Gluu: OpenDS as the foundation of Online Identity Management Services

Gluu is a San Antonio, TX, USA based startup offering a cloud based Identity Service that aims to make it easier for organizations to securely share identity information and to achieve inter-domain web single sign on. The Gluu services are built on open source software such as Apache, Penrose, MySQL database, OpenSSO and OpenDS.

OpenDS, the LDAPv3 directory service in Java, is used for different services in the Gluu infrastructure. It is used for storing all of the users' identity information as well as groups and access control information, in a highly available manner thanks to several instances of OpenDS replicated in a multi-master topology. Also OpenDS is used as a cache layer for some of the Gluu internal data, for availability and performance. Finally OpenDS is also the configuration store for the OpenSSO services. Gluu offers web services access to the LDAP directory services through the OpenDS DSML Gateway, a web application translating DSML messages to LDAP.

OpenDS was chosen over other directory servers for its inherent multi-platform support, its numerous features and its simplicity. Read all the details in the questionnaire.

Posted at 09:18AM Jul 22, 2009 by Ludovic Poitou in OnlineServices  | 

JotBot: Time-tracking application using JRuby, Ramaze, and GlassFish

 
JotBot is a cross-platform desktop-based time tracking application. It is written using JRuby, Swing, Monekybars, and Ramaze. The application is deployed on GlassFish on a VPS hosted on eApps.

A key part of the evaluation critera were better deployment and management and the options offered by hosting companies. The use of GlassFish enabled the JotBot team to focus more on development effort and less on sysadmin work and offered a solution that has been working with no trouble for a few months now. 

Sequel is used as the ORM for talking to MySQL and H2 databases and NetBeans was used for designing the screens. Here is a thought on the JRuby and GlassFish community:

There's a pioneer spirit, and that makes it more fun for everyone.

The detailed GlassFish questionnaire provide additional details on all of the above.

Posted at 11:00PM May 13, 2009 by Arun Gupta in OnlineServices  |  Comments[1]

LinkedIn Polls: Ruby-on-Rails and GlassFish together - it works!

LinkedIn Polls allows a user to poll the audience in their network and then analyze/share the results. This project is developed by the Light Engineering (LED) team at LinkedIn and is a revenue generation source for them. 

The application is built using Ruby-on-Rails and deployed as a WAR file on GlassFish. Why GlassFish - it works and provides useful error messages!

LinkedIn Polls is deployed on Solaris Zones from a hosting provider, uses MySQL as the database, and is featured at on-air with CNBC.

The detailed GlassFish questionnaire provide additional details on all of the above.

Posted at 11:00PM May 12, 2009 by Arun Gupta in OnlineServices  |  Comments[1]

Kenai.com: JRuby-on-Rails and GlassFish enable growing your code in the Cloud

Project Kenai, is Sun's developer "cloud" onramp. It has exceeded over 7,000 members and surpassed 500 hosted open source projects after going live in Sep 2008. Currently, Kenai offers an integrated suite of productivity services for developers to host their open source code/projects as well as connect with their peers.

The platform is built using JRuby-on-Rails and deployed on GlassFish v2, using MySQL Server, Apache Web Server and memcached (all available from Sun's GlassFish Portfolio). GlassFish is performing well for hosting their Rails applications, and the team reports:

The GlassFish processes have been among the most stable of our deployment.

and also:

(The) GlassFish team has been extremely helpful along the way with tuning and diagnosing performance issues.

The detailed GlassFish questionnaire provide additional details on all of the above.

Posted at 11:00PM May 11, 2009 by Arun Gupta in OnlineServices  |  Comments[1]

Webzzle - What if googling could get better (with some GlassFish inside)?

What if Google was not the last word in user search experience? What if the folksonomy provided by Wikipedia could help enhance and qualify every search made on the Internet? Webzzle is replacing keyword searches by multiple queries mixing Wikipedia concepts, pages contents and syntax operators to offer the best possible data to the end-user, all powered by a GlassFish runtime.

GlassFish was chosen over WebLogic and JBoss and uses clustering features such as centralized admin. Webzzle uses a MySQL 5.1 back-end and runs on Solaris with ZFS. When asked about the experience with the product, Webzzle's Xavier Vaucois replies that it offered "100% availability" and that "above all no major issue in our case" is the feature he likes best! This short slide deck and the traditional detailed questionnaire describe in further details this GlassFish production story.

If you'd like to try Webzzle, you can point your favorite browser to their website: webzzle.com, or better yet use their new Firefox plugin.

Posted at 11:54PM Apr 28, 2009 by Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine in OnlineServices  | 

GroovyBlogs.org GlassFish and MQ

Glen Smith has been kicking the tires of GlassFish to run his Groovyblogs portal for a while now. This Grails-powered application was developed in record time and has proven to run smoothly for over two years now.

Groovyblogs was recently enhanced to use OpenMQ and a message-oriented architecture with "significantly greater uptime, and much more scalable and pluggable deployment opportunities" as an immediate result. Earlier updates included the use of GlassFish v2's HTTP compression support (Glen started with GlassFish v1 back in 2007).

Glen didn't wait for GlassFish v3's optimized experience for scripting environment such as Groovy/Grails (Screencast, Download, Getting Started) but promises to do so after once he's done writing and reviewing "Grails in Action".

Read all about this story straight from Glen in this detailed questionnaire.

Posted at 05:00AM Mar 09, 2009 by Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine in OnlineServices  | 

Involver - Online video marketing platform using JRuby-on-Rails on GlassFish

 
Involver.com is an online video marketing platform that allows brands to build, promote, manage, and track video campaigns on social networks for targeted audiences. The heart of this platform is a Ruby-on-Rails application using JRuby 1.1.6 served by GlassFish v2 UR2.

They found "pack of mongrels" as inefficient use of human and machine resources. After deciding on WAR-based packaging and looking at alternatives, GlassFish was chosen because of "well-defined public roadmap and release cycle" and "high degree of community overlap between JRuby and GlassFish projects". The admin console greatly reduced the setup cost which was another key factor for choosing GlassFish.

They use JMS queues to deal with "long running" tasks in single-threaded Rails environments. They are very impressed with the performance and big fans of the web-based admin console.

The detailed GlassFish questionnaire provide additional details on all of the above.

Posted at 06:00AM Mar 05, 2009 by Arun Gupta in OnlineServices  |  Comments[3]

MidwifeMate - GlassFish reducing paperwork for midwifery practice management

midwifemate.com is a on-line midwifery practice management software that drastically reduces the paper work involved when family, hospitals, specialists, and midwife are busy taking care of the newborn and the mother. The information is accessible on a mobile device as well, very considerate of the parents-to-be. The application is hosted on GlassFish.

GlassFish was chosen over other App Servers because Java EE features are working as expected. They are using Hibernate as the persistence provider for the JPA layer. 

The GlassFish is front-ended using Apache Web server and proxy_ajp. Approximately 2000 hours have been spent developing the application.

They like "good support for Java EE", multiple platform support and the GlassFish plugin for Eclipse.

The detailed GlassFish questionnaire provide additional details on all of the above.

Posted at 06:00AM Mar 04, 2009 by Arun Gupta in OnlineServices  | 

Clarity Accounting: Online Accounting Software using GWT and Hibernate with GlassFish

Are you a small business or self employed professional looking for a SaaS accounting solution ? Clarity Accounting provides an online accounting solution by building a simple flexible model with plenty of access to information. 

The solution is hosted on 3tera AppLogic Grid using Linux on commodity Intel hardware. The solution use traditional EJB, Servlet and Web services for the core infrastructure. Hibertate and Hibernate Search are used for database abstraction with PostgreSQL backend. Google Web Toolkit is used for the user interface.

They use GlassFish as the application server because they were recommended it is the "best one to start with". They also like it because of better standards compliance with EJB3 and dont-have-to-edit-XML-configuration file approach possible because of admin console.

The detailed GlassFish questionnaire provide additional details on all of the above.

Posted at 11:00PM Dec 28, 2008 by Arun Gupta in OnlineServices  |  Comments[4]

Ipso-Facto: Real Estate SaaS with GlassFish

Ipso-Facto builds and delivers real estate software as a service for the French market. They've been running GlassFish v2 in production for a little while now. Enough to call it "mature, recommend (it) for professional use" and start the rewrite of older applications to run on top of this Java EE server.

This company used to be a full Microsoft shop and first moved to Java with Tomcat before they adopted GlassFish. Their largest application, LogissimoASP, uses many JSF components from various sources, and operates in a Microsoft environment: Windows 2003 and SQL Server 2005. This application recently started using the clustering and load-balancing features provided by GlassFish v2 to secure the availability of the service which now has hundreds of concurrent users and spikes at well-known moments in the day.

As always, you're invited to read the detailed questionnaire for this Ipso-Facto GlassFish production story.

Posted at 01:42AM Nov 03, 2008 by Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine in OnlineServices  |  Comments[0]

SSOCircle Uses OpenSSO to Provide an Open Identity Provider Service

SSOCircle is an open identity provider that supports multiple protocols for federated single sign-on. One of the first production deployments of OpenSSO, SSOCircle went live in February 2007 with support for SAML 2.0, adding OpenID a couple of months later (see SSOCircle-related posts at Superpatterns).

If you're working with federation technologies, SSOCircle is an incredibly useful resource - in the case of SAML 2.0, you can register your service provider metadata with SSOCircle and test single sign-on from SSOCircle to your site. With OpenID, of course, this isn't necessary - just type your OpenID URL (something like http://myname.ssocircle.com/) at an OpenID relying party and you're in business.

One particularly nice feature of the site is that they have configured OpenSSO's client certificate login, so you can use a browser or smartcard certificate to authenticate, rather than username/password. Convenience!

SSOCircle's latest offering is IDPee - a white label hosted identity provider service. Currently in beta (apply here), this looks like an interesting option if you don't want to be running an identity provider in your own infrastructure.

Read the full questionnaire and Liberty Alliance case study [PDF] for much more detail on SSOCircle.

Posted at 06:00AM Oct 27, 2008 by Andrew Patterson in OnlineServices  |  Comments[2]