Glassfish Application Server Introduction

Glassfish is a popular open source application server that hosts J2EE applications like servlets, java server pages ,enterprise java beans.

Glassfish includes the latest features of J2EE 5.0. and this application server includes some of the latest versions J2EE technologies like Java Server Faces,Java API for Web Services. J2EE 5.0 is a comparatively new specification from Sun Microsystems regarding enterprise applications. And to date very few applications are available which comply with those complex specifications and Glassfish application server is one of them.

Glassfish is based on the source code for Sun Java System Application Server PE 9 which was donated by Sun Microsystems and it is a result of the buzzing community which advocates open source software and wants to contribute to the next generation of Sun Java Application Server.

Although Glassfish is open-source , it does not mean that this server lacks feature. In fact, this application server is of production quality meaning the industry strength applications and the fully functional enterprise applications can be developed for this server right away. Enterprise applications are supposed to face high traffic loads which may bog down the applications. The scalability is built right into the architecture of glassfish. This server can take loads of traffic without any hiccups.

Glassfish installation comes with many helpful softwares like high performance database JavaDB and many ready to use samples which makes it easy to see Glassfish application server in action. Large corporations require complex enterprise applications which are secure and easy to administrate. This application server includes a very comprehensive administration console which makes the task very easy. Moreover, one can easily configure security features like role based authentication right from within the console which can be accessed from remote systems too.

Java persistence API (JPA) is latest technology in the field of Java persistence and glassfish offers all the features that makes it compatible with JPA. Web services are getting more and more popular in Java world and it is considered very fruitful to write web services in Java. These web services require an efficient web services stack to work. The Web service stack is a group of computer networking protocols that are used to define, locate, implement, and make Web services interact with each other. The more efficient this stack is , the more efficient is web service. Glassfish boasts of a very good web services stack. Moreover the latest version of this application server supports Ajax and scripting.

The glassfish server community is rapidly snowballing and Sun and Oracle engineers themselves are contributing to this fantastic application server. Glassfish is bound to become the application server of choice due to its robustness and latest technology features.

I found a very good blog on Sun

GlassFish Solution GlassFish is a product, GlassFish is a community, but GlassFish is also a solution. A solution is something where software, hardware, and support ... More