Sun Java Breaks Out GlassFish
By: David Utter
The latest version of GlassFish, the open source Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE) 5 application server, arrived with clustering support and faster performance.
Sun Microsystems announced the GlassFish V2 application server, with special mention made of the inclusion of enterprise features by the GlassFish community.
Sun claims its GlassFish userbase won’t have to make a choice between GlassFish and Sun’s Java System Application Server, the commercially supported version of the product, to get the features they want.
Performance should be much improved.
A post at Sun’s On The Record blog said GlassFish rated as the fastest application server in the world, based on July 2007 testing results against the SPECjAppServer benchmark.
Along with speed, clustering, and central management for clusters and application deployments, Sun said GlassFish supports Project Metro, for web services interoperability between those hosted on Java and on Windows environments.
The NetBeans 6.0 IDE Beta will have integration support with GlassFish.
Sun said the IDE provides enhanced support for dynamic languages like Ruby and JavaScript.
Also, JRuby is included with the NetBeans 6.0 Beta Ruby support, allowing developers to use Ruby on Rails with existing Java code.
NetBeans developers should note a forthcoming change in licensing, starting with the production version of NetBeans 6.0.
That will be offered under a dual license of the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) and the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2).
Sun’s FAQ on the license tweak said adding GPL v2 as an option makes NetBeans software friendlier to the Linux community.