I've added a couple of new twists to the coverage of GlassFish News at TheAquarium to do a better job while controlling our time investment:

• I've started posting short news posts to my twitter feed as I encounter them;    also tweeting are Frank, Giuseppe, Andi, Binod and AlexisMP. • Nobody is tweeting at TheAquarium, but...    if you want to follow the tweets from the editors, use @theaquarium/editors. • We will continue doing the usual spotlights posts as time permits, • I'll do a weekly summary of news uncovered in the spotlights,

I've also started using ScribeFire to reduce the cost of creating posts, but this should be transparent to the readers.

Reporting on news is a losing battle, but I'm hoping that this approach will keep TheAquarium the best source for news on the (larger) GlassFish community while giving the editors a bit more "free" time to invest in other tasks.

Today was the release of SailFin v2 (download, home, wiki) and its companion Sun GlassFish Communications Server 2.0 (download, home). SailFin v2 is a big release; it leverages GlassFish v2.1.1 (more tomorrow) and adds a number of features including high availability, rolling upgrade, flexible network topology, better overload protection, Diameter support, improved diagnosability, Java based DCR files for the load balancer, and more. I can't cover SailFin v2 properly but I'll collect some of the relevant links so you can follow them up.  Start with Binod's overview: SailFin v2 Released! and move from there:

Some of the major changes are:

• A new replica selection algorithm that improves scalability by easing load distribution after failure.
• Enhancements to the Converged Load Balancer to support writing DCR rules in Java.
• The ability to do rolling upgrades leverages session replication; see this example.
• Improved use of multihoming features for more flexible deployments. See Ramesh's writeup.
• Diameter support in Sun's for-fee AddOn; see details in Venu's many posts, including [1] and [2].
• Improved load protection.  See Robert's one pager and Sankar's work on JMX Notification.

As part of the release, the team has posted a number of new entries, including:

• Next is what? (Prasad)
• Subscribing to user state using Sun Diameter Sh API (Venu)
• Setup and Configure Diameter on SailFin (Naman Mehta)
• Diameter Administration on SailFIn 2.0 (Yamini KB)
• SailFin v2 Released (Srikanth Anandal)
• CLB Enhancements in SailFin 2.0 (Kshitiz Saxena)
• Overload Protection in SailFin: What's new in 2.0 (Rampsarathy)
• Tips and Tricks of SailFin HA (Bhavani Shankar)
• Multihoming in SailFin. (Ramesh)

• TA entries tagged SailFin,
• Prasad's earlier roundup: "SailFin 2.0 is Around the Corner!"
• Sreeram's notes on SailFin amazon images.
• How to write Conference App in 15 lines of nicely formatted code!

Finally, a list for PR/Press reports:

• Sun Communications Server Speaks VoIP (The H Open Source)
• Barron's, BusinesWire.

Note - GlassFish v2.1.1 is also available from Sun's Download Center and from the Community Site. More on that release tomorrow. And the OpenMQ 4.4 (and 4.4.1 RC1) are available from here.

The Executive Committee for SE/EE of the JCP has approved JSR 330, Dependency Injection for Java. This specification, led by Bob Lee @ Google and Rod Johnson @ SpringSource was submitted in May 09 and moved through the JCP process very quickly. The final vote result was 14-1-1. Congratulations to the leads and the EG on this important spec. There are still a few specs left to approve that will go into the umbrella JavaEE 6 JSR. The next major one is probably JSR 299, which was submitted ahead of 330 but was later restructured to leverage it.

Abhijit has announced an update to the GlassFish v3 fcs schedule. We could not keep the previous date due to a black-out period at the JCP (EC elections) and moving the date forward proved to be unworkable for several reasons - including the current Java.Net problems - so we moved the date out by two weeks. New dates set the hard code freeze (HCF) date to Nov 9, 2009, with a final release by Dec 10. Full details at Schedule Page@Wiki.

I've never been at Oracle OpenWorld so I'm very curious about how it feels. In preparation, yesterday I poked around a bit and found several videos that may (or not, we will see) convey a bit the mood... check them out and let me know what you think. If you only have time for one, I recommend the last one.

• Keynote Preview Series: Applications, Virtualization, DataBases, Middleware. • Overdressed at OOW Series: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] and [6]. • OOW 08 Party - they take over Howard Street, like the good J1 days! • More virtalization and cloud previews: Alex A and Rich Schwerin. • And last, but not least, Every Build You Break.

The main blog for OpenWorld is Oracle OpenWorld and there will be live streamcasting of multiple events at OpenWorld Live.

I've pushed out the Sept 2009 Adoption Stats for GlassFish and it shows a record month on downloads, registrations and admin pings. Of all the numbers, I like best the number of unique registered users: 387,384! It does look like we might be back to a growth path but Google trends (cached, live) and jobs@Indeed (cached, live) still show wait-and-see. Do notice that our competitors are down at Google trends, while we are level. Let's see what the next months bring.

The GlassFish Tools Bundle for Eclipse is our all-in-one bundle that includes the Eclipse IDE (wiki) - the main alternative to that other IDE - the GlassFish Server and the GlassFish Plugin (home, intro), all in a single download. The GlassFish Plugin is updated quite frequently but, fortunately, it is quite easy to update the plugin from the bundle so you don't have to do a full-reinstall. The latest versions of the plugins are 1.0.32 (9/4/09) and 1.0.33 (9/11/09) - that's just a week apart - and a full list of changes is always available through the Release Notes.

Although WTP's support for Java EE 6 has been Delayed until mid-2010 the GlassFish plugin provides critical Java EE 6 wizards - see Arun's latest entry in his TOTD series: Java EE 6 (Servlet 3.0 and EJB 3.1) wizards in Eclipse - and additional wizards are planned by GlassFish v3 FCS.

These plugins can be installed on Eclipse 3.4 Ganymede and Eclipse 3.5 Galileo. Galileo seems to have a nice set of features (Wiki, blogathon, DZone) and a co-bundle of Eclipse 3.5.1, GlassFish v3 and the latest plugins will be available when GlassFish v3 ships.

So, you are a happy GlassFish user and want to show your appreciation? First option would be to become a customer but if you are in a hurry and/or are short in cash, consider joining the LinkedIn and/or FaceBook groups. Thanks for taking the time.

Go to the front page of Sun.com and Follow the link for an invitation to this Event on Tuesday. You're Invited to See the World's First OLTP Database Machine With FlashFire Technology Hosted by Larry Ellison; John Fowler will also attend.

The boards of directors for both companies Approved the Sun-Oracle Deal, Sun's Shareholders Approved it and the US DoJ Approved it, but the European Union is still investigating. The EU Commission is the executive branch of the EU and its cabinet has 27 Commissioners. Of these, Neelie Kroes (@Wikipedia, @CNet) is the Commissioner for Competition and her office just announced an In-Depth Investigation (also see NYTimes). As they say, story evolving...

Related news are tagged Sun+Oracle. I also post links to related industry news at TheAquarium@Twitter.

Added I've not done any systematic tracking of how the press is reacting to this announcement, but the sources I follow are negative on the motivations spelled out in the EU ruling; see below for a few links:

• NYTimes: New Snag for Oracle in Sun Deal
• InternetNews: EU May Delay Oracle-Sun Nuptials
• InformationWeek: Global CIO: Oracle Nailed By EU Protectionism As HP And IBM Raid Sun .
• CNet News: The EU's Christmas gift to Oracle
• ComputerWorld (check the comments): Why the EU should block Oracle/Sun

It took a bit longer than anticipated, but we have updated the repositories behind GlassFish v3 Preview (STABLE from glassfish.sun.com). You are most likely to notice this through the see new SoftwareUpdate tool, but you might also see it through the GUI UpdateTool or the embedded UpdateTool, or do it manually via the CLI. Full details in Alexis writeup and Abhijit's announcement. The whole thing has been working very well for me in recent builds but this is software, so please let us know if you experience any issues.

A couple of weeks we provided an update of the GlassFish v2.1.1 Schedule; it's now time to do the same with that for GlassFish v3.

The key driver for GlassFish v3 is JavaEE 6. This means GFv3 leverages the expertise of the wide JCP community and our users have the benefits of a standard but... it also means we don't control all the variables - which is ultimately good, but can be painful in the short-term.

We knew things could get complicated when JSR 330 appeared in mid-May, after the PFD for most of JavaEE 6, and was later accepted by the JCP EC. The relationship between JSR 330 and JSR 299 was resolved recently and both will be part of JavaEE 6, so it was just a matter of doing the numbers, and... The answer is about 8 weeks. The updated GF v3 Roadmap puts the FCS at Nov 24th, just in time for Thanksgiving@USA. The change propagates to NetBeans 6.8 (roadmap) as well as follow-up releases to GFv3 (exact dates still shimmering).

So, that's the new date. It's actually quite good, considering the magnitude of the last-minute change. Overall, I know 330 will make for a better release - just let's hope that next time submissions don't come so late in the cycle... See GlassFish+v3

Further consolidation in the industry: VMware is acquiring SpringSource; see S2's Announcement (website is down; can't take the load?) and TSS Post. The Press Conference is in an hour or so (3:30pm PT); maybe more details then.

Added

• The CTOs/CEOs speak: Rod (website down, can't take the load?) and Steve Harrod (VMware CTO).
• The usual pundits in the press: Darry Taft @eWeek, Paul Krill@Infoworld, Gavin Clarke @ ElReg.
   (I'll confess I'm puzzled - how can these guys not mention the impact on Oracle/Sun in these pieces?... sigh!)

Added - The "morning after" analysis is significantly better and worth commenting:

• Cote@RedMonk - A good analysis emphasizing the public / private cloud possibilities, and the possible Java leadership angles. Let's see what Oracle does with its new assets when they get them...
• Jay Lyman@451Group - A reasonable piece pointing out the industry moves.
• Matt Assay@TheOpenRoad - Points out the increased pressure on RedHat - I agree, I think they will get acquired "soon" - and argues that S2's valuation would be much higher in a short time - I disagree, I think this is as good as they can get, although Hyperic was a very good move on their part.

Kohsuke and I have been hinting at this for a while (and we pre-announced it at JavaOne) and now it is official: reflecting the continued growth of Hudson Adoption, Sun now provides Commercial Support for Hudson. Formally speaking, the offer is part of the Recently Announced WebStack 1.5 and you buy it via the GlassFish Portfolio Offering. In a nutshell, we are providing sustaining support, with priority treatment for bug fixes filed by customers. We also can provide consultative support for people interested in, say, creating private plugins or improving their internal Agile processes. Kohsuke has collected all the key pointers into this Summary Page.

Additional links include the Features in the Offer, Terms of Support (bottom of main page) and Service-Level Agreement (bottom of main page). As always, we appreciate your feedback to help us continue to improve Hudson and Sun's offerings.

Added - Reports from the web:

• Our team in Hungary

Java EE 6 will include JSR 330 and JSR 299. Roberto explains the changes: • JSR-299 will be updated to use the JSR-330 annotations • JSR-330 has evolved to take into account requirements from JSR-299 • Both JSRs will be part of the Java EE 6 Platform

Thanks to everybody that worked so hard to make these changes; obviously we wished this had happened earlier in the Java EE 6 cycle but the result will be an improved platform. We estimate that the final release of Java EE 6 (and GFv3) will be around November but we should have specific dates next week.

Check out Roberto's Announcement for details.