview
• jRuby on Rails (new WAR packaging required)
• Grails (also on GFv2)
• Jersey and Metro (Web services)
• jMaki (AJAX)

Tools:

• NetBeans and Eclipse
• Embedded GlassFish API

MicroKernel approach - modularity - base App server + on demand module loading, extensible and customizable

("Eclipse Con" -> announces GlassFiish bundle available)

Db connection pooling and connection (connector) pooling (JCA)

V3 Prelude

• available from http://glassfish.org -> using modular (microkernel) v3 ideas with existing EE5 technologies -> this version is supported!
• v3 prelude is Java EE Web layer only (i.e. servlets, JSPs etc but no Enterprise beans etc)
  

Compile / Deploy on Change support, dynamic debug loop (netbeans & eclipse), incremental compile of all Java EE artifacts. Auto-deply of all Java EE and static artifacts

Support for: JRuby, Ruby, Groovy, Grails, Python, jython, django, jmaki, JavaScript phobos

Ruby / jRuby and rails can be run on 2.1 today (by packaging up dependancies), on v3 available as OSGi jRuby container


PHP

• Quercis (Caucho) opensource GPL php 5 implementation in Java
• War Packaging
• Java Bridge

V2 -> ee 5
V3 -> prelude with EE5 support
V3 -> early access is EE6 spec (but not supported)


GF Web Stack:

• Apache HTTPd
• Sun web server 7 (most scalable web server - now open sourced!) optimized for multi-core CMT (chip-based Multithreaded) systems - 2x scaling vs. Apache & Tomcat
• lightpd
• memcached
• mod_jk, perl, ruby, PHP Ruby, Python, Squid, Tomcat

Current GF web stack is 1.4 (Python 2.5.2, Squid 2.6, Tomcat 5.5.27, memcached 1.2.5, mysql 5.0.67)


GF ESB:

• JSR 208 JBI (Java business Integration)
• Plug-able integration into backbone
• "Metacontainer" - add new containers within the container, extend the AS
• BPEL, WS-*, XSLT, FTP, LDAP, HTTP, DB service and binding
• Based on OpnESB -> http://openesb.org / community open-esb.dev.java.net/Components.html
• Maybe engines and connectors to things like Corba etc

What's next -> http://fuji.dev.java.net -> OpenESB V3 - next gen of SOA

(JBI and SCA stated as "complimentary, not conflicting")


GF: Web Space server (project web synergy)

• Portlet spec JSR-268 and more (social networking, communities)
• OpenSSO, identify mechanisms
• Compelling web UIs

GF enterprise manager:

• Performance advisor
• Alerts
• JDBC pool management - automatically tunes JDBC connection pool to optimize performance etc

Sailfin (Ericson contribution) telco, SIP, VOIP, Instant messaging

dtrace etends into Apache and PHP

Revamped PetStore 4 part tutorial - developer.sun.com

OpenSSO -> new concept "express builds" - milestone interim builds from Open Source community in between main supported releases

WhitePapers:

New White-papers on GlassFish portfolio launch:

• Comparison with Tomcat
• Performance optimization
• GF with identify and MySQL

Training available in Camberly, BSG in London etc

www.javapassion.com

Books:

• GlassFish
• Database-driven application development
• Others available (I didn't get time to note them down)
  

blogs.sun.com/theaquarium -> god launch pad for developer information

blogs.sun.com/stories -> gives examples and real usage info

Migration tools:

migrate2glassfish.dev.java.net/blogs/blogs.html

built in tools to detect and advise on code usage (for EE standards and vendor specific code dependancies)

--

Examples:

JavaFX mobile - answer to J2ME shortcomings

www.javafx.com -> many tutorials and demos

GlassFish profiles - Developer mode (no clustering etc) but fast start up and change deployment


Clustering:

DAS - Domain Administration server looks after a cluster, deploy to the domain administration server and it deploys to the cluster nodes.

Session replication between cluster nodes, zero down time when switching between nodes

install with -cluster switch

Cluster elements run "node-agents" to talk to the DAS

Extra sections in the admin console -> shows cluster nodes

GlassFish performance monitor - enterprise only (TBC)?

V3 Prelude - web tier only (web apps) but fully functional


Presentation has now been published here: http://uk.sun.com/sunnews/events/2009/mar/glassfish/pdf/UK-GlassFish-Portfolio-Launch-mar09.pdf


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