IT infrastructure giant and Linux newbie are offering the first Java application server to be bundled with Linux distro, Ubuntu.MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—Back in May at JavaOne, Sun Microsystems President Jonathan Schwartz and Canonical Ltd. Founder and President Mark Shuttleworth—creator of the Ubuntu distribution of GNU/Linux—promised to do a lot of business in the coming months.
Their promise is holding quite true six months later.
Sun and Canonical, a two-year-old U.K.-based commercial sponsor of the fast-growing Ubuntu, revealed Nov. 8 that the open-source Java Enterprise Edition 5 application server (specifically, the GlassFish Community reference implementation) is now certified and available to run on Ubuntu Server Edition, which was released on June 1.
The Java Community Process, which governs Java development, on Nov. 7 sanctioned the final JEE5 specification.
GlassFish is the first Java application server to be bundled with Ubuntu, Shuttleworth told eWEEK in an interview on the Google campus here, where Ubuntu developers were busily finalizing the next version of the Debian-based open-source operating system.
"This is going to be great for everybody doing development on these platforms," Tom Marble, senior Java Performance Engineer at Sun, told eWEEK.
"For example, if youre building a Web portal with interactive applications on NetBeans, to add the Ubuntu server all you have to do is find it on the drop-down list and add it. The application will find all the components needed to make it work, automatically. A few clicks, and it just all works," Marble said.
Other third-party components can also be popped easily into place. "For example, Struts is one of those popular pieces developers will be able to drop in quickly," said Jim Driscoll, engineering manager at Sun and member of the GlassFish team.
Shuttleworth said that this new certification (for GlassFish and JEE5) removes much of the programming drudgery and gives developers more quality time to create cutting-edge enterprise Java applications more rapidly than before.
"The combination of GlassFish and Ubuntu gives developers access to the leading open-source frameworks that will be key to developing next-generation Web 2.0 applications," he added.
Canonical also announced final certification and support for Ubuntu on Suns x64 (x86, 64-bit) hardware, which are powered by AMD Opteron microprocessors.
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At JavaOne, Shuttleworths company had announced certification of Ubuntu on Suns UltraSPARC processor-based Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers that use Suns energy-efficient CoolThreads technology.
The expansion announced Nov. 8 includes support for the Sun Fire X4100 and X4200 servers, as well as the Sun Ultra 20 and 40 Workstations. This means that enterprises will now be able to run Ubuntu on Suns x64 systems with the support of five-year software support provided by Canonical.
"Our support staff is based in Montreal," Shuttleworth said. "Well handle it, 24/7 [for Ubuntu on the Sun platforms]."
Shuttleworth said the chief technology officer of a London bank he visited recently has been "waiting and waiting for a good Linux server distribution to run on industry-standard hardware" to implement on his system.
"Sun has developed and built all these things carefully and extremely well—it is all well-documented," Shuttleworth said.
The GlassFish community is currently developing a JEE5 certified application server, which contains core modules upon which many other enterprise Java implementations will be based.
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