Sun provides formal documentation on the GlassFish server but, with all the different versions, it may be hard to find the right document set. Some help is in BigAdmin's recent Locating Application Server Downloads and Documentation which includes a very comprehensive table that covers documentation and downloads - although GFv2.1 is not yet there.

The above article covers the formal docs but there is also a lot of other informal information (blogs, screencasts, webinars, wikis, etc). This information can be hard to discover and navigate we have talked about creating a master entry point; it would work at a kind of a master "Library"... but hopefully less scary than the Silent Library :-)

Docs.sun.com has been around for a long time and its look-and-feel had not been updated significantly for a bit. But today it sports a New Look and it looks very good! Check these out: • GFv2, GFv2 U1/U2, GFv3 Prelude • Portal 7.2, JavaCAPS, MQ, and much more • Nice dynamic browsing and improved searching. • Localized in 12 languages!

Very nice! I would only want to have the ability to annotate the documents, otherwise, this looks very good!

Added - Also check out Susan's Overview of the changes.

A compilation of today's news of interest:

You may or may not know that Comet, Reverse Ajax, and Ajax Push are all synonyms and define a way to notify clients from a server. Jean-François has written many fine Comet blog entries, but this GlassFish v3 documentation on Comet is a very well written intro to the Comet paradigm and how to use it inside GlassFish v3 based on the Hidden example. You may also hear from Jean-François on Comet in a recent interview from this past JavaOne as well as read Ted Goddard's slide deck on IceFaces and Grizzly Comet from last week's GlassFish Day at Jazoon.

The documentation also discusses the pros and cons of HTTP Streaming vs. Long Polling and explains how to code both.

Some time before the holidays the Sun Java System Application Server Troubleshooting Guide was migrated to a wiki format. Of course this document applies equally to GlassFish v2. With the recent releases of both GlassFish V2 ans V2 UR1, this is probably good timing. Of course the wiki format really means that we would like people to contribute to this document and have a better flow of information between this one-stop-shop document and the GlassFish User FAQ. Specifically, hands-on experience and troubleshooting tips on enterprise features such as clustering is welcome. Maybe an idea for the Community Awards Program?

This was an interesting exchange. Jevgeni, of JavaRebel et al, wrote GlassFish Installation from Hell after trying out GlassFish and prompty got plenty of feedback. Most of the commenters pointed to RTFM (e.g. James's note) but I think we should not dismiss his feedback too quickly. Jevgeni has several valid points: there are no installation instructions in the download itself and the download is a jar that requires extra flags (more heap size). We should be able to improve the situation even before GFv3; the heap size may be harder to remove, but even switching to a ZIP of the JAR + Instructions would help. Even just a sharper download page might help!

Note the installation experience of the Java EE SDK is quite different, but that installer is not Open Source and it is not used in the Java.Net Downloads.

PS. Jevgeni, do let us know when you get JavaRebel (and JSPWeaver?) running on GlassFish.

Later today (8:30 PM Pacific), the Sun documentation team for GlassFish is holding a GlassFish v3 Documentation Meeting. This is your opportunity to provide yet more feedback on what documentation should be going forward. • Meeting details are here.

Gail has announced that there is now a Developer FAQ to complement the User FAQ. Please contribute your Qs and your As.

From Kohsuke: • Metro and JAXB users guide gets syntax coloring.

One more Call for Documentation Issues before finalizing the GlassFish v2 final release. The process that Paul has chosen has pretty low overhead: just go to the Master Docs Page and then check out the documentation you are interested. If there is an issue, enter it directly in the corresponding wiki page. Some of the pages have a just a few comments ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5]). Others have many comments, like Developers Guide, Administration Reference and Upgrade Migration Guide.

Paul is being very responsive; provide your feedback and he will incorporate the fixes if at all possible.

Documentation is one of the strengths of glassfish but we want to improve it further. We already sped up the content at docs.sun.com and Paul is now soliciting feedback for the Online Help. If you would like to provide feedback or simply read the latest documentation, please use the document comment wiki at the GlassFishDocs page.

Note that the deadline for feedback in time for GlassFish v2 FCS is just next week: July 23, 2007.

If you are a docs.sun.com user, you probably experienced some latency (or even worse) while navigating the site. We're glad to report docs.sun.com now hosted on a Sun external web-hosting environment with much improved performance. Try for yourself with Sun Java System Application Server 9.1 (GlassFish v2) beta documentation. While blogs are great and show up prominently while searching the Internet, some of them become obsolete and official documentation is really what should preempt other content.

BTW - if you're interested in Internet and XML archeology, you can read how Jon Bosak (XML co-inventor, Sun employee) first implemented Solaris documentation about 10 years ago under the name AnswerBook2 with an all-XML background. This later became docs.sun.com.

All the Java.Net forums that are related to GlassFish are now under one category; going to this Page now will show you all the most recent posts and threads. GlassFish is showing good adoption ([1], [2]) but we think there is a lot of room for growth and we welcome your suggestions...

For example, we could split the development pages from the user pages in the GlassFish Wiki; that seems to be working well for OpenJFX. That might Encourage Participation in projects like this one? It might also help us better integrate the Sun's Doc Site with the community site.

Sun Tech Tips are fairly short but effective articles focused on specific parts of an API. Specifically, Enterprise Java Technologies Tech Tips focus mainly on Java EE 5 and GlassFish features with code snippets for all of them. Java EE 5 Tech Tips are often written by the GlassFish developers themselves. The latest March issue covers Securing WebServices using WSIT and EJB Security Annotations.

Other recent tips covers EJB 3.0 Compatibility and Migration, Introduction to jMaki, Configuring JAX-WS Handlers on the Client, EJB 3.0 Interceptors, Document Handling Using JAX-WS Dispatch and Provider APIs, and more.

You'll find the entire list of Enterprise Tech Tips here.

James has added the Java EE 5 documentation to DocWeb, his Social Network experiment in community-driven translation. Some additional navigation mechanisms are likely to show up: there are just too many classes. See James' blog for details. Doc.java.sun.com runs on GlassFish. I have started an informal page on GlassFish Deployments at the GlassFish wiki; I'll see if I have time to add a few sites tomorrow, but feel free to add your site directly.