Paul is announcing the release of Jersey 1.0.3, an update to the open source, production-quality JAX-RS reference implementation. You can download it today or, if you're using GlassFish, simply wait a little bit for it to appear on your GlassFish Update center (both v2 and v3). New features include Guice 2.0 integration, developer-defined WADL-based resource classes, building on Grizzly 1.9.8, integrated use of MIMEPull, EJB Session beans as resources, improvements to the client API, new samples, more documentation and a new test framework. Check Paul's blog entry for details and proper community attributions.

If you're looking for a list of Jersey-specific features (vs. what the JAX-RS specification mandates), check this post. The team is now en route to Java EE 6 with an upcoming implementation to JAX-RS 1.1.

Grails 1.1 is available on the GlassFish v2 Update Center. Thanks to Vivek and the team for delivering on it, and to Alexis for the tip. Still working on making this available on the GFv3 Update Center; Alexis has started a series to help other groups contribute to the repository. Related entries are tagged Grails.

One of the challenges in spec development is how to best leverage other specs that are being developed simultaneously, within the real-life constraints of schedules, resources, time-zones, etc. This is another situation where transparency and open-source is helping significantly - plus the usual hard work of the EGs. A case in point is EJB 3.1 and JAX-RS 1.1 where the EGs have been working to allow the use of POJO sesion beans as resource (root) or provider classes in Jersey, deployed as a plain WAR. This allows very natural Java programming, things like this root class

@Stateless @Path("ssb") public class StatelessSessionRootResource { @Context private UriInfo ui; @GET public String get() { return "GET: " + ui.getRequestUri().toASCIIString(); } }

Check out full details in Paul's Glassfish v3, EJB 3.1 and Jersey and in Ken's JAX-RS and EJB.

EJB3.1 and JAX-RS are two of the new JavaEE6 features you will be able to try GFv3 in EA by JavaOne - see you there! And the photo? Another great partnership, this one in Mixed Doubles in Badminton: Kim Dong-moon and Ra Kyung-min :-)

I'm finally catching up with Dave's post from last Friday. Quoting from his note on SocialSite and Apache:

... Sun Microsystems is willing to contribute Project SocialSite to the Apache Software Foundation. It's not clear whether SocialSite should be contributed into Shindig or as a new incubator project... I've started some discussions about this on Apache-private mailing lists and I'll let you know what happens next.

As Dave says, this is "the best thing for the project and will give it the best possible chances for building a thriving community". My very best wishes to SocialSite.

Dave's presentation at ApacheCon was on Shindig for Blogs and Wikis; a number of his most recent posts have covered specific topics building to this presentation where he leveraged Shiding and SocialSite (and JSPWiki and Roller). Of special interest may be his posts on OAuth.

Adobe's client-side (RIA) technology, Flex, is officially matched on the Java server-side by their Adobe LiveCycle product, but it is possible to use different software on the server-side. Here are three options:

The first is an old report: Midnight Coders (now a GlassFish Partner) has official GlassFish Server support in their WebORB for java product, see TA entry. A second possibility is GraniteDS, which currently has Experimental GF Support. The third is Adobe's own open source offering: BlazeDS. Successful reports include Ries at BMK LLC, Igor Costa and Sean. Also see Ryan's comments in this TA post. The most complete series is by Anachronymous: Intro, Choosing GF (over JBoss), and then Part I and Part II.

The GlassFish Gem is a GFv3 server for Rack-based Ruby Frameworks (specifically Rails, Sinatra, Merb). Vivek and team have just released 0.9.3 which includes improvements and features like Deamon Mode, GFrake Task, Configuration, Logging and Error Reporting, Sinatra support and more. Check Vivek's writeup for full details.

And this is a good opportunity to link to Arun's list of posts on how to test that GlassFish and JRuby/Rails are working well together, testing: GF Gem, GF v3 Prelude, GF v3, GF v2 + Warbler and GF v3 and Redmine. Check them out.

Progress on both sets of Web Services specifications for JavaEE 6... On the RESTful side, Marc reports on a new specification draft. As usual, the JSR311 Website has full details including the Editors Draft and a Changelog. Marc points out there is still work pending in the integration with Servlet 3.0, EJB 3.1 and JSR 299. On the SOAP side, Rama announces a new implementation of the latest JAX-WS 2.2 Draft.

JFA has Announced the first release of Atmosphere, a portable framework for Comet applications. This release supports Grizzly, GlassFish, Tomcat and Jetty. The key abstractions are AtmosphereHandler and AtmosphereEvent. Also see the JavaDocs and the Chat and Flickr samples. To get started, you can download the CPR and Samples. Also useful is JFA's Devoxx Presentation.

PS. AtmosphereHandler used to be called Grizzlet; the rename is to clearly indicate the relationship to Atmosphere and its portability beyond Grizzly-based containers.

There are two basic approaches to make PHP on GlassFish Server; one is a PHP on JVM solution like Quercus from Caucho; the other is a bridge to a traditional PHP implementation, like the PHP JavaBridge or LRWPInJava.

A quick pass shows a number of references to these approaches: • Quercus: Number 9, John Yeary, Sebastien, Gautam, Davis, Arun, Jason. • JavaBridge: Davis, Jose-Diaz. • LRWPInjava: Drupal Case Study.

The bridges are technically easier because many PHP packages are not written in PHP and need to be ported, but the PHP-on-JVM solution seems easier to deploy and manage. Of course, another, very practical, solution is to just use a web server like Apache or Sun Web Server :-)

I'm interested in your experience; if you are using PHP on/via GlassFish, please consider posting a comment describing your approach.

Tomorrow's (Thursday) webinar Jean Francois Arcand will present on Comet (aka Ajax push). JFA's will show how to write a Twitter like application using the Grizzly Comet Framework and deploy it on GlassFish in less than 30 minutes! Presentation at Mar 5th, 11am US Pacific, at TheAquarium Channel. Full details (and recordings) at the Show Page.

A quick update on Jersey (the REST implementation in GlassFish) to complement yesterday's note on Metro, the SOAP stack.

Jersey 1.0.2 was released on Feb 12th. The release is still based on JAX-RS 1.0, has many bug fixes and new functionality including improved JSON support, resource-specific filters, Apache Abdera support, implicit produces and servlet as a filter. Check Paul's writeup for more details, and the team is already working on Jersey 1.0.3 - see Roadmap.

On a related topic, check Jakub's article on Consuming RESTful Web Services With the Jersey Client API. Finally, JAX-RS is also being used in the GlassFish Mobility Platform; spotlight still to be posted.

This week Harold gave the Metro Webinar, which is a good oppty to catch up with Metro news. There are two release families: GlassFish v2 and GF v3prelude uses the Metro 1.x releases while GlassFish v3 (post-prelude) will use Metro 2.0.

In tomorrow's webinar (Thu) Hans will present on the GlassFish Mobility Platform. Launched at GSMA Mobile World Congress this week (Ryan intro, Vella's Announcement, TA entry), the GF Mobility Platform enables the development of mobile Apps using Java and OMA standards. We had a short presentation last week but tomorrow will be a longer presentation. Full details at the Show Page. And, if you are close to Barcelona (lucky you!) check the booth details.

Metro, the Web Services stack, is one of the main components in GlassFish. One of its key benefits is excellent WebServices interoperability with the Microsoft stack, leveraging our relationship with MS. A consequence is showings in informal publications from Microsoft, like mszCool's Plans for 2009 and Identity Interoperability as well as in formal Federated Identity and Healthcare in the MS's The Architecture Journal. On a related note, O'Reilly has published Java Web Services: Up and Running - A quick, practical, and thorough introduction where Martin Kalin covers SOAP and RESTful Web Services in Java using Metro and Jersey.

For WebServices discussions, check out our Forum, and the mailing lists USERS@Metro and USERS@Jersey. Although we consider Jersey a piece of Metro - we love SOAP and REST equally :-) and the two parts are intended to mesh together - we are maintaining two mailing lists as the audiences tend to be disjoint.

I've been recording our weekly TheAquarium Online Webinars for the last few months using the uStream.TV facilities and I recently spent some time processing the material into different formats and organizing it in the Wiki pages. It is still work in process and I keep learning more about how to do things, but I think last week's presentation is ready for feedback; others will follow in future weeks.

The recordings for the Jan 15th, 2009 Webinar on JAX-RS, Jersey and REST are now available. This Webinar set included presentations by Marc Hadley and Paul Sandoz, a set of 5 short screencasts, and very good audience participation. The recordings are available in several formats, including FLV, Quicktime, iPod(320x240) and Audio only; full links are available at the Recording Page which is automatically included into the Show page. We are planning to upload the audio to iTunes and the screencasts to youTube "soon".

The format of these Webinars has changed over time as we have tried to adjust to the new, online-only, format. Feedback, as well as additional technical and broadcasting tips, on the show content and format are always welcome - I started knowing nothing about these areas. Note - I'm specially interested in a good way to transcode the SWF-based screencasts to a more manageable format like quicktime (for MacOS X, w/o loss of resolution, and cheap).

Next Webinar set is this Thursday, on ASadmin, the GlassFish CLI Console. More details in a separate posting.