vendredi mars 30, 2007

While Oracle contemplates IBM going after JBoss, GlassFish delivers (and the winner is the developer)

Oracle's Omar Tazi has this blog today about the IBM announcement about JBoss users now being able to use a migration tool to move to Apache's Geronimo. So granted, migration is a cost than can be lowered using such a toolbox (although I'm not sure how much it helps), but the real question is why would you use your freedom to leave? Any worthwhile innovation, technical merits? The final part of Omar's post has a pretty gratuitous comment on GlassFish, stating it's never "... part of these battles" and "no one seems to take it seriously.".

First, Sun Application Server 8.x (GlassFish's ancestor) has enjoyed quite a bit of mission critical enterprise deployments. Some public ones are here, there and there.

Second, GlassFish has had a migration tool for a while, but a tool can only do so much and that's really not the point. For new projects or existing deployments to consider an alternate application server, that product needs to innovate and deliver on standards. I think GlassFish does extremely well in both cases and it's the reason we have people deploying high-volume applications on GlassFish today including wotif.com, one of the largest Australian eCommerce site.

So why are we not "part of these battles"? Probably because the GlassFish community is busy deploying applications, working with other communities, and making the product even better.

GlassFish User Group in Paris (LDAP, books, hosting and Eclipse)

During the Sun TechDays Conference last week in Paris, I put together a GlassFish Community User Group. This was done a little bit at the last minute but the result was quite satisfying and I though I'd share with you what was covered.

My idea of a user group is that it clearly shouldn't be a batch of product presentations (the conference had plenty of that) so I asked the following people to present:
•  David Ely on OpenDS, the 100% Java LDAP server
•  Antonio Goncalves on Java EE 5 and the book he wrote using GlassFish
•  Jean-Baptiste Bugeaud on what GlassFish has and needs for hosting
•  Ludo on Eclipse tooling for GlassFish

David Ely, presented on OpenDS. The presentation covers some good background information on LDAP and how it compares to databases (see also Trey's take on it [1], [2]), how OpenDS can be used in various use-cases from embedded to scalable servers (I heard that before :), to development status, performance figures and roadmap. OpenDS has a simple Java Web Start-enable installer and integrated data to populate the database. Try it here. [Slides]

Antonio Goncalves who is a consultant and a teacher at the CNAM university just finished writing a book on Java EE 5. He used GlassFish throughout the book and shared his thoughts on how Java EE 5 changes the life of the developer and the things he likes best about this application server (easy install, admin, ...). His book is in French and is due in a few weeks now from Editions Eyrolles. Read his Java EE 5/GlassFish posts from when he was writing the book on his blog. [Slides]

Jean-Baptiste Bugeaud is a GlassFish community member who can get very passionate about things he cares about. Having chatted about this before I thought he'd do a good job talking about what it would take for GlassFish to be widely adopted in virtual hosting environments (nameli ISPs). To a large extend, the problem is more about Java hosting in general than it is about GlassFish. Jean-Baptiste did a great job talking about what was already available in GlassFish v2 (such as port virtual hosting or standard based Apache-like access log) and what is still required. A Gardian Application to enforce QoS sounds like a must have so that ISPs can actually charge people for what they use while collocating many applications on the same GlassFish instance. I hope the conversation is only starting. JB has already suggested he might be doing some of the implementation himself. [Slides]

Let's just say upfront that Eclipse integration for GlassFish is very important. Ludo has been hard at work following every WTP release with the GlassFish plugin. The problem described by Ludo is that Eclipse's WTP is just not moving fast enough with Java EE 5 support still not there (and J2EE 1.4 Web Services never fully implemented in WTP 1.5). It also seems that project leader BEA is removing its bits from the open source distribution and that overall WTP will not really be meant for general consumption. Rather, BEA, SAP, IBM and the likes are building their tools on top of WTP, keeping much of the value in the closed-source products which is not good news for Java EE 5 as a whole. In the mean time most people using Eclipse are only leveraging the editor, missing out on wizards, deployment, packaging, deployment descriptor authoring and other features, relying on ANT for a poor-man's integration. [no slides]

So, overall a very good 2-hour session rather well attended given the late notice. Looking forward to more such energetic GUG's! See you at the next mega GUG - GlassFish Day in San Francisco!.