Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE), the Sun OpenSolaris-based distribution for Solaris, Java, and Web 2.0 developers has a new release out: 1/08. Ludo has a post about the integrated web stack as well as a 10-minute screencast. After giving SMF privileges for Apache/mySQL servers, Ludo shows how the user can use a very simple graphical tool to start/stop and configure services. He also walks you through a small PHP/jMaki/Ajax pre-packaged demo with a mySQL backend. He finally uses NetBeans' PHP support and auto-registering of the AMP-stack to author and debug a simple PHP application. Pretty slick!

SXDE also comes with the NetBeans 6/GlassFish v2 pre-configured bundle and if you're using the VMWare image, I would recommend upgrading the amount of memory from 512 to 2Gb. And in case you're wondering, the VMWare image password for root is SXDE (see also the FAQ).

Check out also Ludo's previous interview on GlassFish tooling.

This interview with Ludo Champenois from the GlassFish team discusses the general developer experience with GlassFish as well as with IDEs such as NetBeans and Eclipse. We go into the save/reload paradigm for web and Ajax apps (using jMaki for instance), incremental deployment possibilities, value and role of IDEs for Java EE 5, best OS for developers, and more. You can subscribe to this podcast by searching for "glassfish" on the iTunes online store, by clicking here or using this feed for by any other podcatcher.

Sailfin development is moving along nicely and so is it's tooling part now with SIP Application Development Module version 0.2 for NetBeans 6.0 and a detailed installation document. •  new is a "Converged Servlet Application" project template. •  full specifications are listed in this document. As detailed in this document, the next sailfin milestone build in December is Feature freeze.

Vivek provides a good summary of tooling options in Metro. NetBeans 6 provides support for simple Hello World to adding different Quality of Service along with .NET 3.0 interoperability. Within Eclipse, you can use either of SOAP UI plugin, Ant build script, CLI or Maven-based tools. The last three options are available for use outside the IDE as well.

Let us know if you are interested in writing a Metro plugin for Eclipse.

JBuilder 2007 now supports GlassFish: • JBuilder Product Page and FAQ (PDF). • Also check DavidI's blog .

One of the primary ways to technology adoption is making it available on a wide variety of tools. jMaki enabled web applications can be easily developed and deployed using NetBeans IDE already. This new screencast shows how jMaki plug-in can be installed in Eclipse 3.3. It also shows how the rich set of widgets from different toolkits can be added to a web application using drag-and-drop and deployed on GlassFish, all from within Eclipse.

Let us know if you are interested in developing a jMaki plug-in for IDE of your choice.

Several projects in the GlassFish community use Japex to run micro-benchmarks, sometimes taking advantage of additional tools like Hudson and WStest. In this month's Tech Tip, Deep and Bharath describe in detail how to use Japex and WStest to do performance regression test on Web Services. Japex has been very useful in building GlassFish (blogs) and we are seing increased interest in contributing to it. Check it out!

NetBeans 6 now has its last Milestone (M10) available. If you haven't already tried NetBeans 6, you'll find a new editor (for Java, XML, JSP, etc...) and a new modularized installer among many other improvements. The archive varies from 23MB to 172MB depending on the features you request. GlassFish version 2 build 53 is integrated in the install process. GlassFish-related new features in M10 are described in this earlier post. Java EE improvements include: •  Integrated Visual Web designer for HTML, JSP, etc... •  Much improved Visual Web performance •  Enhanced JavaScript and CSS support •  Greater web services support •  Support Project Woodstock component library

Other new features are listed in the New and Noteworthy document. Overall stability and performance are also improved as with every Milestone. This is the last Milestone with a beta set for August and final bits in November.

Eclipse 3.3 Europa is now final and supports configuring GlassFish V1, V2 and V3 using pluggable adapters for WTP 2.0 which now supports Java EE 5 development. From the GlassFishPlugins project at java.net: This adapter is Java EE 5 compliant and works with GlassFish V1, V2, V3, and supports all EE 5 features of Eclipse 3.3, and supports Web application directory deployment, and fully integrated debugger.

Read a detailed writeup, with screenshots, from Ludo on how to configure the adapter, deploy a Web application and debug a JSP page on GlassFish V2 - all from within Eclipse Europa. The writeup can also be watched as a screencast and additionally shows how to deploy a JAX-WS based Web service using the Deployment Descriptor-free Web services deployment.

GlassFish and Eclipse relationship can be tracked in Earlier Posts at TheAquarium.

SailFin (the Communications/Telco Application Server) was Announced at Java One and we have reported since then on a couple of SIP applications: Click to Dial (full code available) and Conference Manager (soon available).

You can also read this intro to SIP, use this documentation to use a vanilla SIP proxy and SIPp to generate traffic, and use tooling support in NetBeans (development using Web Applications with the SIP Servlets Framework) as described here.

But maybe most importantly, nightly builds are now available from http://sailfin.dev.java.net/ (about 60mb, GlassFish runtime included). The first milestone is scheduled for August

If you're interested in SailFin source code, look here or here.

NetBeans 5.5.1 was recently released and this is the stable version of NetBeans you'll want to use with GlassFish v2. Version 6.0 is what all the NetBeans excitement was about at JavaOne last month. Milestone 9 has JavaScript support including in other editors (HTML, JSP, ...), a new Web Services designer and enough REST support to walk through the JavaOne demonstration. New GlassFish-related features in NetBeans 6 (Milestone 10) are detailed by Vince Kraemer : • Per-Instance Options (user settable timeouts for startup and deployment). • Profiler Integration Improvements (explicitly configure the JVM GlassFish uses to run). • Shared Installation Registration (also applies to Solaris sparse-root zones). • Usage Profile Support (developer, cluster or enterprise). Vince has also been experimenting web and enterprise projects related to key bindings.

Look at the Milestone 10 New and Noteworthy document for a (much) longer list of what's coming real soon now.

More news from Ludo, GlassFish's own Mr Tools. Both NetBeans 6.0 and Eclipse 3.3 Europa now have support for GlassFish v2 (and v3). Neither release is final, although Eclipse 3.3 will release at the end of the month, but they are both making very fast progress. Check out Ludo's writeup for details and screenshots of NetBeans 6 and Eclipse 3.3. You can see more TheAquarium spotlights on Tools here, including GlassFish v2 support in MyEclipse 5.5.

NetBeans is a good friend but many GlassFish users use Eclipse and Ludo has two good news for them. MyEclipse has released 5.5 GA which includes support for GlassFish v2. MyEclipse 5.5 is based on Eclipse 3.2; Eclipse 3.3 (Europa) should be out in June and I'd expect a companion MyEclipse release but Ludo is also upgrading his (simpler) Eclipse Plugin.

Check Ludo's blog entry and stay tuned for more details.

JVantage is a new visual Web Application Development tool that can quickly build a Java EE application from a database description and their latest release (announcement) supports GlassFish and Derby. The JVantage site includes a functionality overview through a flash screencast, a good wiki site, a Roadmap and Forums.

One of the many new features for GlassFish v2 is an integrated JBI implementation. Gregg Sporar has done some nice digging on that subject. To get your feet wet, he recommends this resource and the specification's first four chapters.

Since Gregg is a NetBeans evangelist, there's a tooling part of the story. The forthcoming NetBeans Enterprise Pack (version 5.5.1) has new and improved XML and SOA features such as a Service Assembly "casa" editor, graphical WSDL and XSLT editors, and an Intelligent Event Processor.

JBI implementations are listed here, while JBI components and engines are enumerated there. Most of these are Open Source and there are also examples of mix and matching such as this one.