Looking for advice on GlassFish and JEE

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Kenneth P. Turvey - 19 Mar 2008 19:11 GMT

I'm setting up a VPS system right now and I'd like to prepare it for the
day when I'm ready to take on JEE. Right now I use servlets and JSP
pages. I'm also using the persistence framework in JSE, but I don't use
any of the other features of JEE.

What I would normally do is just install resin to handle my static and
dynamic requests, but I'm thinking of installing GlassFish instead. So I
have a few questions about what GlassFish will provide me. I have no
experience with this product at all, so please forgive me if I'm asking
some obvious questions.

1) I assume GlassFish will handle my servlets and jsp pages without a
problem since these are defined in the JEE standard. Am I mistaken here?
Do you need to have a separate servlet container and JEE container?

2) Will Glassfish also handle serving static content?

3) Is it possible to configure GlassFish to handle virtual domains and
more than one IP address?

4) Will GlassFish handle my needs for a platform to learn JEE on? I
assume this is true.

5) Is there a good tutorial on how to setup GlassFish with the above
requirements in mind?

Please understand that I know that GlassFish isn't meant to be a high
volume web server like apache, I don't have a site that requires that kind
of performance. I'm looking for something that is easy to setup and will
provide me with a platform for playing around with the new JEE concepts.

Thank you very much.

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Kenneth P. Turvey <kt-usenet@squeakydolphin.com>

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Kenneth P. Turvey - 19 Mar 2008 21:39 GMT

> I'm setting up a VPS system right now and I'd like to prepare it for the
> day when I'm ready to take on JEE. Right now I use servlets and JSP
[quoted text clipped - 26 lines]
> of performance. I'm looking for something that is easy to setup and will
> provide me with a platform for playing around with the new JEE concepts.

I have one more question to ask here.. Is Apache Geranimo more suited to
this application? Is it a better JEE container?

Thanks again.

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Kenneth P. Turvey <kt-usenet@squeakydolphin.com>

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Lew - 20 Mar 2008 02:02 GMT

> I have one more question to ask here.. Is Apache Geranimo more suited to
> this application? Is it a better JEE container?

What do you mean by "better"?

I suggest you thoroughly review the documentation on both products:

Glassfish <https://glassfish.dev.java.net/>
(follow links to Wiki and Documentation)

Geronimo <http://geronimo.apache.org/>

I've looked briefly at both and they both seem quite good, but Glassfish
strikes me at first blush as more comprehensive. That could make Geronimo
easier to learn, though.

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Lew

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Lew - 20 Mar 2008 02:07 GMT

>> Please understand that I know that GlassFish isn't meant to be a high
>> volume web server like apache, I don't have a site that requires that kind
>> of performance.

Why do you think that? Glassfish is designed for high volume, actually, so
the truth is the opposite of what you "know". In fact, Sun recently has been
crowing about setting a new enterprise benchmark record (on some Spec
benchmark) with their servers running Glassfish against a PostgreSQL back end.

What evidence do you have that "GlassFish isn't meant to be a high volume web
server"?

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Lew

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Kenneth P. Turvey - 20 Mar 2008 02:21 GMT

> Why do you think that? Glassfish is designed for high volume, actually, so
> the truth is the opposite of what you "know". In fact, Sun recently has been
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> What evidence do you have that "GlassFish isn't meant to be a high volume web
> server"?

My mistake.. no intention to offend.

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Kenneth P. Turvey <kt-usenet@squeakydolphin.com>

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Lew - 20 Mar 2008 03:30 GMT

>> Why do you think that? Glassfish is designed for high volume, actually, so
>> the truth is the opposite of what you "know". In fact, Sun recently has been
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>
> My mistake.. no intention to offend.

Who's offended?

As for Glassfish working with Apache web server, see
<http://wiki.glassfish.java.net/Wiki.jsp?page=FaqGlassFishBehindApache>

The Glassfish Wiki has a comparison chart with Tomcat that answers your question

>> 3) Is it possible to configure GlassFish to handle virtual domains and
>> more than one IP address?

<http://wiki.glassfish.java.net/Wiki.jsp?page=GlassFishVsTomcat>

> Virtual server features

<http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-3674/6n5skvu76?a=view#indexterm-711>

> A virtual server, also called a virtual host, is a virtual web server that
> serves content targeted for a specific URL. Multiple virtual servers can serve
> content using the same or different host names, port numbers, or IP addresses.
> The HTTP service can direct incoming web requests to different virtual servers
> based on the URL.

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Lew

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Kenneth P. Turvey - 20 Mar 2008 06:38 GMT

> As for Glassfish working with Apache web server, see
> <http://wiki.glassfish.java.net/Wiki.jsp?page=FaqGlassFishBehindApache>
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
>> The HTTP service can direct incoming web requests to different virtual servers
>> based on the URL.

Thanks for all the info. This is a big help. Looking at the web sites
I'm leaning toward Geranimo because it looks easier to setup and seems to
have the features I care about.

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Kenneth P. Turvey <kt-usenet@squeakydolphin.com>

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Lew - 20 Mar 2008 13:42 GMT

> Thanks for all the info. This is a big help. Looking at the web sites
> I'm leaning toward Geranimo because it looks easier to setup and seems to
> have the features I care about.

You mean "Geronimo".

Signature

Lew

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Arne Vajhøj - 24 Mar 2008 03:46 GMT

>>> Please understand that I know that GlassFish isn't meant to be a high
>>> volume web server like apache, I don't have a site that requires that
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
> What evidence do you have that "GlassFish isn't meant to be a high
> volume web server"?

I don't know what Kenneth meant.

But there is a difference between web server and servlet container.

It is usually assumed that a pure web server is faster for serving
static content than a servlet container.

Any servlet container - not Glassfish specifically.

Arne

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Arne Vajhøj - 20 Mar 2008 00:51 GMT

> I'm setting up a VPS system right now and I'd like to prepare it for the
> day when I'm ready to take on JEE. Right now I use servlets and JSP
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
> problem since these are defined in the JEE standard. Am I mistaken here?
> Do you need to have a separate servlet container and JEE container?

You are correct. It has both web and EJB container.

> 2) Will Glassfish also handle serving static content?

I believe all web containers handle static content. But they may not
be optimized for it.

> 3) Is it possible to configure GlassFish to handle virtual domains and
> more than one IP address?

I don't know Glassfish, but I am sure it does.

> 4) Will GlassFish handle my needs for a platform to learn JEE on? I
> assume this is true.

Yes.

But I think you should consider JBoss.

Arne

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Looking for advice on GlassFish and JEE

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