Blogging Roller

Roller 5 and Glassfish 3

Dave Johnson — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 17:29:36 +0000

In my quest to make Roller work on Java EE 6, the first server that I decided to tackle was Glassfish 3. In this blog I'll describe how I approached the problem and what I learned along the way.

Tested with EclipseLink JPA

Roller uses JPA for persistence and specifically the Apache OpenJPA implementation. I knew that GlassFish uses the EclipseLink JPA implementation and I suspected that there would be JPA portability problems, so I decided to run Roller's JUnit tests against EclipseLink JPA. I wanted to find and fix those problems before even touching GlassFish. The tests ran and there were many JPA related failures and errors, most due to differences in the way that EclipseLink handles bi-directional relationships and the use of unmanaged objects.

Where OpenJPA is lenient about bi-directional relationships, EclipseLink requires you to manage both ends. For example, with OpenJPA you can get away with adding a bookmark to a folder with folder.addBookmark(bookmark), but with EclipseLink you'd also have to add bookmark.setFolder(folder).

Where OpenJPA is lenient about use of unmanaged objects, EclipseLink will complain bitterly whenever it finds one in a persisted collection or relationship. This was more of a problem in the tests than in the actual Roller code, which usually deals only with managed objects (i.e. those persisted to / loaded from the database and managed by the JPA implementation).

I was able to fix those problems easily and move onto the next step.

Created a Roller WAR without OpenJPA

I also knew that Roller included some jars needed for Tomcat but that are not needed, or worse, problematic, on true Java EE servers. For example, we include the Apache OpenJPA implementation because Tomcat doesn't have one of its own. I modified the Roller build process to create two builds. One build is for Tomcat and includes OpenJPA and the other build is for Java EE and does not.

Deployed, tested and updated the docs

Next, I figured out how to deploy Roller to GlassFish 3 via the GlassFish web console, which was pleasant to use and familiar to me. I didn't run into any problems along the way and later I documented the whole process in the Roller 5 Install Guide (2MB PDF), with screenshots.

Next up: Roller 5 on JBoss 6

Roller 5 and Java EE 6

Dave Johnson — Wed, 5 Jan 2011 08:15:53 +0000

It's hard to believe, but I've been dorking around with Roller, the blog software that powers this site, for almost 10 years now. I started in summer 2001. In the past couple of years, I've had a lot less time to work on Roller. I devoted some of that time to mentoring student developers, which was fun and rewarding. I also spent time making Roller more consumable for developers by making it easier to build, run and deploy to modern Java app servers, which was not really fun but was definitely educational, bloggable even.

Roller 5 as Java EE 6 case study

Making Roller work on the new crop of "modern" Java EE 6 servers was an interesting experience and the story makes a pretty good case study in Java EE application portability. I've put together a short series of blog posts to tell the story and this is the first, an overview. In subsequent posts I'll explain the changes I had to make to get Roller working on:

	GlassFish 3 (released June 2010)
	JBoss 6 (released December 2010)
	WebSphere 8 (beta released July 2010)
	Tomcat 6 and 7 (not Java EE but Roller just has to work on Tomcat)

There are other Java EE 6 servers out there and there's a good summary of them on The Aquarium; those are just the ones I had time to explore.

Overview of Java EE 6 changes

There were three categories of things I changed to accomodate Java EE 6 servers. The first is changes to the Roller code base to make Roller work on all of my targets. Most of these changes were in way Roller uses calls the Java Persistence APIs (JPA), needed because of differences in the JPA implementations used by each server. GlassFish uses EclipseLink JPA and JBoss uses Hibernate JPA. On WebSphere and Tomcat, Apache OpenJPA is the implementation. Fortunately, nowhere did I have to use any conditional code or introduce special behavior for any platform.

The second category of changes is additions to the Roller install guide to mention the special settings required to make Roller work on all targets. On some platforms, special behaviors must be enabled for Roller, for example the "filter compatibility" flag on WebSphere. I added a section to the install guide for each server and documented the details there.

The third category is changes to the Roller build process to create special versions of Roller for some servers. Unfortunately, due to Tomcat not being a full Java EE server and some JBoss classloader issues, I'm not able to provide one Roller release that runs on all servers. The latest Roller 5 release candidate comes in three flavors, one for Tomcat 6/7, one for JBoss 6 and one for "Java EE" which is the one intended for use with Glassfish 3.1 and WebSphere 8.

Up next: GlassFish 3

In the next post I'll tell you what I had to do to get Roller running on Glassfish 3 with EclipseLink JPA.

Apache Roller 5.0 RC3

Dave Johnson — Tue, 4 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

On the last day of 2010, I made available the third release candidate for Apache Roller 5.0. The main difference between this new candidate and the previous one is that the new RC3 runs on Java EE 6 servers: Glassfish 3, JBoss 6 and Websphere 8 (currently in beta). Making this happen took a lot more work than I expected and I'll blog about that over the next couple of weeks as it is an interesting case study in Java EE 6 portability.

Here's the announcement:

Apache Roller 5.0 Release Candidate RC3 is now available for testing.
Note that this is NOT a release of the Apache Software Foundation or
anybody else; this release candidate is for testing purposes only and
not recommended for production.

   What's new in Roller 5.0:
   https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/What's+new+in+Roller+5.0

   Change list (issues resolved since 4.0)
   http://bit.ly/gAhDWR

   Issues resolved since last release candidate (RC3)
   http://bit.ly/dZ27Nx

   Signed binary and source files. Also, documentation in PDF form
   http://people.apache.org/~snoopdave/apache-roller-5.0/

The biggest change in RC3 is the new support for Java EE 6 application
servers: Glassfish 3, JBoss 6 and Websphere 8 (beta). I've been able
to verify that Roller runs on all of those servers, and I updated the
installation guide to explain in detail how you install on Glassfish,
JBoss and WebSphere.

If you would like to help out then please test RC3, discuss the
problems you encounter here and file specific bugs with steps to
reproduce in the Roller JIRA bug tracking system.

Thanks,
Dave

That announcement is available here: http://markmail.org/message/my5wbld2xqvhqpyg

Roller on OpenSolaris / Glassfish

Dave Johnson — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 07:14:57 +0000

Dave Koelmeyer offers a nice step-by-step guide to getting Roller up and running on OpenSolaris, Glassfish and MySQL.

Although WordPress undoubtedly has more bells and whistles, with themes and plug-ins galore, I find Roller quicker and less fussy in operation, with far more comprehensive documentation – and its scalability cannot be denied. This guide will enable you to install and run Apache Roller for the purposes of evaluation and tinkering.

We will be using OpenSolaris snv_134 x64, with Apache Roller 4.01, Glassfish v2.1, and MySQL 5.1.

Link

Latest Links - misc

Dave Johnson — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:00:30 +0000

It's time to catch up on blogging and I'm going to start by going through my backlog of links and adding some commentary, but not in this post; these are miscellaneous links that don't fit nicely into my other posts.

Slashdot | Why Google Should Embrace OpenOffice.org
"If Google really wanted to deliver a knockout punch to Microsoft, it would integrate OpenOffice with Google Docs" -- and pump some money into OOo development
Headius: The Power of the JVM
"And while JRuby and Groovy will probably spend the next few months one-upping each other, we've both proven something far more important: the JVM is an *excellent* platform for dynamic languages. Don't let anyone tell you it's not."
SpringSource Blog - Open Source, Open Strategy
My 141 char summary: open source good, but we need money. we won't relicense existing parts, but we'll GPL the full-stack so we alone can ride it to the bank
Kohsuke Kawaguchi: GlassFish v3 just got embeddable
"GlassFish glassfish = new GlassFish(); glassfish.minimallyConfigure(8080);"
Derby: Using the bulk import and export procedures
closest thing to mysqldump in Derby land
Core team statement on replication in PostgreSQL
"it is time to include a simple, reliable basic replication feature in the core system"
Distributed Caching with Memcached
Nice how-it-works article on memcached.

SSG EA2

Dave Johnson — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 13:26:23 +0000

I'm supposed to be on vacation today and I'm doing my best, but I just wanted to point out that something interesting has quietly appeared in the Glassfish Update Center. Why so quiet? Well, it's an EA2 release and the emphasis is definitely on the E. I'll post some more details later, perhaps after winter break. I've still got shopping to do now and I'm supposed to be on vacation.

Interested? If you haven't done so already grab yourself a copy of the new Glassfish V2 UR1 release. Run the updatetool and install the latest EA2 release of Social Software for GlassFish.

Latest links Nov. 12, 2007: Glassfish, OpenSocial and more

Dave Johnson — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:23:08 +0000

Sound Opinions from Chicago Public Radio and American Public Media
Best podcast ever

The Aquarium: GlassFish Interim Governance Board - Now Complete
"The complete roster is Tony, Greg Luck (Wotif.com) and Pierre Delisle (Google), and Simon and myself (Sun)"
Bistro!: GlassFish/SJS AS in production - which bundle, which profile, ...?
Explains differences between developer, cluster and enterprise profiles
GlassFish Podcast: The GlassFish Podcast
Finally, a Glassfish podcast! Props to Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine
Apple - Downloads - UNIX & Open Source - GlassFish
Download Glassfish V2 directly from Apple
Red Hat and Sun Collaborate to Advance Open Source Java Technology
"Red Hat has signed Sun's broad contributor agreement that covers participation in all Sun-led open source projects."

Megginson: First looks at OpenSocial: part 1 (URLs)
Lists the URIs for the AtomPub collections available in OpenSocial
Megginson: First looks at OpenSocial: part 2 (members and friends)
How OpenSocial members and friends are represented in Atom format
Megginson: First looks at OpenSocial: part 3 (activities)
How OpenSocial activities are represented in Atom format and manipulated via AtomPub protocol
Megginson: First looks at OpenSocial: part 4 (persistence data)
How OpenSocial persistence is implemented via AtomPub protocol
Google: OpenSocial Container Sample
Shows "basic demonstration-level OpenSocial container can be implemented"
Dare Obasanjo: OpenSocial Tech. Overview and Critique
"Despite these misgivings, I think this is a step in the right direction. Web widget and social graph APIs need to be standardized across the Web."

snellspace.com: Notes, Part 2
"lots and lots of things that can be modeled as collections of web resources"
netzooid: Building Services with AtomPub
"While APP is not the one true protocol, I think I?m hooked"

Switched

Dave Johnson — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 21:46:20 +0000

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!

Glassfish at UNC-Chapel Hill

Dave Johnson — Tue, 3 Jul 2007 21:41:01 +0000

Via the Aquarium, there's a nice Java EE and Glassfish adoption story over in Chillboro:

Adam Constabaris: A fundamental question for us in building this application was whether to use Tomcat and "soup it up" by using Spring to add services Tomcat doesn't provide itself, or whether to use a full Java EE container. We could have made it work with the servlet container approach, since our application isn't heavily "enterprisey" and we were initially reluctant to pay the complexity price of EJBs. After looking at the Java EE 5 specification, though, we saw a lot of ways we could simplify and standardize things, such as using JSF 1.2 and coding to the Java Persistence API rather than using Hiberrnate APIs directly.

Hey! I know that guy. Hi Adam.

Is there a trend towards full app servers and away from plain old Tomcat? Is it because of strong open source Java EE offerings from Sun, JBoss and Apache? I don't know, but I sure hope so.