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Switched

Glassfish logo Yes this is my obligatory Glassfish V2 post but listen, for me V2 is a pretty big big deal. Like Eclipse, which was the IDE that pulled me away from VIM, Glassfish V2 is the app server that finally pulled me away from Tomcat.

You see, I've been using Tomcat every day for a very long time. I started back in 2000 when I worked at HAHT Software and I was working on the new "Rocketsled" J2EE version of the HAHTsite app server. We were ripping out the old proprietary page engine and plugging in Tomcat. It was a pleasure to work with and I learned a hell of a lot from the code-base. After joining Sun and switching from Eclipse to Netbeans because Sun-on-Sun matters, I still stuck with Tomcat. It's what we were using for blogs.sun.com and Glassfish was just too bulky and slow. I grew to love Netbeans, but I couldn't stomach Glassfish, until now.

Now that Glassfish V2 is out I'm switching from Tomcat to Glassfish for all of my development. It's more than fast enough. With Glassfish on my MacBook Pro, Roller restart time is about 8 seconds compared to 16 with Tomcat. And the quality is high; the admin console, the asadmin command-line utility and the docs are all excellent. The dog food is surprisingly tasty ;-)

Congrats to the Glassfish team!

Dave Johnson in Sun Comments [5]
Tags: glassfish java

Comments:

Continue to keep us honest! Roller+GFv2 should be a great enterprise-quality deployment environment for the near future. Looking beyond that maybe GFv3 will provide an even better story - maybe you can have a version of roller with a bundled GFv3 container so it starts with zero config and very short start-up time. - eduard/o

Posted by eduardo pelegri-llopart on September 19, 2007 at 03:35 AM EDT #

I've heard a lot of good news on Glassfish, but for apps that only require a Servlet Container isn't Glassfish overkill? Even if it does start faster then Tomcat I bet it requires more memory, disk space, etc. Erik

Posted by Erik Weibust on September 19, 2007 at 08:53 PM EDT #

Hi Erik,

I haven't noticed that but yes it's possible/probable that GF uses more memory due to the additional components (EJB, JMS, etc.). That's why I thought I'd have to wait until the uber modular Glassfish V3 release to make the switch, but startup time is what matters most to me at development time.

- Dave

Posted by Dave Johnson on September 19, 2007 at 09:00 PM EDT #

Why does the extra bit of memory that Glassfish uses matter when servers and even workstations now have 1 GB - 4 GB of memory these days? I've heard the same argument from people who say IDEs use too much memory so they prefer text editors. What are you going to do with the 2 GB of memory in your laptop? Yes there are a few features you won't use in Glassfish today, but one day you might need them and will be pleased that Java EE has them built-in. For example: clustering, JCA, JPA, etc.

Posted by Ryan de Laplante on September 19, 2007 at 10:49 PM EDT #

[Trackback] In Switched , Dave says: Now that Glassfish V2 is out I'm switching from Tomcat to Glassfish for all of my development. It's more than fast enough. With Glassfish on my MacBook Pro, Roller restart time is about 8 seconds compared to 16 with Tomca...

Posted by Raible Designs on September 20, 2007 at 01:05 PM EDT #

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