Anissa's Blog

...   Administration Console,   JavaOne,     Plug-Ins ,  v3,  HOL,  OSGi,  5572, San Francisco,  2009,  GlassFish,  ...

So, by linking together the above  seemingly random words,  what do you get ?   A HOL#5572  titled  Building OSGi Plug-Ins for the GlassFish™ v3 Application Server Administration Console at  JavaOne 2009 in San Francsico.  

Yes, thats what Ken and I have been working on during the last few months, to bring to you a lab that gives you all the information you need to create a plugin module to the Admin Console.   The lab includes background info on OSGi,  the admin console architecture and most importantly, the step by step instructions that guides you how to build a plugin module to extend Admin Console to your need.      Ken  believes  HOLs are hidden treasures in JavaOne.   He gave a sneak preview on the lab doc and how the console looks like after plugging in the jar YOU build.  Check it out.

Besides the HOL,  we have great demos at the GlassFish Pod,  make sure you check it out too !!

See you at JavaOne 2009 !!

After you have upgraded to GlassFish 2.1  from  previous GlassFish 2.0 release,  you need to do one more step to ensure that Admin Console works properly.   This is due to issue # 7404  and also explained  in detail in the forum
After the upgrade,  you will see the following jars under <AS>/lib/install/applications/admingui/adminGUI_war/WEB-INF/lib

 %cd /gf2.1/lib/install/applications/admingui/adminGUI_war/WEB-INF/lib/
 %ls -l jsftemplating*

-rw-r--r--  1 anilam  owner   132712 Feb  3 18:13 jsftemplating-dynafaces-0.1-1.0.jar
-rw-r--r--  1 anilam  owner   422259 Feb  3 18:13 jsftemplating-1.2-SAILFIN.jar
-rw-r--r--  1 anilam  owner   132712 Feb  3 10:34 jsftemplating-dynafaces-0.1.jar
-rw-r--r--  1 anilam  owner   423089 Feb  3 10:34 jsftemplating.jar

You need to perform the following steps to ensure that only 1 copy of the jsftemplating jars exist and with the correct name so that any further upgrade will not run into the same problem.

1.  Remove  the 2 jsftemplating jars (jsftemplating-dynafaces-0.1.jar, jsftemplating.jar)  from previous installation.

    % rm -f jsftemplating-dynafaces-0.1.jar, jsftemplating.jar

2.  Rename the 2 remaining jsftemplating jars

    % mv jsftemplating-dynafaces-0.1-1.0.jar jsftemplating-dynafaces-0.1.jar

    % mv jsftemplating-1.2-SAILFIN.jar jsftemplating.jar

3. Ensure there is only 2 jsftemplating jars for your installation.

    %ls -l jsftemplating*

-rw-r--r--  1 anilam  owner   132712 Feb  3 18:13 jsftemplating-dynafaces-0.1.jar
-rw-r--r--  1 anilam  owner   422259 Feb  3 18:13 jsftemplating.jar

Now, you can restart the server and Admin Console will be fine.

After couple weeks of hard work,  the console team finally have a prototype that is ready to be tried out by the community.   You can access the prototype by going to  http://63.227.208.233:9999/admingui/
Ken's blog has a couple screenshot, and he also listed out some of the known issues/limitation for this prototype. 
In case it is not obvious to users,   clicking on the the tag name,  eg 'web' in my case,  lists out all the pages that are tagged 'web'.   This is the same as entering  'web' in the Search box and do the Search,  except saves you a couple key strokes :)   Once i setup this tag list, i can go to any of these pages related to 'web' by just one click,  instead of through the menu and sub menus.




Be sure to try this out and leave us comments !!

GlassFish Enterprise Manager is  launched today (Feb 10, 2009) as part of Sun GlassFish Portfolio. Performance Advsior is one of the key deliveries for GlassFish Enterprise Manager.   Performance Advisor allows you to monitor key performance indicators, such as Physical Memory, CPU Usage etc. that may impact performance and sends notifications when pre-defined thresholds are exceeded. JDBC Pool Management,  Log File Management as well as Performance Tuning are all part of Performance Advisor. Performance Advisor is available as a patch from sunsolve for customers who has a service contract. Here is a screencast that shows you how to obtain and install the patch, and also gives you an overview of all the new features that  help boost the performance of your systems.  Enjoy !!

The next stop in my GlassFish China Trip after attending Beijing Sun Tech Days is HangZhou.   Every year, there are thousands of tourists visiting its exquisite West Lake (Xi Hu) area to enjoy the placid lake,  reflecting pools and beautiful gardens.

My stay in HangZhou includes a meeting with the Students in Zhejiang University.    This is organized  through Yu-Hao Yang,  who is  Sun's Campus Ambassador.   Zhejiang is one of the top university in China and this is the first time i visit any University in China.  For Judy, this is a completely different story as this is the University that she graduated from.    We had lunch in the cafeteria,  treated by Dr. Ning,  a professor in Dept. of Biomedical Engineering.    Although the students there may not agree,  the food there was really delicious and of great value.  We believe this is one of the best meal we have so far for our trip,  especially Judy as she has missed the food from this cafeteria for a long time.
I am really impressed with the campus,  its learning environment and the student's enthusiastic in learning.

We have almost 100 students attending the talk of GlassFish.   Some of them have been using Tomcat,  some are just start learning about JavaEE, regardless, they are all eager to learn and try out GlassFish.
Jim talked about Java EE 5 and Java EE 6.   I told the students more about GlassFish and gave live demo on how to use the Admin Console  and Judy presented the slides about community and how it will benefit the students.
Lots of good questions raised during the Q&A.   They are really smart students asking questions right to the point.   They will be great engineers someday,  contributing to the success of GlassFish and help building prosperous China.

Sun's Campus Ambassador and the poster:

    


Beautiful  Campus












Attending Students

       



      



     



Q&A





West Lake in Hangzhou

Sun Tech Days 2008 took place in Guangzhou on Nov 19.   This is the first time that Sun Tech days took place in this beautiful city.  This is a very successful conference with more than 1200 attendance which is above the target.  

Together with Jim  and Judy,  I presented GlassFish session.   The conference room is completely packed with over 700 people.   The audience was a little surprised when I introduce myself with Cantonese.   Besides meeting FishCats,  I also met lots of energetic  and devoted  university students who is really interested in GlassFish. 
My first visit to Guangzhou consists of   shuttle to hotel where conference is held,  stay there for a day  and then taxi to airport for departure to Sun Tech days in Beijing.  So I didn't really see Guangzhou.  But I know that my next visit will be fun in another way,  since  莹莹 and her schoolmates gladly offered to be my tourist guide next time i visit Guangzhou.   她 说:  "很乐意带你去找好吃的和好玩的".   谢 谢 你 啦 莹莹 :)



  Preparing for demo before ANYONE arrives :)


   

  

  

  


   My future tourist guide :)   

By now,  you probably are aware that GlassFish v3 Prelude is released and available for download.  A quick start guide is here to help you get it up and running quickly.    There is so many  new materials and features in GF v3 Prelude that is beyond me to mention it here.   The best way to learn about it is by attending Webinar Nov 6th.  Yes, thats today !!  Hurry up and join  us !!

Out of the many features in v3 Prelude,  I want to draw your attention to 2 of the main features in Admin Console.   The extensibility of the console,  most people calls it 'plugin' to the GUI,  and the integration of UpdateTool  in the console itself.   Jason has a very detailed writeup on Extending the GlassFish v3 Prelude Administration Console that you definitely should check out if you are interested in extending the console.

Lets talk about the updatetool integration in the console here.    Through updatetool,  you can add on  additional modules such as JRuby and Groovy,  Jersey,  Metro Web Services etc to GlassFish,  to customize your own requirement.  After installation,  you can start up updatetool by going to the bin directory  type in  bin/updatetool.  It will bootstrap itself and startup.  However,  since this is a standalone application, you have to be on the same machine of your GlassFish installation to run it.   So,  what if you are on a client machine and want to manage your server ?
Well, Admin Console solves the problem for you.    As usual,  by using the browser and going to  http://<hostname>:4848/  you can bring up the console.   Unless you declined to check for update,  you will be notified of available updates in the message area.   UpdateTool functionality is available through the CommonTask page and the navigation tree node.

           



It tells you what modules has been installed,  and what is available for add-on.  It also allows you to configure the proxy server if needed.   The Configuration page also shows you the repository that has been setup for you.
After installing additional component,  you may need to restart the server for this module to be recognized.
Here is a couple screen shot for this feature.

         

        


        

Just as the blog title suggests,  GlassFish Registration Campaign is giving out free iPhone and the only action needed from you is to register the product.    Support at your fingertip shows you how easy it is to register and the new support page in Console  is only available to registered users. Arun's blog of  Free chance to win iPhone summarize the campaign and the screencast on the left puts it in action.   Check these out and don't miss this great opportunity.    Spread the word and refer you friend.  If they win the iPhone,  you get the same prize  too !! And Hurry up,  this campaign ends on March 23.  Good Luck !!

GlassFish V2 UR1 is released today and can be downloaded here. I want to bring everyone to the attension of a new feature that is added to the Admin Console:  Supports at our finger tip.  We all know there is lots of information out there related to Java EE  and application server,  but only if you know where to find them.   And how about up to the minute's News, training information, latest bug fixes etc.   Isn't it be nice if all this is aggregrated and presented to you in one single page ?   Thats exactly what  is delievered by Admin Console for GlassFish V2 UR1 relesae. Here is a sample of this support page,  and  a screen cast which shows the page in action and what you need to do to get this page. Take a look and be sure give us comments.

Do you know whats new in GlassFish V2 Admin Console ? Here is the top 10 feature lists thats implemented for this release. [Read More]

You have heard about the new clustering support in GlassFish V2, but your domain is setup with developer profile. How do you get this new feature with just pressing a single button ?[Read More]

This blog gives clear instructions on creating a cluster with 2 instances running on 2 different machines. The step-by-step instructions start from creating a domain with cluster profile to a running cluster . A 5 minutes screen cast is also included here.[Read More]

So, i have been told that i need to spend sometime blogging,  and i have been saying, 'yes i will' for many months  if not year ...

What  should i blog about ?  As i am mostly familiar with  Admin Console for GlassFish,  maybe i should start from there.   I will try to make an Admin Console series,  to cover most of the tasks that GUI helps our user for administrating the application server.

Since JavaOne 2007 is coming up next week,   it may be a good time to show user how to use one of the major enhancement in GlassFish V2, which is  Usage Profile   and  clustering.

Stay tuned ....