Arun Gupta's Blog

Why GlassFish over JBoss ?

1. Admin GUI and CLI alone are true differentiators.
2. Java EE5 with EJB3 is much better to work with and GlassFish is JavaEE5 compatible, of course it's the Reference Implementation as well.
3. Seamless integration with NetBeans.
4. Solid and consolidated documentation.

Some other quotes are:

• "overall GF is just plain easier to use and that's my major pain point."
• "The new clustering looks spectacular"
• "GF is really a joy to work with and we haven't had any major problem using it"
• "you will be up to speed and productive more quickly on GF than JBoss, and just as important, you will stay that way"
• "because of JEE 5, EJB3, and the JPA, and leveraging that technology, our applications run better, and are easier to maintain. GF is not the sole perveyor of such technology, but the combination and integration of the whole thing: GF, NB, EJB3, and the low learning curve and overall ease of use makes the entire package a "performance win" for our apps as is"
• "The best part is the server is handling more and more of the stuff we need to do and we have to work around it less and less."

And if these are not enough for you to choose GlassFish, here is a more detailed list of Why Use GlassFish ?.

And we see GlassFish as "GlassFish is WebLogic Features and Performance at JBoss's price" except we are shooting for better Features and Performance than WebLogic!

Technorati: glassfish jboss opensource

Comments

• *clap* *clap* *clap* From the Glassfish forums you found reasons why people want to use Glassfish over Jboss. Maybe, just maybe you might find the same thing on the JBoss forums if you asked a similar question? Maybe?

  Posted by: gregorypierce on June 26, 2007 at 03:48 AM

• Ah yes, classic Sun Microsystems. Work with JBOSS on ide support and then turn around and use the knowledge gained to attack their core business.

  You can always count on sun micro to screw their "ecosystem".

  - Don

  Posted by: don8201 on June 26, 2007 at 06:46 AM

• I'm not sure I understand the vitriol here. All Arun did was to highlight one Glassfish user's reasons for using Glassfish, and then market the application server himself. Is that what gives offense? If so, I'm not really sure why.

  Posted by: ljnelson on June 26, 2007 at 08:19 AM

• Hey Don -

  The folks working on IDE support with JBoss are different people from the folks working on GlassFish, and as far as I know, those people don't talk.

  I'm not sure, from your comment, what would make you happy - that Sun not support JBoss in it's IDE? Or prehaps that Sun not continue work on GlassFish? You'll need to be more specific, I think.

  Jim

  Posted by: driscoll on June 26, 2007 at 09:23 AM

• 1) couldn't care less. The config files of JBoss work faster for me than the gui of Glassfish.
  2) EJB3 works fine on JBoss, and it even works with my database engine (FB2) which GF still doesn't support.
  3) who cares? I use IntelliJ which has excellent JBoss integration
  4) JBoss documentation is also good, and community driven.
  "overall GF is just plain easier to use and that's my major pain point." I found the reverse to be true
  "GF is really a joy to work with and we haven't had any major problem using it" I couldn't even get a DataSource and connection pool set up... Took several days of browsing mailing list archives (documentation???) to figure out that there was just no way to get it working
  "you will be up to speed and productive more quickly on GF than JBoss, and just as important, you will stay that way" 3 days to figure out GF wouldn't work, after which I had JBoss up and running in a few hours. What's faster? And JBoss just keeps going too.
  "because of JEE 5, EJB3, and the JPA, and leveraging that technology" which are all available on JBoss as well. In fact JPA is based on Hibernate which is a JBoss product.
  

  Posted by: jwenting on June 27, 2007 at 01:31 AM

• netbeans integration is big for me - unless there's a wizard to get me up and running eg. create the basics, some samples, i'm a non-starter.
  Netbeans 5.5 has this for JSF with JSPs. i really wish it had Seam support! I look forward to Seam ("WebObjects") being standardised and part of the Glassfish/Netbeans picture ie. wizards to get one up and running with sample pages built using GlassFish JPA/Seam/JSF/facelets (ie. XHTML files not JSPs)

  Posted by: evanx on July 21, 2007 at 12:25 PM

• I have used WebLogic for the past 5 years. On a new project we were told to use an OS App server. I started with Glassfish V2.1 and found it very similar to WLS - nice admin console and no need to ever touch an XML file. In addition, GF fully implements the EJB3.0 spec. You can easily monitor your resouces with the admin console. You can easily test your WebServices from within the console. In addition, GF has build in support for Java Web Start - I don't need to write the JNLP file! It is created automagically when I deploy my Swing GUI as a Client Application to the server.

  Then we were told to use JBoss 4.2.2. What a difference! If you like getting your hands dirty, JBoss is for you. I wanted to add a database and connection pool. The answer is to create some *-ds.xml file and put it in the deploy directory. Similar concept if I want to create a JMS Topic or Queue.
  JBoss does provide a web console. However, the JMX Console is cryptic and non-intuitive and JBoss Web Console is equally un-useful. It does list your WebServices and you can see the WSDLs, but I could not figure out how to test it from that page.
  JBoss does not fully implement EJB3.0 - for example the @Stateless mappedName attribute is not supported. JBoss 4.2.2 does not support JDK6.0.

  For me, there is no comparison between Glassfish and JBoss. I just wish we were directed to use GF.

  MB

  Posted by: marshallbenfield on April 15, 2008 at 10:22 AM

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.