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.

Continuing the series ([1], [2], [3], [4]) we're pleased to announce that one of the GlassFish Day demo station will be dedicated to JSF Portability and shared between Sun and JBoss.

While Sun's GlassFish and JBoss can be seen as competitors we're happy to report that Gavin King and Sacha Labourey have agreed to show the efforts to have our JSF Components (Sun's Project WoodStock and JBoss' RichFaces) on various containers/implementations. Portability and interoperability is very important to us. Of course, there's more to JSF than Sun and JBoss, but better start somewhere.

For an overview of GF Day check here; and, for a free registration, here. Note we now have a GlassFish Lunch scheduled with Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green. Also stay tuned for yet more announcements.

What about this for a catchy title for a blog: Spring and GlassFish VS Seam and JBoss... The answer is that GlassFish is happy to work with both the Spring and the Hibernate and JBoss Seam communities. Sorry, no duels not to the Death, ... and neither to the Pain!.

GlassFish's own JMS implementation is Open Message Queue still under incubator at Java.Net (home page, technical overview, free Web training). It is a good implementation and I often feel it is well under-advertised and we should fix this... but GlassFish also includes the Generic Resource Adaptor for JMS. The GRA site includes white papers explaining hiow to use a variety of JMS implementations includig: Tibco, WebSphere MQ 6 and Active MQ. A new addition is support for JBoss Messaging, and Ramesh recently tested and published how to configure the different pieces to accomplish this. More details at Ramesh's blog and at the GRA project web site.