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Oracle has announced a new version of its Java application server, Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1, as well as an update to the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 6 software development kit distribution through the latest release of the Java EE 6 Reference Implementation.
The new GlassFish release provides enhanced application-development capabilities, centralized administration and high availability features.
Oracle GlassFish Server is based on its open-source counterpart, GlassFish Server Open Source Edition. Oracle officials said the new GlassFish release delivers on the roadmap laid out at JavaOne 2010 with a focus on new high-availability features specifically in the areas of load balancing, failover, state management and centralized administration.
“Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1 delivers a flexible, lightweight and extensible Java EE 6 platform,” Steven Harris, senior vice president of application-server development at Oracle, said in a statement. “With this release, Oracle is delivering on the roadmap we announced at JavaOne 2010 and responding to the increasing demand for Oracle GlassFish Server by adding features for enterprise management and high-availability to help customers reduce application and deployment complexity and increase developer productivity and system uptime.”
Moreover, as the reference implementation for Java EE, Oracle GlassFish Server also is serving as a proving ground for the upcoming Java EE 7. Oracle has already begun working within the JCP (Java Community Process) to submit JSRs (Java Specification Requests) as part of Java EE 7, including JPA 2.1 and JAX-RS 2.0.
Oracle GlassFish Server complements Oracle WebLogic Server 11g, which is designed to run the broader portfolio of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g and large-scale enterprise applications, Oracle said in a press release on the new application server.
Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1 features developer productivity improvements, which enable more rapid development and help to decrease costs and time to market, including new features for OSGi Enterprise including support for JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) and HTTP Service, as well as Apache Felix 3.0.8.
Oracle claims developer productivity is enhanced to the point that the new version delivers a 29 percent faster startup/deploy/re-deploy cycle than GlassFish 3.0.1.
The new version also has enhanced tools integration with NetBeans and Eclipse, as well as increased compatibility with Oracle WebLogic Server 11g, improving application portability.
The latest version also delivers a 34 percent improvement in high-availability performance over GlassFish 2.1.1. The high-availability features enable customers to experience greater application uptime and faster application responsiveness. And GlassFish 3.1 provides failover and load-balancing capabilities, as well as built-in HTTP and EJB (Enterprise Java Bean) state management.
Other key features of GlassFish Server 3.1 include:
- Integration with SSH for remote node management
- High availability messaging with GlassFish MQ
- Centralized administration enabling customers to monitor and manage clusters and standalone servers securely from a single Web-based console, helping to decrease operational costs and respond to changes quickly
- Improvement in manageability with support of up to 100 instances in a domain
- Allows centralized policy-driven management of GlassFish Metro Web Services from Oracle Web Services Manager
- Highly productive management console via Oracle GlassFish Server Control to provide a more seamless end-user experience.
- Up to a 300% performance improvement out of the box
- Built-in performance tuning and load-balancer configuration tooling
- Supports Oracle Coherence for in-memory session state replication
- Seamless application single sign-on through integration with Oracle Access Manager