Duke in an aquarium visiting a glassfish?

In een ruim 5 uur durende presentatie heeft Oracle gisteren haar volledige strategie rondom hardware en software, gevoed door de overname van Sun Microsystems, aan de rest van de wereld gepresenteerd. Voor enkele miljoenen kijkende mensen wereldwijd werd vanaf 18:00 Nederlandse tijd de grootste webcast ooit gehouden. Conclusie: Oracle gaat met grote vaart enorm investeren in zowel Sun hardware als ook de volledige Java stack van Sun met als grootste speerpunt de gehele Glassfish portfolio. Graag nemen wij u even mee in de belangrijkste highlights op software gebied.

Java SE 7
Op korte termijn lanceert Oracle de nieuwste marktstandaard Java SE versie 7 voor desktop PC’s. Men gaat zich hier met name richten op native multi-core ondersteuning. Ook gaat Oracle het gevreesde Permgenspace probleem aanpakken in de HotSpot en JRockit JVMs.

Glassfish AS en ESB
Oracle heeft aangekondigd dat men Glassfish verder gaat ontwikkelen en ook leidend zal laten zijn als Java EE reference implementation. Men gaat hardwerken aan Java EE versie 7 en ook is men nu al bezig met de planning voor Glassfish v4 waarin name het Metro component en de multi-threading en IO non-blocking componenten verder worden uitgebreid. Opvallend was de mededeling dat er ook gewerkt wordt aan een nieuwe eigen virtualisatie server, gebaseerd op Sun Virtualbox, die een Glassfish Applicatieserver en Enterprise Servicebus direct laat communiceren met de Sun CPU’s. Hierdoor zullen bestaande Java EE applicatiesystemen, zonder aanpassingen, een veel hogere performance geven op Sun hardware.

Glassfish Webspace Server
Ook is aangekondigd dat Oracle de Glassfish Webspace Server actief zal blijven ontwikkelen. Ook hier zal een synergie ontstaan tussen het strategische product Oracle Webcenter en de huidige GlassFish WebSpace Server waarbij componenten uit beide platformen in elkaar zullen overvloeien. Onder andere zullen componenten van Oracle Webcenter gedoneerd worden aan de Apache Liferay (de basis van Glassfish Webspace Server). Voor klanten dus een duidelijk beleid rondom portal technologie: Glassfish Webspace Server als open source, GPL licentie, en Oracle Webcenter als Enterprise closed source oplossing, conform Oracle licentie beleid.

Netbeans en Jdeveloper
Oracle heeft een duidelijk beleid rondom haar Java IDE’s. Netbeans wordt verder doorontwikkeld als enige echte Java/J2EE ontwikkelomgeving, gericht op open source componenten en methodieken zoals Continuous Integration en Unit Testing. Jdeveloper wordt volledig gericht op het ondersteunen van de specifieke software Oracle Fusion Middleware en Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF). Daarnaast blijft Oracle actief de plugins voor Eclipse ontwikkelen. Opvallend en zeer positief is dat Oracle de Sun technologie Hudson verder integreert in Oracle’s volledige software lifecycle en sourecode management omgeving. Oracle kiest hier dus duidelijk voor de beste oplossingen en is niet te beroerd om de huidige Oracle productlijn te wijzigen.

openSSO en openESB
Daar waar er eerder geluiden waren dat de openSSO en openESB trajecten stil zouden komen te liggen bij een overname van Sun door Oracle, is het sinds deze presentatie van Oracle heel duidelijk geworden: Oracle gaat verder en gaat vol investeren om zowel openSSO en openESB door te laten groeien. Zeer goed nieuws voor de Java wereld. Dit betekent ook concreet daar Oracle’s eigen identity management oplossingen (Oracle OID) meer gebaseerd wordt op de openSSO methodieken. Onder andere zal Sun ;s Role Manager een strategisch product. Beide producten zullen meer en meer naar elkaar toe gaan groeien.

Java Mobile
Oracle heeft aangekondigd om de verschillen tussen de het javaME platform en het JAVA SE platform te verkleinen en de developer hierin een handreiking te doen. JavaME moet beter op de kaart worden gezet in de mobile wereld.

Conclusie
Daar waar er in de afgelopen maanden van uit sommige kampen huiverig gekeken werd naar de overname van Sun door Oacle is deze angst onterecht gebleken. Oracle gaat investeren en uitbreiden. Zo is er aangekondigd minimaal 2.000 extra ontwikkelaars aan te trekken om dit alles mogelijk te maken. De omvang van investeringen in het J2EE ontwikkelgebied is enorm. Oracle zal een grote bijdrage gaan leveren aan de verdere ontwikkeling van Open Source J2EE. Concurrenten zoals JBoss en Mule zullen het lastig gaan krijgen met deze nieuwe koers van Oracle, hun huidige achterstand op de J2EE standaarden zal in de komende jaren alsmaar groter worden indien zij niet dezelfde investeringen gaan doen die Oracle van plan is te doen.

Te raadplegen bronnen
Alle informatie en presentaties zijn terug te vinden op http://www.oracle.com/us/sun/044498.html

Oracle Corporation announced today that it will host a live event for customers, partners, press and analysts on January 27, 9:00 AM – 2:00 PM PT, at its headquarters in Redwood Shores, California. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, along with executives from Oracle and Sun, will outline the strategy for the combined companies, product roadmaps, and how customers will benefit from having all components - hardware, operating system, database, middleware, and applications - engineered to work together. The event will be broadcast globally. Details are available at http://www.oracle.com/sun.

Sometimes things change within a corporate network. And sometimes these changes also impact a GlassFish domain.
How much does relocating a server impact the GlassFish Domain?
That depends; When the glassfish installation was performed using proper DNS / hostnames then there should not be very much impact. When the GlassFish configuration itself (like JDBC resources or resource adapters) are also spared of IP-address usages then the impact should be diminished even further.

Unfortunately GlassFish uses some internal components which store the more physical information of the network location of the various GlassFish instances in a domain. This becomes apparent when the GlassFish domain is relocated to another IP-address range or VLAN.

Starting the domain after changing its underlying networkstructure could result in not being able to start domain or server instances within the domain. The logfiles might indicate that a connection to the IMQBroker has not been possible within the last 6000 milliseconds.

java.lang.RuntimeException: MQJMSRA_LB4001: start:Aborted:
Unable to ping Broker within 60000 millis (startTimeOut)

An exception like this will also be shown in the logfiles of the failing instance:
[C4003]: Error occurred on connection creation [localhost:37676].
- cause: java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused

The most common cause for this is network problems. Checking the correct DNS lookup and reverse lookup of the DAS and the various nodes containing in stances in the domain will provide more information whether there is a network problem.
If DNS lookup succeeds and the hosts-file of the operating system does not contain any incorrect references then other things might go wrong.

The problem could also lie within a corrupted persistent store of the IMQbroker(s). Looking at the imq log.txt files which are located in the server instance folders (and more specifically in the imq/instances/[full unique instancename]/log folder within the nodeagents folder) one might see message like:
ERROR [B3095]: Cannot join the cluster because of persistent store state mismatch. Please clear the existing persistent store with “-reset store” and try again. Broker exiting.

Clearing the persistent store can actually be done by executing the imqbroker daemon using the -reset store parameters.  Issue the following command from within the [GLASSFISH-HOME]/imq/bin directory:
./imqbrokerd -varhome [GLASSFISH_HOME]/nodeagents/[NODEAGENT_NAME]/[AFFECTED_INSTANCENAME]/imq -name [CLUSTERNAME][INSTANCENAME] -reset store

Replace the variables between brackets as appropriate! Mind the -name argument which contains a concatenated cluster and instancename!

For example:
/opt/glassfish-v2.1/imq/bin/imqbrokerd -varhome /opt/glassfish-v2.1/nodeagents/domain1-nodeagent1/serverinstance1/imq -name myclusterserverinstance1 -reset store

After this has been started, stop it and start the server instance which would previously not start. The persistent store for this instance has been cleared so a rendez-vous with the DAS should now work once again.

This morning the Zembly support team of Sun anounced the suspension of Zembly service.

Zembly was a tool where developers where able to build online API’s and publish it through REST services. It was also possible to generate Zembly service clients with Netbeans inside Java applications.

So it seems that from november 30 this year, everybody who used Zembly inside their applications and projects will loose all their Zembly functionalities, because the online service will be offline from that specific date.

Official anouncement is made by mailgroup, and on the Zembly site.

On April 20, 2009, Oracle announced that it has agreed to acquire Sun Microsystems. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and until such time as the transaction closes, the companies remain separate and independent companies and it is business as usual. Since the announcement, Oracle has made many public statements to reiterate its commitment to Sun’s business, including continued focus on hardware and software technologies such as SPARC, Solaris, and Java. Customers are expected to see increased investment from Oracle after the transaction closes to ensure continued innovation and success for customers of both companies. Oracle expects to deliver the following benefits after the transaction closes:

What are Oracle’s plans for the GlassFish Enterprise (Java EE) Server after the transaction closes?
Oracle plans to continue evolving GlassFish Enterprise Server, delivering it as the open source reference implementation (RI) of the Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) specifications, and actively supporting the large GlassFish community. Additionally, Oracle plans to invest in aligning common infrastructure components and innovations from Oracle WebLogic Server and GlassFish Enterprise Server to benefit both Oracle WebLogic Server and GlassFish Enterprise Server customers.

What are Oracle’s plans for NetBeans?
Oracle has a strong track record of demonstrating commitment to choice for Java developers. As such, NetBeans is expected to provide an additional open source option and complement to the two free tools Oracle already offers for enterprise Java development: Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse. While Oracle JDeveloper remains Oracle’s strategic development tool for the broad portfolio of Oracle Fusion Middleware products and for Oracle’s next generation of enterprise applications, developers will be able to use whichever free tool they are most comfortable with for pure Java and Java EE development: JDeveloper, Enterprise Pack for Eclipse, or NetBeans.

How will Sun’s Identity Management and SOA products fit into Oracle’s middleware strategy?
Sun’s Identity Management and SOA products (JCAPS) are expected to be integrated into the Oracle Fusion Middleware product family. Sun and Oracle’s Identity Management (IdM) and SOA products bring distinct and unique areas of strength. The combined products will benefit from increased R&D, rapid innovation, increased support for open standards, and a much larger ecosystem of partners and users. Oracle is committed to ensuring that the investments of Sun customers in middleware products are protected similar to what we have done for past acquisitions.

How does Oracle support open source?
Oracle has long been committed to developing, supporting, and promoting open source. Oracle has been, and continues to be, committed to offering choice, flexibility, and a lower cost of computing for end users. Oracle has invested significant resources in developing, testing, optimizing and supporting open source technologies such as Linux, PHP, Apache, Eclipse, Berkeley DB, and InnoDB. Oracle continues to embrace and offer open source solutions as a viable choice for development and deployment. More information about Oracle’s support of open source can be found atoracle.com/opensource.

The Glassfish v3 schedule has been updated because of several reasons, explained by Abhijit Kumar.
See his message here

We can expect the final release by Dec 10.
See full Glassfish v3 details here

GlassFish V2 offers out of the box support for JMX to handle various GlassFish administration tasks which you can also do through the adminconsole like depoy applications, add connectors and resources and so on.

GlassFish supports the JSR-77 J2EE management standard by offering a variety of standard MBeans to access the configuration of GlassFish but also to monitor various aspects of the GlassFish instance and domain.
GlassFish offers access to dozens of MBeans through the RMI server which, by default, listens on port 8686.

However, although you can retreive very much information about your currently installed (running) GlassFish installation, you might run into a connection problem when trying to connect to the RMI server from a remote host. Connecting JConsole from the same machine should work, it’s out of scope of this article if you do have problems accessing JMX locally.

When using JConsole from a remote machine to connect to GlassFish you see the following error:

java.lang.NullPointerException
at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnector.connect(RMIConnector.java:281)
at sun.tools.jconsole.ProxyClient.tryConnect(ProxyClient.java:348)

Along with something like:

connection refused to host : 127.0.0.1; nested exception is:
java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused

The RMI server is refusing to connect to the client because of network issues.
You need to tell your RMI server in GlassFish on which hostname its listening for JMX connections by adding a JVM property to the GlassFish domain admin server in the Adminconsole.
You can find these JVM Options in the Adminconsole by navigating to Configurations -> server-config -> JVM Settings and finally clicking on the tab JVM Options.

Click on the Add JVM option button and add the following JVM option

-Djava.rmi.server.hostname=<hostname>

where you replace <hostname> with the hostname of the GlassFish instance.

The RMI server now knows on which hostname its listening and will start to accept remote connections.
Restart the domain to reload the JVM options and retry the JMX connection. It should work now.

Online Widget development

Zembly is an online platform, where you can create your own Widgets and publish your own RESTfull webservices. If you already have a SUN webaccount, you can login and maintain your applications. It is also possible to use other public Widgets and services from other Zembly users. There are several services available from Google, Facebook, Myspace, Amazon, and so on…. Please visit http://zembly.com for discovering all possibilities.

Zembly plugin

Through Netbeans 6.7 there’s a Zembly Web API Client plugin available. With this plugin it is possible to consume RESTfull API services published on Zembly, inside your own Java applications. There’s a nice tutorial on the Netbeans site that explains how to consume a Google Translator engine inside a Swing application. Go here to try out the tutorial.

Calling RESTfull API Services inside java

Inside the above tutorial, you first have to setup the basic swing screen, with a form. But the real action where the Zembly client is used begins from the “Adding the Google Translate Operation from Zembly” section. That section can be applied on any kind of Model-View-Controller pattern. JSF, Spring-MVC, Portlets, Webflow, Wicket. The main issue is, that we have a generic Java client available for Zembly API services. Another nice way to implement cloud principles.

The Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE), the industry standard for building enterprise and web applications, has innovated over the years to cover an increasing range of application needs. The latest edition, Java EE 6, improves on the Java EE 5 developer productivity features, breaks the “one size fits all” approach with Profiles, adds extensibility, and more.

This webinar will get you developing with Java EE 6 today and will cover:

• Java EE evolution
• Java EE 6 features overview
• GlassFish v3 features
• Getting started with Java EE 6

Find registration page here.