James reports on the latest news on JavaCard 3.  JavaCard (wikipedia, spec site) is what we all have in our pockets (ATM cards) and/or our phones (SIM cards). The JavaCard 3 comes in two Editions: Classic (for SIM/ATMs) and Connected. The new kid, Connected, supports most of the JDK6 VM as well as Servlet 2.5, extended and classic Applets, HTTP and HTTPS, etc. The target of JavaCard3 Connected includes secure USB tokens and personal DBs, Embedded Servers, WebDAV-Compliant Thumb Drives, etc.

JavaCard Connected seems it may deliver on the promise of "connected" Java devices everywhere; we will see how it gets adopted. There is a new project at Kenai focused on learning about JavaCard Connected. The project includes the NetBeans Plugin (see sneak preview).

This week's webinar is on Nuxeo ECM, the Open Source ECM. Stefane will provide details on Nuxeo 5.2 (release/en, release/fr) and will discuss how to build scalable content management applications using OSS JavaEE technologies and sample use cases. Stefane will also describe the plans for Nuxeo 6.0 Nuxeo 5.2 is available with GFv3 Embedded (in addition to Jetty and JBoss) and is a good example of how the architecture of GFv3 extends the applicability of GlassFish into new markets. Presentation on Thursday, March 26th, 11am US Pacific, at TheAquarium Channel. Full details (and recordings) at the Show Page.

The first public mention of "embedded" GlassFish was back in April 2008 in a quick design before JavaOne. Now that we are past GFv2.1 and closing on GFv3 we are working on a more permanent API and we need your participation to ensure the result satisfies your needs; here are some links to get you started... The DEV discussions are happening at dev@embedded-glassfish.dev.java.net; the USERS alias is embedded@glassfish.dev.java.net (archive, markmail). Documentation is moving between sites, but check at the embedded-glassfish web page for a pointer.

Some recent blogs are from Alexis, Byron and Jennifer. Older entries are tagged embedded. Thanks for your contributions!

The top 3 Java-Based Wikis out there are (alphabetically) Confluence, Apache JSPwiki and XWiki. I've been using the first two for a bit via wikis.sun.com and GlassFish Wiki and OpenSolaris.ORG is about to use XWiki ([1], [2], [3])... Which makes Alexis's posts on XWiki very timely. In these two posts ([1], [2]) Alexis shows how to use the embedded API in GlassFish v3 Prelude to create a 24MB (GFv3) + 40MB (XWiki) download image that will just add one second to the base XWiki startup and has low footprint.

It seems a pretty compelling arrangement. We have already seen it in several Sun-led (OpenSSO, WebSynergy) and non-Sun-led (Liferay, ehCache Server) projects we have mentioned in the past. I expect to see more of them in the future...

From Patrice, we now have a Java CAPS 6 / SWIFT Demonstrator initially put together in Benelux and now ready to be shared with requesting customers (VirtualBox images included). From the other side of the Atlantic, Tom Barrett's Open ESB Tutorials are four detailed documents on getting started, tooling, event processing, and monitoring for OpenESB and Java CAPS release 6. Tom is asking for your feedback. Johan, a GlassFish pioneer and creator of Dali is reporting on the launch of vi.be, an online social music service powered by GlassFish and Dali. Rajeev shares his work on making OpenSSO Webstart Prototype : QuickSetup. Building on the GlassFish v3 embedded API, this provides OpenSSO users, testers, and demoers a very nice experience.

A compilation of today's news of interest:

Greg Luck, EHCache maintainer and GlassFish community member has been busy in the recent weeks. First, he released EHCache 1.5.0 and soon after came EHCache debugger, but also EHCache Server with a SOAP interface built using Metro (as the WSDL shows).

Greg discusses the rationale behind the SOAP choice on his blog and explains that the server is available as a war archive that can be either deployed in a Java Application Server or simply started using its embedded GlassFish v3 engine. In addition to the SOAP interface, Greg is also working on a RESTful implementation of the EHCache server, this time with Jersey (JAX-RS's reference implementation in the works) under the hood.

EHCache is a popular distributed cache used by many frameworks and applications. Previous EHCache entries on this blog are here.

If you are using or planning to use GlassFish v3 (with or without the embedded mode), feel free to comment here or send us email, we'll happily mention it here.

Adam Bien has turned to be one of the most active advocates for GlassFish. He is very active at his Adam Bien and in presentations everywhere. One of his latest entries explains how to Embed GFv3 for testing purposes. The title summarizes it: "Embedding Glassfish V3 in Unit Test - Two Jars, Three Lines Of Code And Five Seconds Start With Deployment" (link). The ability to embed GlassFish v3 is going to open many new opportunities for GlassFish. For example, Tom Rose also mentions the ease of use and fast start-up time. If you are embedding GlassFish v3, drop us an email; we are interested.

Jakub's Building a Jersey WebApp ended with: mvn tomcat:run but his New Sample now ends as: mvn glassfish:run

Jakub's note includes full instructions, sources and annotated run screenshots. Check it out!

One of the new features in GlassFIsh v3 is that it can be embedded. Kohsuke and Vivek started playing seriously with this for a demo before JavaOne and it got a lot of attention (see embedded blogs @ TA). Now Arun has written a description of how to do this using NetBeans and Maven.

Check out the details at Arun's Note; download GF v3 TP2 and NetBeans and let us know how it goes.

More GlassFish v3 news: Vivek is using the Embeddable GFv3 that Kohsuke had been working to Embed GFv3 with Grails. I guess this is not really a pre-announcement because it was not planned; people are just playing around doing demos for CommunityOne... -) So come to CommunityOne to check it out. Added: Also see Kohsuke's Note.

CommunityOne is free but space is limited; register now!

Moving forward with GlassFish v3 and fresh from Kohsuke's forge: GlassFish v3 just got embeddable. It is pretty neat; a couple of calls and you can start it and deploy and undeploy applications. And very fast too! It is very early but it is good enough that he can run Hudson on it! Come to CommunityOne and JavaOne and see it in action.