Java EE 6 builds on the Ease of Development theme of its predecessor and Roberto's latest post sketches the new additions, which includes the improvements in Servlet 3.0 (tune in to Rajiv's presentation on Dec 4th), JAX-RS, JSF 2.0, EJB 3.0, WebBeans, Bean Validation and more. Roberto's webinar is on Dec 18th.

Jim has a series of posts showing the benefits of JSF 2.0; the latest entry shows how to write a Spinner Component, and then how to Adding Styles to it and, then, making the implementation Fully Reusable. Check it out!

Juien created a new IzPack installer for GlassFish v3; check out the GFv3 Installer, a description of the New Features developed for it, and the corresponding IzPack 4.1.1 announcement.

I'm a fan of Tufte, so it is very pleasant to see a reference to his work in Paul Murphy's Review at ZDNet of our recent OpenStorage release. Paul refers to the systems ability for real time monitoring and action (like in this screenshot); hopefully we will see more exploration of these principles in the industry. Thanks to Brian for the tip.

The biggest news for Sun this week was Friday's Restructuring announcement (PR, Tim O'Brien, The Register). It is still early so just some observations based on publicly available information: GlassFish is mentioned prominently (and positively) in all the news pieces; it will be good to be closer to the MySQL folks; we will all miss Rich Green; by all metrics GlassFish adoption continues to grow (see, for example, Admin Ping Map).

• Extensions to the "." operator for improved navigation
• Mapping with KEY and VALUE operators
• Ordered Lists
• Non-polymorphic Queries with the TYPE operator
• Case Expressions and NULLIF and COALESCE operators
• Scalar Expressions in the SELECT clause

The Tutorial Divas have been updating their Ruby tutorials to the forthcoming NetBeans 6.5 release that includes GlassFish v3 Prelude. They have comments on the key tutorials: Setup, Getting Started and Ruby Weblog in 10 Minutes. Check their Getting Started with NetBeans Ruby 6.5.

Ryan continues his series on JSF 2.0 new features with a Practical Example of the JSF 2.0 Event System. Ryan's previous 7 entries cover all the main features in JSF 2.0 (including the Event system) and are collected in This TA Spotlight.

Back in March, Yamini wrote an entry on how to use the CallFlow Monitoring in SailFin and now has a followup with an FAQ on CallFlow. Expect more coverage on SailFin as the product moves towards its final release at the end of the year.

From Roberto, a new Enterprise Tech Tip on Building An Ajax-Enabled Web Application Using Phobos and jMaki.

From the JavaFX team, an invitation to participate next week in an Ask-the-Experts session. This is a Q&A format via email, with replies summarized and available for later use. Check Rita's Note, or go directly to the Ask the Experts website.

From Steve a screencast of a Live xVM Server Demo.

And, for something different, from The New York Times, a report on two very large Solar Farms in California. One step at a time...