Alexis and Paul have updated the GlassFish Release Feature Table that compares GlassFish v2, v3 Prelude and v3 Preview. My shortened summary is still applicable: v2.1 is for production deployments, v3 Preview is a beta for v3 final and v3 Prelude is/was a transitional release...

More JSF 2.0 samples: • Carol has converted the Pet Store to Use JSF 2.0, JavaEE6 and GFv3 preview, • Jim shows how to take a YUI calendar widget and integrate it in a JSF 2.0 page, • ... and then takes that widget and Moves it into a JSF Component.

A couple of weeks we provided an update of the GlassFish v2.1.1 Schedule; it's now time to do the same with that for GlassFish v3.

The key driver for GlassFish v3 is JavaEE 6. This means GFv3 leverages the expertise of the wide JCP community and our users have the benefits of a standard but... it also means we don't control all the variables - which is ultimately good, but can be painful in the short-term.

We knew things could get complicated when JSR 330 appeared in mid-May, after the PFD for most of JavaEE 6, and was later accepted by the JCP EC. The relationship between JSR 330 and JSR 299 was resolved recently and both will be part of JavaEE 6, so it was just a matter of doing the numbers, and... The answer is about 8 weeks. The updated GF v3 Roadmap puts the FCS at Nov 24th, just in time for Thanksgiving@USA. The change propagates to NetBeans 6.8 (roadmap) as well as follow-up releases to GFv3 (exact dates still shimmering).

So, that's the new date. It's actually quite good, considering the magnitude of the last-minute change. Overall, I know 330 will make for a better release - just let's hope that next time submissions don't come so late in the cycle... See GlassFish+v3

We have been converting our distributions to leverage the new IPS format. Recent conversions to IPS include OpenMQ 4.4 and some distributions of GFv2.1 but the distribution with the largest volume remains GFv3 Preview.

The current release of GFv3 Preview uses pkg.sun.com/glassfish/v3/stable/. These packages were last updated before J1 (except docs) but we will soon push out an update based on an stable promoted build and when that happens you are likely to encounter the New SoftwareUpdate Tool.

The SoftwareUpdate tool provides a simplified interface to the standard UpdateTool, normally activated via a PopUp Notice. A single click Starts a Search for all the Apps that can be updated. Once Completed, choose the Apps you want to update, accept the license terms, and install.

The SoftwareUpdate tool will report on the progress of the install: [1], [2], [3]. Once Completed you are done. The underlying machinery is the same used in the UpdateTool, and you can peek into the details, both before installing and after installing, but the SoftwareUpdate experience is faster and simpler, and more appropriate for most users.

IPS is one of the key new technologies that we are leveraging for GlassFish v3; related entries are tagged IPS. If you want more technical details, Christophe has a very good Presentation as part of the IPS Best Practices wiki. Also check the UC2 Blogs.

Rajeshwar has written a short description on how to use the GlassFish v3 REST Interface to Configure GlassFish; this complements his previous entry REST and Monitoring and, like that one, it also has examples using a Jersey-based client - included in the post. Related entries are tagged REST+GlassFish+v3. PS. Picture at left shows the anterior eyes of a Jumping Spider.

Java EE 6 will include JSR 330 and JSR 299. Roberto explains the changes: • JSR-299 will be updated to use the JSR-330 annotations • JSR-330 has evolved to take into account requirements from JSR-299 • Both JSRs will be part of the Java EE 6 Platform

Thanks to everybody that worked so hard to make these changes; obviously we wished this had happened earlier in the Java EE 6 cycle but the result will be an improved platform. We estimate that the final release of Java EE 6 (and GFv3) will be around November but we should have specific dates next week.

Check out Roberto's Announcement for details.

Ludo seems to win the race to be the First to Announce it, but NB6.8 M1 is now available for download. This is the first build that provides JavaEE 6 support, including a bundled GlassFish v3 (b57). See New And Noteworthy and Ludo's Post for details. Download the different bundles from the NB6.8 M1 page.

Added - Reviews from:

• Adam Bien - "Netbeans 6.8m1 - The (lightweight) Java EE 6 IDE"
• James Branajam - More About NB 6.8 M1

Let me know if you want to help with the community launch of GlassFish v3 FCS. We will pull together a small coordinating group to work on this in the next few weeks...

I've only used Second Life a couple of times and in either time I didn't spend enough time to have a good feel for the experience - I'll confess I'm not a gamer, unless you count the occasional GT5 and Rock Band - but Mary pointed me to a recent event that seemed compelling.

You may have heard about Sun's DataCenters in Broomfield and in Santa Clara. Greg P and Dean Nelson recently hosted an event at Second Life that focuses on how to improve cooling through different arrangements in those Data Centers. Check out Mary's note or go see the video; I found it useful and even entertaining. You can also go directly to the Sun Pavilion in Second Life, the artifacts are there, but I couldn't figure out how do something like play with the airflow simulation during my short visit.

On a related topic, we have been talking about doing an online event for the GlassFish v3 FCS launch. If you are interested in applying to be in the organizing committee, send me email with your info.

This is a short overview of how GlassFish v3 provides support for OSGi through pointers to the work / posts of Richard, Sahoo, Jerome and many others. The story starts with an OSGi-core that is used in a system that is organized around the notions of a kernel, services and components. A good overview is Jerome's presentation at JavaOne, TS-4923.

For the basic deployment check Jerome's GFv3 Extensions: Managed OSGi bundles which explains how asadmin deploy --type=osgi myosgibundle.jar will deploy an OSGi bundle: GFv3 installs the bundle in the OSGi framework, starts it and also records the information in domain.xml, so asadmin list-components will show that an OSGi bundle has been deployed. Note you can then Use the Felix Web Console to browse through the OSGi bundles.

There are other ways to activate the same deployment machinery and, in Using filesystem operations to manage OSGi bundles in GlassFish, Sahoo shows how GFv3 leverages Apache Felix's FileInstall to allow autodeploy via the autodeploy-bundles/ directory.

Jerome's next two posts describe an extension in GF v3 that allows applications to use @Resource to refer to OSGi services. In the first one, GF v3 Extensions: Spring, Java EE 6 and OSGi, the service is a Spring Bean that is exposed to the OSGi service registry using Spring DM, while in GF v3 Extensions: OSGi Declarative Services he just uses the standard OSGi Declarative Services, which were made part of the standard GF v3 bundle starting with b55

More posts in a future installment...

There is a new beta for Mojarra 2.0, the RI of JSF 2.0 (relnotes, news, downloads). Mojarra 2.0 is bundled in GlassFish v3 and the new release of Mojarra is included in recent Promoted Builds; an alternative is to use the Update Center and only update JSF.

The Update Crenter is accessed through an update tool; either the one bundled in the GlassFish console or the unbundled one. To do that, first ensure that you have http://pkg.glassfish.org/v3/dev as your preferred repository and then check on available updates. You will get a long list; you can then unselect all the components (using (Command-Modifier)-U on my mac) and then select JSF only. Then you just need to install the new packages.

Thanks to Jim for the tip. Ah!, also note that Mojarra can also be used in other containers; install and configure it manually.

Thanks to Byron and Lloyd, GlassFish v3 now has a Restart Button in the Admin GUI. Just download a recent promoted build (I used b55) and go to the Application Server panel in the Admin console; see the Screenshot. One more RFE bites the dust... Added - Byron pointed out that the corresponding CLI command is asadmin restart-domain

Paul has announced the availability of Jersey 1.1.1 EA, based on the draft for JAX-RS 1.1 (see JAX-RS 1.0 spec and Changelog). To learn more about Jersey you can see the Getting Started Document and the Jersey User's Guide, check out Paul and Marc's Webinar, or browse through previous entries. Jersey is also collaborating with JFA's Atmosphere framework, and, since Paul is a fan of Scala, also supports Lift. Overall, very good movement towards GFv3. More details at Paul's announcement.

Redeployment time is one of the metrics we track in our productivity metric (others include startup and deployment time). GlassFish v2 is already very fast - actually, according this survey ran by the ZeroTurnaround folks, GF v2 is the fastest JavaEE compliant container - but GF v3 is even faster.

One of the new features in GlassFish v3 is session state preservation across redeployments. Jan Introduced the new feature during GFv3 Prelude and now Alexis has published a Screencast (movie) using JPetStore (Spring, IBatis, etc). The screencast uses NetBeans 6.7 but it works equally well on the Eclipse Bundle. Very much looking forward to GFv3 FCS...

One of our goals with GlassFish v3 is to significantly expand the number of use cases where GlassFish can be used. To do this we want to retain (and expand!) the enterprise quality attributes present in GlassFish v2(.1) but also make it much more "lightweight". We think we are making good progress towards a lightweight container, but download GFv3 Preview, check Alexis' Top Seven Reasons and let us know how it is working for you, like in this Ongoing Thread.

A pity Alexis didn't come up with 10 reasons; maybe he could have gone to Letterman's Show.