Java Design Concepts

GlassFish - Open Source Application Server for Java EE 5

GlassFish is widely known as a Java Enterprise Application Server by sun Microsystems, but it also refers the open source community that delivers this Java EE 5 compatible Application Server. GlassFish is based on source code donated by Sun and Oracle Corporation's TopLink persistence system.

GlassFish accelerated the adoption of JEE5 in the community by adding a new enterprise quality application server in the open source community. The first release of GlassFish was in May 2006. This release implemented the full JEE 5 specification, but some enterprise features were missing. In September 2007, the second version of GlassFish was released, and this was a full enterprise application server.

The development of GlassFish takes place in three different phases and they are defined as follows:

• Concept Creation – Collecting key features, rough time-frame, and prototyping.
• Active Development – Implementation leading to usable Milestones and a final release.
• Maintenance – Bug fixing of final releases, creating Update Releases.

GlassFish V1
GlassFish V1 was released in May 2006. GlassFish V1 is equivalent to “Sun Java System AS 9.0 PE”. This version of GlassFish implemented the JEE 5 specification, but some of the enterprise-level features were not included in this version. These features like clustering were added in GlassFish V2. GlassFish V1 is currently in the “Maintenance” development phase, as there are no additional features added to this version. Some bug fixing releases were made in October 2006 and December 2006.

Download:
GlassFish V1
GlassFish V1 UR1
GlassFish V1 UR1 PO1

GlassFish V2
GlassFish V2 was released in September 2007. GlassFish is also distributed by SUN under the name of “Sun Java System AS 9.1”. The PE was dropped from the name as this version contained all the enterprise features “Sun Java System AS 8.2”. The most important enterprise feature that was added was clustering (grouping, load-balancing, and data replication). The same executable that is downloaded could be used in a developer, enterprise and cluster profile. The enterprise profile could be configured to use HADB (High Availability Data Base) for very high (99.999%) availability.

Download:
GlassFish V2
GlassFish V2 UR1

GlassFish V3
GlassFish V3 is a lightweight and modular application server. The kernel of V3 is very small and the start-up takes less than a second. GlassFish V3 recently moved from the Concept development phase to Active development.

External links for GlassFish:

• https://glassfish.dev.java.net/
• http://wiki.glassfish.java.net/
• http://blogs.sun.com/theaquarium/

The Acquarium contains the latest news, blogs and activities of the GlassFish Community.