Carla Mott's Blog

January 2006 Archives

Asking for feedback on GlassFish documentation

GlassFish Milestone 5 (beta release) is due out on Feb 6. We are asking for feedback on the documentation for that release.

The latest revisions of the docs have been posted on the website and we would appreciate any feedback on the Developer's Guide, the Adminstration Guide and new with this release the Application Deployment Guide specifically. Of course, any and all feedback on the document set is welcome. We can incorporate feedback for this milestone until Feb 01 (6pm PST). Feedback received after that date will be address for the final release.

The documentation home page has instructions on how to provide your feedback. Let us know what you think.

Allow users to demo your J2EE app

Project app-hosting has been created for java.net projects to showcase their J2EE application and allow users to demo the app live. LocaWeb, a Brazilian internet service company, has agreed to host the Sun Java System Application Server PE 8.1 and we are very grateful.

The first application available for you to demo is AtLeap, . Hong Zhang, one of the deployment leaders blogged about her experience deploying the AtLeap application on the LocaWeb servers. There are some restrictions and requirements application developer must meet for consideration. For example, this service is for demo purposes and for projects hosted on java.net only. In addition, applications must meet packaging requirments and run on SJSAS PE 8.1. You can find all the requirements on the app-hosting website.

The app-hosting project will keep a list of the applications that are currently deployed. Next app which is in the process of getting deployed is BPCatalog.

javadocs on project GlassFish

Recently I posted the current version of the javadocs in project GlassFish. Included are the javax APIs and the com.sun APIs that have been implemented. Although the title on each pages says J2EE 1.4 SDK, these have been updated to include Java EE 5 APIs. We're working on updating the title and headers over the next few weeks. We also plan to update the site with each promoted build so the javadocs posted will reflect what is in the latest promoted build.

One important note. The specifications for Java EE 5 are NOT final and therefore these javadocs reflect a work in progress. In some cases more information about the API is needed for the docs to be complete. Still, I think you may find these useful.

Which GlassFish build to download

Milestone 5 is the beta release for GlassFish and that started with build 32. Currently build b32b is available for download which has a few more bug fixes than build 32 and is more stable. Milestone 5 is expect out Feb 6.

Also available is build 33. This build is off the main trunk of the workspace and contains the bug fixes found in the milestone 5 builds as will as other bug fixes and enhancements targeted for the final build due out in early May.

The weekly promoted builds of GlassFish have passed a minimum level of testing. which includes the quicklook tests, a sub-set of CTS tests (representative collection of 263 J2EE 1.4 tests) and a sub-set of SQE tests (22 in number). A build is not promoted unless it passes quicklook, CTS smoke and SQE smoke tests.

Eclipse plugin available for GlassFish

Since we announced GlassFish at JavaOne last June people have asked about an Eclipse plugin for GlassFish. Some time ago the GlassFishplugins project was created on java.net just to encourage the creation of different plugins to popular IDEs. Early on we added pointers to the NetBeans plugins for GlassFish and last week the initial version of the Eclipse plugin was added to the project.

I'm excited to announce that you can now download the initial version of the Eclipse plugin and try it out. The plugin requires Eclipse 3.1 and is based on Eclipse WPT and includes a quick start guide. You can download the plugin, ask questions on the forum or mailing lists, or contribute to the next release of the plugin. See project GlassFishplugins for details.

Hibernate and GlassFish

A couple of users have asked how to get Hibernate running with GlassFish. I remembered an article on just that topic written for SJSAS 8.1 although most of the information still applies. Ram describes how to configure Hibernate 2.0 to run on the app server.

I had forwarded pointer to that article to several people who found it useful so I thought I would try to reach a larger audience.

GlassFish technology pages on EJB 3.0 and deployment

Ken Saks from the EJB group in GlassFish has written up some samples for the new EJB 3.0 APIs. There are samples for Stateless, Stateful and Message Driven Beans and all include the source, instructions for deploying and at least one client. Take a look to become more familiar with this technology.

Tim Quinn has published a page describing how deployment works in GlassFish with examples on the different ways users can deploy their application.

GlassFish MileStone 4 available

GlassFish is targeting Feb 6 as the release date for Beta and it's just over a month way. MileStone 4 is the hardcode freeze build which means only approved bug fixes are allowed in the workspace at this time. See the download page to download the server and for the list of bugs fixed in this bundle.

Aside from many bug fixes added, I noticed that this bundle checks that each application deployed defines Java EE 5 deployment descriptors when using annotations and will not allow J2EE 1.4 applications using annotations to be deployed. Downside is deployment time is considerably longer so the next promoted build will allow you to optionally set this feature. Default will be to not test.

With each newly promoted build the server will be more and more stable so I encourage you to try the latest builds of GlassFish. For GlassFish news and highlights checkout the weblog The Aquarium

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