Here is a list of activities related to the Migrate to GlassFish project that I am working on. There is a timeline towards the end of activities. Let me know your feedback. Oh, by the way, here is the full quote:

Four steps to achivement: "Plan purposefully. Prepare prayerfully. Proceed positively. Pursue persistently." William A. Ward.

Examples

I am going to be taking some examples and migrating them to GlassFish. The purpose is to show migration issues and solutions. Here are some examples to get started. I plan to migrate at least one example from each application server and to cover different Java EE technologies.

• Tomcat 6.x -> GF : Helloworld from Tomcat 6.x distribution. Actually this is already done. See here.
• JBoss 4.2.2 -> GF: Todo example from JBoss 4.2.2 "Getting Started Guide". This example uses JSF, facelets, localejbs, Persistence API. I am close to finishing this.
• Websphere 6.x -> GF: The Samples Gallery (installed by default on a typical Websphere installation) contains several examples. I plan to pick one or two samples - most likely from Tech Samples & Web services samples - to cover different Java EE/J2EE technologies.
• Weblogic -> GF: I will be looking for an example. If you know of a good example, feel free to suggest.

I can add to that list based on feedback.

Watch for my blogs for more information on the migration examples.

Tools

There are several tools that can assist in migrate to GF. The Migration tool is obviously an important one. More on this shortly. But there are a few others that I have found useful while working on migration examples.

• verifier tool included in GlassFish distribution. This can be used to verify an ear/war file.
• Netbeans project (Enterprise -> Packaged Archive). This project allows opening of binary archives, editing of run time deployment descriptors, verification of ear/war and deploying to GlassFish.
• Java AVK to verify application's use of Java EE/J2EE compatible
  APIS.

Watch for my future blogs for more information on the tools and examples on when and how to use them in migrating an application to GlassFish.

Migration Tool

The Migration Tool assists in migration to GF through support for migration of deployment descriptors, some custom JSPS and so on. (See here for details). Some of the plans here are:

• Run Migration Tool on ears/wars in Examples and capture issues in IssueTracker.
• Add support for newer versions of application servers.
• bug fixes and enhancements based on the usage of tool. I started to use the IssueTracker for filing issues with the tool.
• Make the tool more extensible/pluggable.
• Examples showing the use of Migration Tool on ears/wars generated on other application servers.

I will blog when I have more information on above.

Migration Guide

I plan to start a migration guide. The idea is that over time this guide will cover a list of migration issues to GF and solutions to them. For example, a search through the GF forums and mailing lists turns up a list of migration issues. The questions have been answered, or under discussions or have RFEs filed against them and so on. It would be useful to start collecting these different issues/answers. So, initialy, I plan to start compiling a list of GF migration issues and start adding them to the migration guide. This can evolve over time to include additional text, examples, etc.

To get an idea of what the guide might contain, here is a sample of topics on which questions related to JBoss -> GF migration that I found on GF forums:

• Migration of SAR (Service Archives)
• MBean deployment
• Multiple questions on SEAM on GlassFish
• Deployment of resources in EAR
• Entity caching
• Dynamic creation of JMS topic
• Virtual directory mapping - how to on GF.
• Dynamic Role Handling

You get the idea. I plan to host this "guide" in a wiki format on Migrate to GlassFish . Anyone with a java.net id will be able to edit this guide. So, we really welcome any contributions to this guide.

Watch for my future blog on this topic with additional details.

Migration Tool : On Line Documentation and Online Help

Currently the migration tool comes with two sets of documentation:

• Online Documentation
• Help menus included in the migration tool itself.

The duplication of content means more maintenance work. So, going forward, we plan to remove the duplication as follows.

• Retain only the section Migrating the application in the Help menus in the tool. Remove all the other menus.
• Retain all section other than Migrating the application in the Online Documentation

Watch for my future blog on the topic.

Timeline of activities

Here is a rough timeline of different activities:

• Feb 08, 2008: JBoss -> GF example
• Feb 15, 2008: Websphere 6.x -> GF example
• Feb 19, 2008: Verifier example
• Feb 22, 2008: Weblogic -> GF example
• Feb 22, 2008: Netbeans plugin for verifier
• Feb 26, 2008: Java AVK example
• Feb 11, 2008: Start Migration Guide - ongoing
• Feb 11, 2008 - Feb 29, 2008: Run migration tool and capture issues in IssueTracker
• March 1, 2008: Start Migration Tool bug fixing
• March 1, 2008: Start removal of duplication of Migration Tool Online Documentation and Help menus
• March 1, 2008: Start investigation of making the tool pluggable/extensible

So there is the plan. Let me know your feedback.