An introduction to GlassFish. Presented at the South African Oracle Java Developer Conference in May 2012.

1. GlassFish Application Server
An Introduction
By
Jumping Bean
21 May 2012

2. Who Am I?
● Mark Clarke – Java Developer
● Working for Jumping Bean, an open source
solutions integration company
● Working with Java & open source
technologies since 2001
● Co-founder of Jozi JUG

3. Jozi JUG

4. Jozi JUG
● Meet once a month in Johannesburg,
● Talk
● Beer
● Pizza
● All FREE!
● Where to find us?
– Meetup
– Facebook
– Web Site

5. GlassFish History
● 6 June 2005 – Glassfish launched by SUN
– based on Sun Java System Application
Server PE 9
– TopLink persistence code donated by Oracle.
● 4 May 2006 – Version 1 JEE 5 RI - aimed at
developers
● 17 Sep 2007 – Version 2 Clustering, MS
interop web services. Aimed at enterprise

6. GlassFish History
● 10 Dec 2009 – Version 3 Java EE6 RI.
Introduced OSGI, fast startup & redeploy on
change.
– New architecture,

7. Recent Releases
● Version 3.1 shipped Feb 28th 2011
– ssh-based provisioning, centralised admin,
clustering & load balancing (reintroduced)
● Version 3.1.1 shipped Jul 2011
– Bug fix release
● Version 3.1.2 shipped Feb 2012
– – bug fixes, new admin console features, new
thread pool properties, transaction recovery
from database

8. Future Releases
● Version 4.0 – Java EE7 – PaaS
– Some hints in V3

9. GlassFish Versions
● Oracle Glassfish Server
– Oracle supported version,
– Based on Open Source Edition + some closed
source bits,
– Similar to SUN's Glassfish Enterprise Server
● Glassfish Open Source Edition
– GPL or CDDL
– Community Supported

10. GlassFish Versions
* from blogs.oracle.com

11. GlassFish Versions
● Certified interoperability with Oracle Fusion
Middleware products:
– Oracle Internet Directory,
– Oracle Virtual Directory,
– Oracle, WebLogic Server,
– Oracle Access Manager
● Includes Oracle GlassFish Server Control for
improved manageability and performance of
production deployments

12. GlassFish Adoption
* from maps.glassfish,org/server

13. GlassFish Adoption
* from maps.glassfish,org/server

14. GlassFish Adoption
● World wide - 23,257,762 active users,
● South Africa – 268,449 active users.
* from maps.glassfish,org/server

15. Installing GlassFish
● Zip package
– No configuration wizard
– Update tool must be installed manually
– Manual uninstall
● Self-extracting bundle
– GUI installer, installer can be used to perform
configuration after installation,
– Can do silent mode installs, useful for scripting
– Option to install Update Tool,
– Uninstaller provided

16. Installing/Upgrading GlassFish
● Update tool
– Used to update server components,
– Install additional functionality
– Graphical & command line (pkg)
– In place upgrades

17. Why GlassFish?
● Easy to administer with GUI,
● Cluster wide management and deployment,
● Load balancing,
● Centralised administration,
● Support for the latest web services specs +
interoperability with Microsoft WCF,

18. Why GlassFish?
● Developer productivity,
● Modular architecture
– Extensible
– Embeddable
● Support for multiple languages
● In place upgrade.
● Built-in, fine-grained, monitoring

19. Developer Productivity
● Fast startup times
● User friendly Admin console interface,
● Excellent tooling
– Netbeans,
● Compile on Save
● Deploy on Change
– Eclipse,
– Maven support,
– IntelliJ,
● Scriptable via command line interface

20. Developer Productivity
● Session retention on redeploy

21. GlassFish Architecture
● Kernel
– hundred kilobyte kernel
– Startup/shutdown sequence
– Basic service deployment
– Reading config
● Services cross container functionality
– Security, JNDI
– Admin Console

22. GlassFish Architecture
● Container - Handle user applications
● E.G. Web container, EJB container

23. GlassFish Sub-Projects
● HK2 Kernel
– hundred kilobyte kernel
● Grizzly
– NIO based network listeners/connectors http
● OSGi
– Used for module system, swappable Apache
Felix or Knoperfish
● Tomcat – (modified) for servlet container

24. GlassFish Architecture
● Jersey – Provides REST Web Service
functionality
● Metro – Web service stack, SOAP etc
● Shoal – Clustering framework
● Majorra – JSF
● OpenMQ – Message Service

25. Embedded
● Testing
– EJBContainer API (EJB 3.1)
– Simple testing using Java SE (Junit, Maven)
● Packaging/Bundling
– Integration testing,
– Ship server with app

26. GlassFish Administration
Concepts
● Domain – An administrative name space.
Can administer multiple instances, on same or
different node.
– Domain Administration Server (DAS) used to
centrally administer domain
● Instance – Is a JVM process. Applications are
deployed to instances.
● Virtual Hosting – Each instance can do
virtual hosting

27. GlassFish Domains
● Multiple instances in a domain
● Instance can belong to only one
administrative domains
● One DAS per domain
● Each domain has own isolated configuration
● Standalone instances or clusters
– share applications and resources
● Each instance has own config for ports etc

28. GlassFish Administration
Channels
● Web App: Admin Console – easy to use,
● Command line: asadmin – bash scripting
● JMX – Admin GlassFish from your code,
● Restful API – REST client

29. GlassFish Administration
● Ease of administration - Can create
– new domains,
– New instances,
– Deploy applications
● Across nodes using SSH (Unix/Linux( or
DCOM(Windows)

30. GlassFish Clustering
● High Availability with clustering,
● Session replication,
● Fail-over,
● Application deployment support,

31. GlassFish Monitoring
● Monitoring via
– Admin console
– Asadmin command line utility
– REST interface
– JMX
● Monitoring Server
– Services – Off/Low/High
● JDBC connection
● HTTP services etc

32. Multi-Language Support
● Support can be installed via update manager
● PHP via
– jfastcgi
– php/java bridge
– Quercus – Java implementation of PHP
● Pyhton
– Jython container can run Django apps
– fastcgi

33. Multi-Language Support
● Grails
● Jruby
– Jruby container
● Scala/Lift
● Phobos
– javascript

34. Application Versioning
● Deploy multiple versions of an app, only one
enabled
● Commands
– asadmin deploy foo.war
– Asadmin deploy -name=foo:beta-1 foo.war
– Asadmin deploy -name-foo:beat-2 -enable
false foo.war
– Asadmin enable foo:beta-2

35. Application Versioning
● asadmin deploy -name=foo:rc1 foo.war
● asadmin undeploy foo:beat*
● asadmin undeploy foo:*

36. Application Scoped Resource
● Created and Destroyed when application is
deployed and undeployed
● Ensures no other application uses your
resources which are usually globally defined
● Modules with deployment descriptor scoped to
those modules only

37. Application Scoped Resource
● glassfish-resources.xml
– JDBC connection pool,
– JDBC rsources
– Connector Connection pools
– Resource adapters
– External JNDI resources,
– JavaMail resources

38. GlassFish – Java EE 7
● Multi-tenacy
● Application Versioning
● Virtualisation
● Modularity
● New Roles

39. GlassFish – An Introduction
The End