Sun Microsystems is attempting to move deeper into the world of open source software with its Sun GlassFish Portfolio. Now included are a light-weight LAMP-style stack (which itself includes Tomcat, Memcached, Squid and Lighttpd with support for PHP, Ruby and Java) a Sun GlassFish Liferay-portal-based Web Space Server, and a JBI-base ESB. A proprietary Sun Enterprise Manager for monitoring is also available. GlassFish has arisen as a potential lightweight alternative to established J2EE application server architecture - but Sun likes to note that GlassFish can span from the light-weight to the heavy-weight solution. Read the rest at http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/soa-talk/light-weight-open-source-themes-discussed-at-sun-glassfish-portfolio-debut/ .

All this talk of modularity and its benefits (i.e. lightweight container), but there's only one viable module system for java today, and that's OSGi. I wonder why it isn't mentioned? There was a big announcement a few months ago when GlassFish first started using an OSGi Framework - Apache Felix I believe. It must still be the case, but the article doesn't mention it anywhere...

This particular announcement does not include GlassFish v3 which is still in development. GlassFish v3 achives its modularly being built around OSGi. It covers the GlassFish v2 code line with the release of GlassFish v2.1, a corresponding Telco appserver built on top of GlassFish v2.1 i.e. Sailfin 1.0, and commercial support offerings from Sun around these.

This particular announcement does not include GlassFish v3 which is still in development. GlassFish v3 achives its modularly being built around OSGi.

While it's built around OSGi, it's an implementation detail and that's why it's not really advertised as OSGi. It started with their H2 model, then they ported to OSGi. I believe if/when the Module JSR ever comes to light, they'll likely port to that as their module implementation layer. So, essentially, they're OSGi "agnostic". And they're certainly not an OSGi "platform".

Hey, JBoss 5 supports OSGi. Does this mean we're "lightweight" now too? Are we? Huh? Are We?

I like this bit:

GlassFish has arisen as a potential lightweight alternative to established J2EE application server architecture - but Sun likes to note that GlassFish can span from the light-weight to the heavy-weight solution.

But... Glassfish is an established J2EE architecture - it's the reference implementation! "Appserver X is an alternative to Appserver X's basic architecture." i.e.... what?

Does this mean we're "lightweight" now too? Are we? Huh? Are We?

you most certainly aren't lightweight ;-)

Alot of them on the serverside these days.... Meaning that really useful ones like 'Avoid Java transactions pitfalls with Spring' disappear off the front page too quickly. Well done.

Hey,

JBoss 5 supports OSGi. Does this mean we're "lightweight" now too? Are we? Huh? Are We?

Bill, Maybe you need to talk to some of your colleagues a bit more :-) (Bill works at Red Hat for those who don't know) JBoss 5 does not actually appear to be anywhere close to supporting OSGi: http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=148973&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 Colin

Hey,

JBoss 5 supports OSGi. Does this mean we're "lightweight" now too? Are we? Huh? Are We?

Bill,

Maybe you need to talk to some of your colleagues a bit more :-) (Bill works at Red Hat for those who don't know)

JBoss 5 does not actually appear to be anywhere close to supporting OSGi:

http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=148973&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Colin

I am sure our Bill will respond shortly with logical explanation and clarification.

Hey,

JBoss 5 supports OSGi. Does this mean we're "lightweight" now too? Are we? Huh? Are We?

Bill,

Maybe you need to talk to some of your colleagues a bit more :-) (Bill works at Red Hat for those who don't know)

JBoss 5 does not actually appear to be anywhere close to supporting OSGi:

http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=148973&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Colin

Touche! Guess I'm too RESTful lately and shouldn't rely on press clippings to learn about my own company's products. :) I'll shut up now. Good day...

Lightweight Java EE is so 2008. In 2009 all the buzz is about weightless Java EE. A new generation of app servers using JSR 40345 (Java Anti-Gravity) use no memory, start up in 0ms and can be deployed all the way from a ZX Sinclair Spectrum to a Cray supercomputer.

Heavyweight: ClassCastException Lighweight: ClassNotFoundException FlyWeight: IllegalStateException William

Lightweight Java EE is so 2008.

In 2009 all the buzz is about weightless Java EE.

A new generation of app servers using JSR 40345 (Java Anti-Gravity) use no memory, start up in 0ms and can be deployed all the way from a ZX Sinclair Spectrum to a Cray supercomputer.

LOL... sign me up for the early beta for the ZX Spectrum, I'm another veteran. I wonder if at least JavaCard could be ported there?

Go Tomcat Go...

This is simply a branding exercise by Sun, trying to leverage the Glassfish name. There's is some "new" work here, notably the bundling of a LAMP stack for folks to use, but otherwise it doesn't appear to be much more than when they were putting "Sun Java Enterprise" on everything.

(branding + commercial open source + cheap ) X bad economy = opportunity

what is the exact name of sun application server? is it sun one? glassfish? sun application server? or Sun GlassFish Enterprise ? by the why it is funny to see that official web site of glasssfish https://glassfish.dev.java.net/ is hosted on jboss application server X-Powered-By: Servlet 2.4; JBoss-4.0.4.GA (build: CVSTag=JBoss_4_0_4_GA date=200605151000)/Tomcat-5.5

It's either "GlassFish" or "GlassFish Enterprise" (for the supported version). Anything else is now deprecated. Let's hope this remains simple. As for what CollabNet is using to power java.net, I don't think it's a great showcase for the product...