Here is a new addition to our Switch series. Justin is in the process of converting from JBoss to GlassFish Server and he is going to document it in his blog. His first entry covers the two (small) issues he encountered when converting his REST-based endpoints: ordering of WARs and JDBC resource deployments. Check out From JBoss to Glassfish: Part I. I will highlight Justin's additional entries as they become available.

I bumped into this post from David dscribing his experiences migrating his app from JBoss 4.0.4-GA to GlassFish.

David covers 3 issues: • JBoss EJBQL != GF (J2EE Spec) EJBQL • Embeddable Objects, Entities and the GF Cache • Refresh and the GF cache Beyond this, it was a successful experience; for details, check out David's writeup. And keep the migration stories going...

The GlassFish Awards Program (GAP) is intended to encourage and reward innovation in the GlassFish Community. The program's rules (here) are quite loose and many types of projects will qualify. There are US$ 175K available, for both projects and bug submissions; check Previous Posts for additional commentary.

Some notes on the program:

• Submissions are to be sent to Gap-Submissions at GF (Archive, mailto). • All projects in the GlassFish community at-large are eligible. • Applicants are individuals, we don't care were they work. • Whether you need to sign the SCA depends on the requirements of your project. • Docs, Portals, Workshops, etc, are all eligible. If in doubt, Ask Us. • Don't wait until the last minute; Submit it Now! • A good approach is to submit now what you have, then Send an Update!

We have up to 20 prizes for projects and many more for bug submissions but we have received very few submissions so far. I suspect many are waiting for the deadline, but we would much rather you submit now first and then resubmit. Don't leave money on the table!

Note! We had a configuration problem with the submission alias and it is possible that some submissions may not have been recorded properly. If you submitted, please check the alias archive, and resubmit if necessary.

The basic arrangement for the GlassFish AppServer is: sources are external (to Sun), we use Hudson on internal machines to build and run all our tests, then push out the builds out for everybody to use. This arrangement works well for everybody except that it is hard to track the build status from outside of Sun, but that has now been fixed thanks to a new Build Publisher plugin contributed by a group at JBoss.

Check out the build dashboard and Kohsuke's Announcement. The plugin was discussed a few days ago in a Separate Post, and I clarified that it would qualify for the GlassFish Awards Program; I think it is a very useful plugin.

Next step on Sekhar's Master Plan: after the Tomcat Hello World example, he now has ported the JBoss's Sample JSF-EJB3 to GlassFish. Sekhar's example covers the use of facelets, JSF, Hibernate, JNDI lookup of EJBs and packaging issues. Try it out and let us know how it works for you.

The Migration Tool for GlassFish/SJS Application Server has been available for some time now. What Sekhar is announcing is the Open Sourcing of that tool which is GlassFish-specific and picks up where the AVK (Java EE 5 only) left off. The new homepage for this migration tool is https://migrate2glassfish.dev.java.net/.

Other resources include Overview, FAQ, and Documentation.

The tool currently does not support the latest and greatest versions of application servers, but that's not very important given it is meant to help people move their older applications over to GlassFish. Finally, just like the AVK, this is "just a tool", so while it can save you some precious time, it probably cannot claim 100% effectiveness.

JavaWorld has an article entitled JBoss, Geronimo, or Tomcat? Three open source Java application servers compared. It's unfortunate that they did not include GlassFish but Masoud has attempted to address that through his latest blog entry; Check it out!

We probably should write some comparison articles of our own and submit them for publication. Maybe after GFv2 UR1 goes out we will find the time to do it.

Added: Also see the discussion at TheServerSide.COM, and the comparisons at TSS and Wikipedia.

OpenESB is included in the GlassFish App Server, but it is also available separately. OpenESB runs on plain Java SE (see Wiki page) and Mark just announced that it Also Works on JBoss (Wiki page). All OpenESB downloads are Available here. Also see this List of Screencasts related to OpenESB.

A detailed HowTo from Boleslaw: • JBoss Portal with OpenDS and OpenSSO   Thanks to Ludo for the tip.

Julien (at Aubiere) provides an evaluation of the main Open Source AppServers: Apache Geronimo, GlassFish, JBoss and Jonas and his choice is GlassFish. He mentions the usual reasons (documentation, console, RI) but also one that is less common: domains which turn to be very useful for teaching a class.

Julien also mentions jRuby and GlassFish v3 support as additional reasons. Check the details at his Blog entry.

Three more Hudson Plugins and a nice Adoption Story: Peter Reilly contributes the Design Violations Plugin (aggregating FindBugs, PMD, CheckStyle and CPD), Hafner Ullrich contributes a Task Scanner Plugin, and David Vrzalik (at JBoss) fixes Hudson Issue #1, from 2005! The nice adoption story is that of JBoss, which is now using David's plugin to expose their builds at a Public Dashboard. More details at [1] and [2].

As another metric for Hudson's adoption: Nabble lists it as #3 in Activity among Java.Net projects, while Java.Net lists it as #4 in Mail Traffic; BTW, if you are interested in Nabble's metric check it here.

News.Com has a nice Interview with Marc Fleury that is worth a read. With my GlassFish hat on, I specially like this quote: ... we were seriously stressed when IBM declared war with Geronimo, and then HP got in the game against us, too. Red Hat and JonAS didn't scare us at all (really - not at all), nor did we worry about Sun's foray into the market. Oddly enough, of that group only Sun has managed to mount serious competition to JBoss.

Marc has a keen understanding of the industry and the whole interview is worth a read.

OpenDS continues to make progress. We recently reported on the OpenDS 0.9 release, but now we have available the first builds for OpenDS 1.0. And, in related events, JBoss Portal is going to use OpenDS and Ludo Added OpenDS to Ohloh. OpenDS 1.0 final is getting closer; stay tuned.

Thomas announced that JBossWS 2.1.0 will support Metro, the GlassFish WS Stack (Thomas' blog, Vivek's). Other uses include GF v2 (and SJS AS 9.1), TmaxSoft JEUS 6 and WebLogic Server 10. Metro is designed to be extensible and integrateable and also works on Jetty and Tomcat - I'd venture it should not be hard to use inside Geronimo, so let us know if you attempt that effort.

PS - The map shown is that of Barcelona's Metro. It does not include the future Linea 9.

JBoss 4.2.0 is now available as a GA release (Announcement, Release Notes). The release uses JSF 1.2@GlassFish, Tomcat 6 and Hibernate 3.2.3 but does not claim to (or try to) be a Java EE 5 implementation - the biggest single omission seems to be JAXB 2.0 and JAX-WS 2.0.

Picking and choosing specifications can cause user-confusion, but we certainly welcome their use of our JSF implementation. Coopetition helps us all.