Spring-ing past Java EE?

Blogger: Joe Niski

SpringSource has been busy this month, just as I put the finishing touches on Burton Group's first in-depth look at the flexible Spring Framework (It's a lightweight container! It's a data access tool! It's a web framework! It may not wash your car, but you could extend it . . .)

For many developers tired of the grunt work involved in Java EE programming, Spring has made life easier for over four years. Today's announcement of the SpringSource Application Platform just might free developers from ever touching a Java EE server or deployment descriptor ever again. (Well, maybe eventually . . .)

Built on the Apache Tomcat servlet container, the innovative and proven OSGi service framework, and Spring, SpringSource Application Platform offers functionality comparable to a Java EE server but with a more modular service infrastructure and a more developer-friendly programming model than Java EE. It has tremendous potential to live up to its “next-generation application platform” label.

The combination of SpringSource Application Platform and the Spring Enterprise Edition bundle of support, software, and tooling constitutes a full stack for enterprise software development, deployment, and management. It may seriously disrupt the server market currently dominated by IBM, BEA, Oracle, and RedHat in the next two to four years.

Comments

[Gerry]

I was recently talking with JBoss about their ESB and other products. They already have a "Tomcat+" container, and they are working on a transition to OSGI. I would suspect JBoss app server is going to the same way. The demo of the ESB product showed it to be very modular already, and having BPM integrated in was nice. OSGI has been making a lot of inroads. There is a competing spec in a JSR but it appears to be kinda stuck, and it does look like Java Enterprise Edition is going to keep losing market share, no matter what the platform is. But the issue with most market share surveys is the lack of accounting for open-source installations. And SOA is changing how we look at application servers, too. What's clear is that the future is not entirely clear.

[Eduardo Pelegri-llopart]

Hi Joe.

Have you looked at GlassFish v3TP2? It is available today [1]. It is modular, very fast (sub-second startup), with OSGi support (builds on Apache Felix), full web-tier with Java Tier (based on a Tomcat branch), modules for Web Services, JavaPersistence, Grails and JRuby Scripting, and more. Ah, also embeddable.

The responses so far are very positive.

More information on OSGi initiatives within the GlassFIsh community at [2].

Let me know if you want to chat about this area. -- eduard/o

[1]http://blogs.sun.com/theaquarium/tags/glassfish+v3
[2]http://blogs.sun.com/theaquarium/tags/osgi