A compilation of today's news of interest:

Back in Sept'07 Arun wrote about Using GlassFish's JDBC connection Pooling in a Rails App; now Ikai@LinkedIn has an updated note that includes changes since then and presents the instructions from the perspective of a Rails developer. Ikai's note covers warbler, the MySQL Connection Adaptor and Other Code. Check out Ikai's writeup, and I hope we can tell you more about that particular use case!

I just noticed that Glen has started working on a Grails in Action book that looks very interesting. While working on that, he is collecting good tips like Grails and JNDI Data Sources in GlassFish. Grails continues to gain adoption (Google Trend), leveraging the strengths of the language and framework and its easy integration into the Java plaform.

NetBeans is investing to be a top IDE for Grails, see Grails Plugin for NetBeans and Integrating Meera with Grails and NetBeans, and the responses so far are very positive. All this targeted for NetBeans 6.5; I think the result will be a top IDE for dynamic languages.

Even IBM's DeveloperWorks is covering Grails, their Mastering Grails Series includes 7 articles, from Introduction to Grails to Grails and Legacy DataBases. I've skimmed the articles and they look good. Their list of AppServers "somehow" does not include GlassFish server, but don't be distracted - it should work, and if they don't, it's a bug we will fix :-)

Related entries at TheAquarium can be found via tags: Grails or Scripting.

Trying to catch up a bit on Ruby/Rails/JRuby related news...

Two new NetBeans 6.1 Ruby tutorials: Getting Started With Ruby and Rails and Using Java Libraries in Rails Applications. The last topic is one of the big benefits of JRuby, one example is this report of Calling into Sun's SSO and another is this Tutorial showing Invoking Java 2D Graphics. A recent adoption story is CSI's use of JRuby in a project on Infectious disease reporting and management. Slightly older is Nick's This Blog now Powered by GlassFish and JRuby.

Overall, very nice progress on the JRuby/Rails front. I believe the last set of formal releases were: Release of GlassFish Gem 0.3.0/0.3.1 (announcement and update), and JRuby Module in the Update Centers with JRuby 1.1.1. The interest continues to grow and it is moving closer to actual deployments; perhaps time to start a commercial support offering?

PS. Arun has a whole collection of applicable entries tagged JRuby.

Developer.com awards a Product of the Year and this year several of our family, friends and relatives are winners: Metro, NetBeans, JSR 223, JavaSE 6 and PostgreSQL. Full details in the Developer.COM article: [1], [2].

Tons of progress on Python and Jython. Sun now has a new Python Developers page, published an Interview with Frank and Ted and started a new Python for NetBeans project. On the implementation front, Jython 2.5 is getting very close to Alpha - Frank is Approaching it, James is Flipping and Realizing it, Colin is happy. And Jython has More Contributors too!

All of this is generating attention in places like a new InfoQ Article. I think Jython will have a very interesting future; on my side I've always had an interest in Python because the community seems to pay a lot of attention to its evolution; time to give it a try.

Martin reports on improvements to his Metro plugin that allows Web Services development with Grails. He also upgraded to Grails 1.0.3. See Martin's note and check the Plugin page.

Arun has a blog entry up announcing the availability of the JavaOne '08 "TicTacToe" demo from the glassfish-scripting site. The source code for the Java EE, Rails and Grails applications are all available along with some documentation. What makes this demo interesting is GlassFish v3's fast startup, dynamic behavior (loading the web container, the JRubyOnRails or the Groovy runtimes on demand), but also how multiple applications written in different languages and frameworks can be hosted in the same environment while sharing things such as a comet context.

Arun and the team are taking feedback on webtier-AT-glassfish.dev.java.net or on the GlassFish WebTier Forum. If this scripting topic is of interest to you, you should probably follow Vivek's blog, the Scripting for GlassFish lead.

I'm beginning to think we "undersold" GFv3 TP2 when we called it a Technology Preview as pretty much anything we are throwing at it works! Check out Vivek's latest note on Scala Lift Framework. Starting with a Maven Archetype, it creates a Scala Lift project using a Derby database that can deploy on GFv3 and, with a small change it can use v3 tp2 embedded for ease of development through mvn glassfish:run. Neat!

More GlassFish v3 news: Vivek is using the Embeddable GFv3 that Kohsuke had been working to Embed GFv3 with Grails. I guess this is not really a pre-announcement because it was not planned; people are just playing around doing demos for CommunityOne... -) So come to CommunityOne to check it out. Added: Also see Kohsuke's Note.

CommunityOne is free but space is limited; register now!

Further progress on the Jython and Django on GlasFish using WSGI via Modjy. Frank is making good progress (Part I, Part II) and will show the results at C1 (in S297614).

Frank is collaborating with Jim Baker and Leo who have a related Google SoC project. I'm very interested in the outcome of this project; Python has certainly changed since when I looked at it years ago!

PS. Posts for the last few days have been slow due to preparations for J1, C1, et al.. Will do my best to keep with at least highlights, but we will see.

More progress towards the Scripting on v3 story: Vivek reports success in running his first Jython Servlet on GlassFish v3. Check Vivek's Note for details and complete sources. Early steps, but I'm looking forward to what come out from Vivek and Frank working on this together.

NetBeans and GlassFish are making good progress with many scripting languages, the latest being Groovy, which is a particularly easy match to the Java infrastructure. Matthias reports on the new NetBeans 6.1 PlugIn Functionality for Groovy, which includes deploying to GF v2. On the runtime-side, we recently reported on improved Grails Support on v3, and you can track our plans at the GF wiki uder GroovyGrailsPlanning.

GF and NB are collaborating with multiple scripting groups including those on Ruby, Python, JavaScript, PHP and Groovy. Stay tuned for more progress as we get closer to JavaOne.

In his latest blog, Vivek (the new Scripting lead for GlassFish) reports his experience deploying a Grails application to GlassFish v3. We want GlassFish to be a great container for all scripting languages, from JRuby on Rails and P/Jython (Django?) to PHP, Grails and others.

With the recent fixes that went into GlassFish v3, a Grails application deploys in about 10 seconds. While v3 is not yet a final release (latest Tech Preview 2 build available here), it is important for us to track multiple web container use-cases such as Grails application deployment.

The technical integration and user experience of using Grails and GlassFish together can probably still be improved. Stay tuned.

Python joins the club! Ted and Frank have joined Sun to work on Python and Jython (On the Record, eWeek, Infoworld). They join JRuby and JavaScript and Groovy and Quercus(PHP) - and others! - as part of the non-Java on (J)VM family.

Welcomes from Vivek, Kuldip, Roman and Rich. I worked briefly with Ted years ago around JAXP, and Frank and I have talked a number of times about Jython and GlassFish. A very strong welcome!

We are committed to making GlassFish the best server-side platform available. We can do a lot with GFv2 and much more with GFv3. By themselves and together with Java EE 6. The future will be very interesting!

Added - Both Frank and Ted have written about why they chose to join Sun, check it here and here.