I was "on vacation" last week, so the news are a bit late, but the news on July 1st confirmed the rumor: Oracle WebLogic Server is Oracle's "Strategic AppServer" - see the articles at The Register and InfoWorld. This comes on top of recent surveys on Oracle/BEA usage: SOA-Talk and The Register.

A consequence of this move is that Metro is now used Oracle's main AppServer, increasing the adoption of GlassFish's WebServices stack. The same applies to JAXB RI; and, in that case, I know of no mainstream AppServer that uses a different implementation!

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It took a bit (see the Original News back in October 06) but this time Oracle got through (NYTimes Article). Like last time (Original Thread) there are several threads at TheServerSide covering the topic: Rod Johnson on Oracle/BEA and Oracle set to buy BEA for $8.5B. And, like last time, the threads have multiple positive references to GlassFish.

There are plenty of News articles covering the acquisition. And, since that day was also that of MySQL joining Sun, many of the pieces cover both, and some compare and contrast the two.

BEA today formally released WebLogic Server 10 (Press Release, Linux Mag, CBR Online). This release supports Java EE 5 and shows the increased adoption of the standard.

So far we have 6 vendors Java EE 5 Certified: BEA's WebLogic Server v10.0, Kingdee's Apsuic AppServer v5.0, SAP's NetWeaver 7.1, TmaxSoft's JEUS 6 and GlassFish v1 and Sun's distribution SJS AS PE 9.0.

It is always interesting to read between the lines in the Official PRs: BEA mentions their use of Spring but not that of GlassFish's Web Services stack, and they never mention the "key competidors" by name... Anyhow, welcome to the Java EE 5 party, the more, the merrier...!

BEA has released WebLogic Server 10.0, as a Technology Preview for their Java EE 5 support. The specific versions of the JCP specs supported are listed here and the Java EE 5 Web Services technologies are well represented since BEA is using the GlassFish implementations for JAX-WS 2.0, and JAXB 2.0, which were part of GlassFish v1 UR1 (latest release).

The one major area I see not yet up-to-date is the Web Tier: JSF, Servlet, JSP (see the Java EE 5 list of technologies), but BEA has repeatedly expressed their interest in fully supporting the latest standards, so stay tuned. They should also be incorporating soon the latest Web Services stack, with is part of GlassFish v2.

Congratulations to BEA and looking forward to further cooperation. And thanks to Jaime for the Tip.