Applications using the Spring framework have always been able to run happily in GlassFish, be it v2 or v3. Now with GlassFish v3 approaching a final release, new opportunities are coming along. In a follow-up to last week's entry on managed OSGi bundles, GlassFish architect Jerome Dochez takes it a little further by implementing the GlassFish service using Spring beans and invoking it using a Java EE 6 webapp. All with no OSGi or Spring dependency whatsoever. This detailed example uses Spring's extender bundle whose role is to target the Spring container for the Spring-based service implementation, and (this is what seems to me like the most interesting part), a simple web application that can simply inject this service with a standard @Resource annotation. Of course, this is no customized version of GlassFish and the service lookup uses OSGi services and a standard Java EE annotations. No GlassFish/Spring/OSGi API required. Powerful, yet very simple.

In his recent interview on OSGi interview JavaPosse.com, Peter Kriens (OSGi Director of Technology) mentions GlassFish v3 as an example of extending a runtime without using any API specific to that runtime. It's great to hear Peter likes the work done by the GlassFish v3 team!

A new episode for the GlassFish Podcast is available. This was recorded back on October but the content is still very much valid. The sound quality isn't perfect (still trying things out) but I think I've heard much worse quality... In this episode, GlassFish architect Jérôme Dochez gets into how GlassFish V3 is being built using the HK2 modules sub-system. He goes into what the nucleus is, the role of grizzly, how easy embedding GlassFish V3 will be but also into the challenges of building a Java EE 6 Application Server implementation on top of a micro-kernel. You can read more about GlassFish V3.

There was a lot of interest for GlassFish V3 and HK2 at last week's JavaOne. The two technologies are related but since it is possible to use HK2 outside of GlassFish v3 we have gave it its own project and Mailing Lists. So, if you have discussions about what you like or not about V3, go to the DEV@GF or USERS@GF mailing lists, while the DEV@HK2 alias is specific to the component and modular subsystems in HK2. Note: the home page for HK2 currently claims there are no mailing lists; ignore it and go here

Note-2: somebody pointed out that HK2 had no clear license. The license should be the same as GFv3: GPLv2 and CDDL; if it is missing it was an oversight and we will fix it asap.

More announcements in preparation for GlassFish Day and JavaOne: Jerome has released the code for the modular core of GlassFish v3. He chose the name HK2 for Hundred Kb Kernel and it indeed is under 100KB (80 Kb - and it starts in less than a second). HK2 couples a Modules Subsytem with a Components Model. Read about HK2 at Jerome's Blog, directly at the HK2 Web site, or watch the Screencast. Or, even better, go to GlassFish Day at the Moscone and watch Jerome present at his session or in a demo station. GlassFish Day is part of CommunityOne and is free but you need to Register to attend.