Date: 26-Nov-2009   URL: www.sun.com/software/products/appsrvr/features.xml

Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server

Features and Benefits

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.


Features & Benefits
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
 
 
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