JRuby 1.1.2 is released. They key features are reduced startup time, improved performance and 95 issues fixed since the previous release. Read how to Get Started with GlassFish Gem and deploy popular Rails applications using JRuby 1.1.2 and Gem.

Sun offers quite a number of training courses, and some of them are even free. Some I noticed this week:

Trond highlights two very interesting free Webinars next week with top speakers (tip): "Highly scalable solutions with MySQL and Memcached" (Wed) and "Designing and Implementing Scalable Applications with Memcached and MySQL" (Thu). Marina points to free Student Courses as part of the resources at the Student Portal. Arun and Daniel mention Sang's latest course on Ruby and Rails. Sang's Java Passion site has many good online courses using the GlassFish Server, including JavaEE, Web Services and EJB.

Sun has many other courses, sometimes it's just a bit hard to find them. For example, the site for online and in classroom courses offered by Sun is http://www.sun.com/training and many of these are related to GlassFish, but a Search for "glassfish" will yield only a few of those.

We are working to fix that last problem, and I try to capture courses I know at GlassFishForBusiness, but what we really need is a full-time librarian... ideally a super one, like Conan the Librarian.

Using JRuby (instead of Ruby) to develop your Rails applications allow you to leverage the power of Java libraries in Rails applications. Java 2D API is one such API that provides support for advanced 2D graphics and imaging. Jennifer has a good Writeup explaining image-filtering effects (negative, grayscale, brigthen, sharpen) using Java 2D API on an image.

The app runs using GlassFish v3 Gem but can be natively deployed on TP2 as well.

TP2 Docs provide a more comprehensive tutorial on how to get started with using Rails for the GlassFish v3 Application Server.

The web site for WorldxChange Communications NZ looks very good (they won the NZ Telecommunications Carrier of the Year 2007) and their Customer Bill View system is a JRuby Application running on GlassFish v2! The application came from an strategic emphasis in improving the customer experience and was developed very quickly, that influenced the choice of technologies. Check out Chris' Adoption Story and check the Questionnaire. The questionnaires for the Adoption Stories are always full of very interesting details; for example, WXC uses CentOS in production. Annecdotal data, but still, interesting.

Heard on the blogosphere ...

Teflon Ted's blog entry Rails Doesn't Scale is betting on JRuby and GlassFish. It says: "Personally my money is on JRuby (and Glassfish) for the long haul; if you haven't checked out Glassfish yet, you're doing yourself a disservice!."

Have you checked out GlassFish v3 gem for JRuby ?

It is now hosted on RubyForge and can be easily installed using "gem install glassfish". Read more details here.

Christmas in February! It took a bit longer than I expected but the GlassFish v3 M2 is now available. This release supports the Java Web Container (no JSF so far) and JRuby on Rails. Also supported are multiple HTTP listeners and Virtual Servers. Have fun! Downloads and Available Commands.

JRuby 1.1 RC2 is Now Available. Quoting from the relase, changes include: • 260 issues resolved since JRuby 1.1RC1 • Large IO refactoring • Memory improvements for JIT'd methods

The team is soliciting feedback to assess if it can move from a Release Candidate to a final release.

Updates to two popular GlassFish-based bundles. The GF v3 Gem now has a a Bug Fix Update (v0.1.1); Pramod also includes plans for v0.1.2. The second is Liferay 4.4.1, also mostly bug fixes.

I enjoy data mining, so I poked around a bit at the download stats. The GF-based Liferay bundles have been increasing, from 5.4% in 4.3.0 to 15.1% in 4.4.1. And, since JBoss Portal 2.6.4 released the exact same day as Liferay 4.4.1, a comparison between the two was easy: 3778 for Liferay and 1053 for JBoss Portal.

The GlassFish (v3) Gem (older TA entries) has moved and it now lives at RubyForge.

Arun gives Details on the Gem and the Move and also, separately, reports on interest on the Gem and other JRuby at the Acts_as_Conference 2008 ([Day 1] and [Day 2]).

The Gem is a very interesting direction; not yet ready for production, but we are trying to move as quickly as we can. BTW, most of the GFv3 development traffic has succesfully moved to the DEV alias, and you can trak it there.

Vivek has a new job: help make GlassFish (v2 and v3) the preferred platform for scripting on the server-side. What languages? JRuby for sure, but we want them all, from Groovy to PHP to Jython, to... Choosing the winner is hard, we want the winner to choose us!

Check Vivek's blog for his announcement, and for his first weekend project: a Ruby Plugin for Hudson. And contact him if you want to help with the effort!

The Mediacast team (the companion to BSC for large media files) has rewritten the application using JRuby, Rails, Goldspike and GlassFish. Igor has a good Writeup describing the good and the bad. I know that the area around memory comsumption and performance is improving rapidly right now; we will see how things look like by JavaOne.

A slow week; I was still catching up from the Trip to Orlando. • GF Community - New IzPack Installer and GreenFire • HowTo - Combining JMX and Management in GlassFish • New Portal Bundles - Liferay 4.4.0 and GlassFish • Community Programs - Grants Program and Registration Page • Web.Next - GlassFish and Ruby Meetup

Interested in knowing how GlassFish provides easyt-to-use, robust and "green" development and deployment environment for JRuby-on-Rails applications ? Like to know how jMaki provides visually appealing views for Rails application ?

Attend South Bay Ruby Meetup (a.k.a Ruby Meetup 99) on Jan 29, 7pm. Read details here.

Be prepared to ask questions by reading the previous related entries :)

I've not done a Weekly since Dec 23rd due to the Holiday Break (Bon Nadal!). Many people Took the Break but the is still plenty of content:

• Hudson - News Roundup, Works Like a Charm and You can Help. • Web.Next - jMaki with Jersey, Social Network Bundle and a RESTful Toolkit • HowTo - Using Metro, LifeRay, Continuum, Spring 2.5 and Mod_Proxy • Advocacy - New GUG, Atlanta and Sydney, Comet and Grizzly Slides and the GAP Program • Adoption - Kind Words, December Stats and GF blogs Around the World • Ready for Production - Overwiew, Migration and new SPECweb2005 Record • Future - GFv3 Map, New gem and Podcast, HK2 and NB6 and Sailfin M3 • New Releases - JDK 6 U4 and JSF Components from Woodstock and Manor Rock • Misc - A Troubleshooting Guide and Reducing CO2

"Great tool for your continuous integration needs", "pretty simple and works like a charm" and "truly a sweet tool" are phrases commonly associated with Hudson. This time they are coming from JRuby / Ruby community. This post describes how to setup Hudson for running your Ruby and JRuby tests. The post describes a gem CI:Reporter that formats the test results in XML format that can then be easily consumed by Hudson.

And if you want to show your support for Hudson, go visit the CafePress Store.