The GFv3 TP2 does not include the SOAP web services stack - Metro - (content) but it has all the required hooks and Metro is available from the v3 download center, as Bhakti explains in her Latest Note. Installation is straight-forward with the new UpdateCenter (ScreenShot). Try it out and let us know how it goes.

BTW, for those curious, you can poke to the IPS repositories through HTTP: windows, linux, mac, solaris SPARC, solaris x86

PS. As you can see, in addition to Metro, the GFv3 repository includes Grails support, Jersey (RESTful Web Services), jMaki/AJAX, and jRuby. Since TP2 already includes the Java Web Tier (Servlet+JSP+JSF) and JPA (EclipseLink), it is actually a very functional release - please share your experiences with it.

Over the past few months, Aravindan Ranganathan, Lakshman Abburi and Marina Sum have been working on a series of articles covering the new identity services functionality available now in OpenSSO and coming soon in Sun Federated Access Manager 8.0. This week sees the publication of part 3, covering retrieval of user attributes. One notable feature of the series is it's presentation of both SOAP/WSDL and REST patterns for accessing OpenSSO's identity services. Which do you use, and why?

The GlassFish Podcast has already provided some GlassFish audio, but this time Ed Ort brings us video with this interview of members of the Metro Web Services Security team. The interview, which was taped at the recent Hyderabad Sun Tech Days, starts off with interviewee background questions before it gets into the point-to-point vs. end-to-end security tradeoff (both of which Metro can do).

It then goes on to discuss the four main parts (specifications really) implemented today in Metro : WS-Security, WS-SecurityPolicy, WS-Trust, and WS-SecureConv (full list). The interview finally touches on the future beyond Metro 1.1 which is mainly about implementation of next versions of the specifications.

If nothing else, this is a good time to put a face on a name if you've been participation in the Metro mailing list or forum. If you're coming to JavaOne, you may want to write down this Microsoft/Sun session about interoperable web services.

You know the saying... "when Pigs Fly..."? Well, Clemen's Latest note starts: A flock of pigs has been doing aerobatics high up over Microsoft Campus in Redmond What he is referring is that he just checked in GlassFish and Metro into the latest Biztalk SDK! Neat! And he has some very nice words for the Metro team, as Arun highlights.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Alexis highlights another Microsofter, Stéphane, on another aspect of the same relationship: GF and NetBeans being available at Microsoft Technology Centers.

I think we may have a new mascot - the flying pig!

A new Tech Tip written by Jiandong Guo of the Application Server Web Services Security team was just posted. Read the tip and learn the basics of WS-SecureConversation. Also see an example that demonstrates how to enable secure conversations for a web service through the WS-SecureConversation support in Metro. You can find the tip here. Setting up the infrastructure can be tricky, so if you're getting started with WS-SecureConv, this is a good document to read. You can get to all the Tech Tips from this site or this blog.

The latest stable version of Metro (which ships as part of GlassFish v2) has been extensively tested with Microsoft's WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) version 3.0. The next version of .Net 3.5 is already out and the team is working hard to achieve the best possible interoperability with this new set of WS-* implementations.

Harold and Rama report on the most recent "plugfest" with Microsoft engineers. The work involves moving from some non-standard technologies (such as WS-ReliableMessaging 1.0 which is "just" a specification, not an open standard) to the OASIS version (OASIS WS-RM 1.1, dated July 2007) for better interoperability. The set of test scenarios is comprehensive and results very promising.

Check out Metro's roadmap here for an idea of when to expect stable releases. In the mean time, you can get the nightly builds.

Does GlassFish support REST or SOAP Web Services? Both! REST through Jersey and SOAP through Metro (Jersey will be included in a future Metro release, see Roadmap). Security is very important for SOAP Web Services and Jiandong has a set of notes describing how Metro supports WS-SX (OASIS Web Services Security Exchange). Check out the Overview, How to Issue SAML Tokens and a description of a Scenario based on WS-SX.

We recently realized that our "Web Services" page was pretty out of date. If you're new to Web Services in either Java EE 5 or in GlassFish and you are trying to make sense of Metro, JAX-WS, JAXB, WSIT, or Tango, the new version of that page is now available for you to find all about them.

You may also be interested in the list of Web Services Technical Articles and Tips. I find the Enterprise Tech Tips to be often very well written and straight to the point. Check them out and tell us what other topics you'd like to be covered.

There is now a new Policy subproject of Metro (see Governance email). Quoting from the project page, the project has two distict goals: • In the short term, make JAX-WS WS-policy aware by moving out the generic policy code from project Tango. • In the long term, provide a common, abstract policy API layer. The API design should be independent of any particular policy expression language. Instead it should be use case driven and ease-of-use oriented.

In an Enterprise Tech Tip, Rama describes how to use the JAX-WS Maven plugin to develop Web services. The article describes why you may be interested in the  plugin: don't have to get the JAX-WS dependencies, set up the classpath, and configure and invoke the tool tasks for compilation and packaging -- steps required by the Ant tasks.

The different tooling options around Metro are described in an Earlier  Post.

You can also subscribe to the Tech Tips as an RSS feed.

Paul is announcing the availability of JAX-RS v0.5. As with previous releases, this one is synchronized with Jersey v0.5, its Reference Implementation. Traditional delivery vehicles such a the GlassFish Update Center and NetBeans will soon follow (Maven should be already there). Among new things, Jersey has an improved deployment and configuration process (courtesy of Grizzly and asm) and a rewritten URI dispatching architecture. Paul has more details in his blog entry.

Both the JSR and the reference implementation are developed in a very collaborative way. Schedule leading up to version 1.0 is here.

Overview article about Project Tango (now part of Metro) is now available in Chinese as well. Read it at Sun Developer Network China.

I posted a tip describing how to override Metro 1.0 in GlassFish v2 UR1 with a more recent Metro 1.1. Several screencasts are available to get you started with Metro.

Two New Metro Releases: Metro 1.1 and 1.0.1. Check out • Vivek's Announcement &bull Last week's note on the Metro Roadmap

New Java Web Services Instructor-led Training Courses for GlassFish. • Creating Web Services Using Java Technology • Designing Java Web Services • Developing Secure Java Web Services These courses are for GlassFish v1 but the v2 courses are almost ready. Thanks to Arun for the tip