EasyBeans is available for download. The project targets implementation of an open source container based on the EJB 3 (Enterprise Java Beans, JSR 220) specification. EasyBeans is designed to be easy to use, pluggable and scalable.

Compared to the previous version 2.1 of the EJB specifications, EJB 3 aims to simplify application development with EJBs. When designing EasyBeans, project leader Florent Benoit and his team focused on making the developer's life even easier. But since performance and reliability are critical for such middleware, the team also took care of the quality and the efficiency of the code since day one and came up with a robust and scalable architecture.

EasyBeans can be deployed on a Java EE application server through a RAR connector. The JOnAS J2EE 1.4 application server comes with EasyBeans since version 4.6, in addition to the existing EJB 2.1 service. EasyBeans is expected to be used to implement the EJB 3 container in the future Java EE 5 certified version of JOnAS.

EasyBeans is designed to be integrated in a web container through a web application. An example of such integration with Tomcat is expected to be available soon.
     
EasyBeans can also be used standalone. In this configuration, EasyBeans provides the features of a lightweight container, without requiring the deployment and administration of a full-fledged J2EE application server.

EasyBeans relies on the byte code generation technology using ASM, an ObjectWeb project that is quickly becoming a reference for bytecode injection and interceptor mechanisms in the open source community. This choice was made over a reflective architecture so to get better performance at runtime. The current version of EasyBeans uses Hibernate for persistence. Speedo is expected to be supported in future versions too.

The code is made easy to understand, debug, localize, so that open source developers can easily get involved and contribute to the project. Special attention has been paid to limiting the impact of such features on the container's performance.

EasyBeans makes it easy to deploy applications by suppressing the need of client-side RMI stubs.

Hot redeploy features take care of undeploy / deploy sequences that often happen in a project development lifecycle. Modifications in the application source code are taken into account on the fly without wasting the developer's time with counterproductive packaging phases.
 
EasyBeans is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

Glad to hear that you also try to get an EJB3 Container.
Please also consider hibernate for persistence in future even if it from one of your competitor.

Best luck for Florent and his team.

Georges

Hmm, the announcement states Hibernate is supported already. Did you mean anything else?

Glad to hear that you also try to get an EJB3 Container.Please also consider hibernate for persistence in future even if it from one of your competitor.Best luck for Florent and his team.Georges

"The current version of EasyBeans uses Hibernate for persistence. Speedo is expected to be supported in future versions too."

<blockquoteEasyBeans is designed to be integrated in a web container through a web application. An example of such integration with Tomcat is expected to be available soon.
Can someone briefly explain how that will work with Tomcat? I will be able to deploy a .war to Tomcat and run an EJB3 app?

Mike

Can someone briefly explain how that will work with Tomcat? I will be able to deploy a .war to Tomcat and run an EJB3 app?Mike

Yes, by deploying a .war file. And for a global setup, it could be done also by using a Listener (as for other global Tomcat listeners in the server.xml configuration file).

poor doc and api ,hope comming !

There is a simple "Getting Started for JOnAS" in SVN :
http://svn.forge.objectweb.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/*checkout*/easybeans/trunk/easybeans/build/packages/jonas/GettingStarted.html?rev=27

The doc is comming soon, but you can always generate the javadoc (very complete and instructive) from the sources ...

There is no documentation on the web site, and the link to svn is not working.
Is it a sign of a very poor quality API?
I wanted to have a look on this container but I don't want to download all the API...

When I say that some doc is coming soon that's true :)

Check the updated web site :
http://easybeans.objectweb.org/documentation.html