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The guys at ZeroTurnaround (makers of JRebel) have been running a survey on redeploy and restart turnaround time in Java App Servers that has >1100 responses so far. The survey's 3 questions ask about AppServer usage and redeploy and restart time. Although doing a good survey is tricky - for example, in this case the sample is self-selected (but not as bad as with the Reader's Choice), the impact of (Re)Deployment tooling/configurations is unknown and the time is estimated, not measured - I think this one is useful in calling attention to the importance of the full develop/deploy/debug cycle. GFv2 did very well and v3 is even faster! |
Jevgeni's analysis has some reasonable comments although some others seem unwarranted by the data. The most popular containers were Tomcat (29%), JBoss (25%), WLS (13%), WAS (12%) and GF (10%) (OC4J is 4%), with the caveat about self-selected samples. As a reminder of the importance of methodology, I'll point out that only 1 respondent listed Geronimo; readers may compare to that EDC Survey from Last Year.
Also note the impact of twitter and reddit in the comment thread - there are 117 comments as of this post... almost all of them very short 'heads-up' with no added value - sigh...
Last month we ran a GlassFish Adoption Survey. Our main intention was to learn about Migration patterns on the GlassFish server. Although it was a totally self-selected, unscientific, survey, we thought it would collect some interesting insights which we could then use for a more formal survey later in the year.
With those caveats, here are the highlights:
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Where they migrated from (%):
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Major reason to switch to GlassFish (1-10):
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Biggest benefit of for-fee support (1-10):
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Mostly what I was expecting, although I thought there would be fewer WAS and more WLS migrations. Looking forward to an improved version of the survey later in the year.
Sun's LAMP support is assembled from two pieces: the L is from our Linux/GNU Support (see SunSolve entry), while the AMP comes from the GlassFish WebStack, which, in its latest incarnation includes Apache HTTP Server, lighttpd, memcached, MySQL, PHP, Python, Ruby, Squid, Tomcat, GlassFish (v2.1) and Hudson (features).
The inclusion of Hudson is a bit of an opportunistic move (more on that in a bit), the rest comprises a well tested, integrated, optimized, and extended component stack for your new and old Web Apps.
The WebStack can be downloaded here; the bundle includes the WebStack Enterprise Manager, which, unlike the other components, is not free right-to-use but rather is available with an eval license; this is a model like that of the GlassFish Enterprise Manager. The current release supports RHEL, Solaris and OpenSolaris (it is bundled in OpenSolaris); for additional details, check out the Documentation and Discussion Forum.
Check out these posts from the WebStack team:
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Brian's
Announcement
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We are conducting a survey on developers, ISV, etc, that are using Tomcat and are considering GlassFish. We want to find out what features are used and which migration approach would be preferred. If you want to help us, please participate in the survey. Thanks! |
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Switching from Tomcat to GlassFish is very easy, specially with recent additions like Valves Support; The only somewhat tricky area were dependencies on MyFaces APIs or behavior. A simple solution to this problem is to use the UseMyFaces properly, as mentioned in this thread. This approach is directly applicable Alfresco; see Mandy's post. |
PS, I'll clarify if UseMyFaces is officially supported or not.
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The vast majority of Tomcat applications ran fin on GlassFish. Jan tell us that now even the ones using the Tomcat-style valves will run unmodified.
Of at
The ServerSide
Pawan explains
How to use OpenMQ with Mule ESB by configuring the Mule JMS connector.
Added (by pelegri) - I've heard of a number of requests for this,
please let us know if you use the combination so we can track
OpenMQ LayeredTech announced free GlassFish hosting for Sun Startup Essentials™ Program participants. CrazyRails has a post on how to install JRuby on Rails on Mac, including GlassFish and MySQL setup. More GlassFish coverage is promised. |
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Some people know they want a full JavaEE 5 AppServer - and for those, the GlassFish Server is a better choice than Apache Tomcat, but, even if you only want a subset of these APIs, check out Alexis' Tomcat Today, GlassFish Tomorrow. Also check out Wang Yu's Blocking and Non-Blocking IO article that, like Scott's More on the simple vs. the complex, shows the benefits of NIO as workload increases. |
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David Yu asked How to Port a Custom Valve from Apache Tomcat to GlassFish and he and Jan carried a conversation in this Mail Thread. The Valve interface in GlassFish was changed to Flatten Valve Invocations in a Pipeline; the changes needed to adjust your custom valves include some signatur changes, and some changes in the invocation flow. Jan has captured them in this FAQ Page in the GF wiki. |
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Straightforward instructions on how to install
OpenSSO on
Apache Tomcat
(5.5 and 6.0).
See Robert's
Writeup |
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Daniel posted a few weeks ago this blog entry about a code camp he and others have been running for ISVs to port and develop their applications on the GlassFish Application Server. Don't be put off by the page being in German, all of the GlassFish Workshop documents are in English and very good IMHO. They cover from GlassFish fundamentals such as basic installation steps to much more advanced details about how to adapt applications and their packaging for GlassFish. |
Here's a list of those documents :
• Getting started, Introduction and Migration.
• Resource Management &
Call Flow Monitoring.
• Clustering & Load Balancing.
If you're more into following slides, here's a good deck.
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Wolfram, the author of JSP Tutorial describes in two notes how he moved that site from Apache Tomcat to GlassFish. The first one covers Virtual Servers in GlassFish. This was necessary to run multiple apps in his box (provided by 1x1). The second shows how to use asadmin to Add Resources to be used by his apps. Thanks, Wolfram! |
Regarding the image... Andrew Sherratt argues for a follow-up to the Neolithic Revolution based on Secondary Products from the domestication of animals. Yeah, a bit convoluted, but I'm following a revolution theme for the migration articles... :-)
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Sekhar's Migrate2GlassFish project is beginning to make progress under Sekhar's direction. Check out his Introduction Note and his latest entry: Migrating From Tomcat to GlassFish. We are interested in your feedback on what is useful to help you migrate to GlassFish. |
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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.
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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.
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• Community:
Closing on Tomcat? |
