New tutorial from Dongmei and Ken on how to use the latest NetBeans 6.1 to create a Web App using JSF and Hibernate on GlassFish. Tutorial is here; thanks to James for the tip. Note The tutorial uses GF v2; I suspect it would run on v3 also, but if somebody tries it, please let me know.

More GlassFish blogging from Munich. This time Siegfried has written a two parter on how to use Guice (the Resource Injection framework Google developed for AdWords) and Hibernate. part I introduces a simple Hibernate Application using GlassFish and MySQL, while part II transforms it to use Guice. Full sources are included. NetBeans project information is also included. Guice recently won a Jolt Award; see the Finalists. Direct download is here. A typical first question when encountering Guice is how it compares to Spring, here are two answers: @GoogleCode and @JavaLobby.

Also check out Sigfried's earlier post on GlassFish and Quercus. Looking forward to more!

Alexis is running a poll on What JPA Provider you are using. If you are so inclined, point your browser to his blog entry - the poll is on the Right-Hand Side margin - and cast your vote. Self-selecting polls have many methodology problems - I always think about Lies, Dammned Lies and Statistics when I see them, but they are still interested. Right now, with over 70 votes, TopLink has 32% and Hibernate has 58%. OpenJPA has 4% and others is 5%. Let's see what type of impact the wider announcement has on the result.

Update - As of 12:47 pm PT, Dec 12th, with 186 votes we have 54% Hibernate, 38% TopLink, 4% OpenJPA and 4% Others.

Wouter continues showing how to use Maven and GlassFish, this time he shows how to Combining Hibernate and Facelets with Maven, Netbeans and GlassFish. Also check these earlier posts by Wouter on GlassFish: Building and Deploying GF Apps using Maven and Invoking EJBs in GF from Tomcat.

Two tips on using Hibernate with GlassFish v2: • From Max: Hibernate with NB and GF (also see Related Tutorials). • From Eskatos, see his Quick and Dirty HowTo (also see Alexis' Commentary)

Max has been doing an interesting series of tutorials using GlassFish, NetBeans and JPA, the Java Persistence API (@Sun, @JCP, FAQ). The original tutorial covered how to Use Hibernate as JPA Provider and the next showed how to use Additional Hibernate Features. The new series explores JSF and ehCache and revisits Hibernate and TopLinkEssentials: [1], [2], [3] and [4].

Adam argues that Java EE 5 applications are More Portable than in earlier (lesser!) releases. Part of this is the natural progression in the specs. Part of this is the Plugability of the JavaPersistence API implementations: in his case he is switching back and forth between Hibernate/JBoss and TopLinkEssentials/GlassFish. Check here for other Java Persistence entries, and, if you are interested in portability of your apps, you may want to read about the AVK (see [1] and [2]).

We are seing a very fast transition to the new Java Persistence API. The containers are almost all there, starting with the JPA Reference Implementation in GlassFish, which is Almost Final and available with GlassFish and as a Separate Bundle. See Marina's Blog for directions on how to use it, and also Other TA entries.

Other groups are moving very fast too. Hibernate supports JPA ([1], [2], [3]), and BEA's Kodo is also in good shape. The Apache community is also moving in that direction; they seem to be lagging a bit but I expect them to move quickly soon (Cayenne, Open JPA).

The extra, and important, benefit of JPA is that it is possible to Mix and Match. We have already started testing the GF RI with other containers, and other JPA implementations with GlassFish.

All this creates an ideal situation for the customers, and I expect a move towards replacing the Hibernate-specific dependencies with standard-based, JPA, dependencies, as described in Spring and JPA or in Roller and Hibernate. And new applications, like NetBeans and CRUD, are all written against JPA. Interesting times ahead!