The Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server provides the foundation to develop and deploy Java EE artifacts, including Web Services. It provides value-added services for management, monitoring, diagnostics, clustering, transaction management and high availability of mission-critical services.The Features and Benefits are as follows:
GlassFish v3 Preview
- Java EE 6 - Includes new and updated specifications, includes Web Profile distribution
- OSGi Runtime - Dynamically extensible, lightweight runtime platform that consumes minimal resources
- Improved Administration - Extensible administration (add custome features/commands), RESTful administration API
- Embedded API - Easily embed GlassFish Enterprise Server v3 in your solution
- Enhanced monitoring - Enables more granular monitoring with less overhead; includes Dtrace integration on Solaris
Java EE Compatible
- Implements Java EE 5, which helps improve developer efficiency
- Enterprise Java Beans 3.0 reduces the amount of code required by as much as 30 to 90%
- A new Persistence API allows maximum flexibility in specifying the mapping of Java business objects to a relational database
- Java Server Faces 1.2 simplifies the building of user interfaces for Web-based applications
- Use of Annotations reduces the need to edit and maintain separate files during development
Dynamic language support
- Enables deployment of JRuby and Groovy applications
Rapid iterative development features
- Simplifies development lifecycle of Java Web applications to "edit-save-refresh browser" by maintaining servlet session state after application redeploy
Clustering for scalability and high availability
- Create and manage clusters from a single administration console and manage a cluster as a single entity
- Dynamically grow or shrink a cluster by adding or removing application server instances
- Load-balancing plugin monitors cluster health and balances load across available instances
- Automatically update the load-balancing plugin
Breakthrough performance
- GlassFish is the fastest open-source application server, surpassing the industry's leading application servers
- GlassFish is highly scalable and optimized for multi-core servers, including Sun servers with CoolThreads technology
- Fast Infoset support improves Web services performance by a magnitude of 2x to 4x, with Sun's Project Metro JAX-WS surpassing other implementations
Open source foundation
- GlassFish Enterprise Server is based on Project GlassFish
Sophisticated administration
- Centralized administration of deployed instances and clusters
- Provides remote secure management using a browser-based admin console and a feature-equivalent scriptable command-line interface
- Enhanced application monitoring, visualization, and diagnosis
- Built-in management rules and triggers can be expanded programmatically
Integrated development support
- Includes NetBeans and Eclipse IDE support; refer to the GlassFish Plugins project
.NET 3.0 Web services interoperability
- Leveraging Project Metro (see above), Sun's Web Services stack, applications can interoperate with Windows Communication Foundation(WCF)
Update Center
- Quick access to new technologies such as Open ESB, jMaki, JRuby, additional samples and documentation
Improves developer productivity
- Provides simplified Java EE APIs and annotations, reducing the amount of code a developer needs to write by up to 78%
- Can speed start-up by up to 30% (on-demand initialization) and reduce memory requirements by up to 30%
- Java EE 5 SDK bundles GlassFish Enterprise Server, Netbeans, and Open ESB for building SOA components, managing a Web services stack, and providing a framework for a Federated Identity management system
