Available now, Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1 is based on its open source counterpart, the GlassFish Server Open Source Edition. Version 3.1 focuses on high-availability features such as load balancing, failover, state management and centralized administration.
"With this release, Oracle is delivering on the roadmap we announced at and responding to the increasing demand for Oracle GlassFish Server by adding new features for enterprise management and high availability to help customers reduce application and deployment complexity and increase developer productivity and system uptime," said Oracle's Steven Harris, senior vice president for application server development, in a statement released by the company.
Other capabilities include improvements for OSGi support, including JDBC, HTTP Service, and Apache Felix 3.0.8 backing. Felix is an OSGi service platform. OSGi offers modularity for Java. Version 3.1 also offers faster startup and deployment as well as integration with the NetBeans and Eclipse IDEs.
GlassFish MQ capabilities in version 3.1 enable high-availability messaging. Version 3.1 also improves manageability by supporting as many as 100 instances in a single domain. Remote node management is enabled via integration with the SSH (Secure Shell) network protocol. Oracle Coherence is supported for in-memory session state replication.
GlassFish Server is the reference implementation for Java EE and also serves as proving grounds for the . Oracle also unveiled on Wednesday an updated Java EE SDK, for building and deploying Java EE 6 applications. The SDK comes in two versions -- one for the entire Java EE 6 platform, and another just for the Java Web Profile for building Web applications. Labeled as Java EE 6 SDK Update 2, it is based on the open source edition of GlassFish 3.1 and features code samples, APIs, documentation, and tutorials.
GlassFish Server 3.1 offers increased compatibility with Oracle WebLogic Server 11g application server, including application portability, Oracle said. When Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems in early 2010, it added GlassFish to the other application servers in the Oracle product list, which included the WebLogic Server product gained when Oracle . WebLogic Server, according to Oracle, is designed to run the broader Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g portfolio.
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