1 Setting Up a Development Environment

Installing and Preparing the Server for Development

For more information about GlassFish Server installation, see the Oracle GlassFish Server Installation Guide.

The following components are included in the full installation.

• JDK

• GlassFish Server core

  • Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) 6

  • Java EE 6 compliant application server

  • Administration Console

  • asadmin utility

  • Other development and deployment tools

  • GlassFish Server Message Queue software

  • Java DB database, based on the Derby database from Apache

  • Load balancer plug-ins for web servers

The NetBeans Integrated Development Environment (IDE) bundles the GlassFish edition of the GlassFish Server, so information about this IDE is provided as well.

After you have installed GlassFish Server, you can further optimize the server for development in these ways:

• Locate utility classes and libraries so they can be accessed by the proper class loaders. For more information, see Using the Common Class Loader.

• Set up debugging. For more information, see Debugging Applications.

• Configure the Virtual Machine for the Java platform (JVM software). For more information, see "Administering the Virtual Machine for the Java Platform" in Oracle GlassFish Server Administration Guide.

High Availability Features

High availability features such as load balancing and session failover are discussed in detail in the Oracle GlassFish Server High Availability Administration Guide. This book describes the following features in the following sections:

• For information about HTTP session persistence, see Distributed Sessions and Persistence.

• For information about checkpointing of the stateful session bean state, see Stateful Session Bean Failover.

• For information about failover and load balancing for Java clients, see Developing Java Clients.

• For information about load balancing for message-driven beans, see Load-Balanced Message Inflow.

Development Tools

The following general tools are provided with the GlassFish Server:

• The asadmin Command

• The Administration Console

The following development tools are provided with the GlassFish Server or downloadable from Oracle:

• The Migration Tool

• The NetBeans IDE

The following third-party tools might also be useful:

• The Eclipse IDE

• Debugging Tools

• Profiling Tools

http://localhost:4848

Sample Applications

Sample applications that you can examine and deploy to the GlassFish Server are available. If you installed the GlassFish Server as part of installing the Java EE 6 SDK bundle from Java EE 6 Downloads, the samples may already be installed. You can download these samples separately from the Code Samples page if you installed the GlassFish Server without them initially.

Most GlassFish Server samples have the following directory structure:

• The docs directory contains instructions for how to use the sample.

• The build.xml file defines Ant targets for the sample.

• The src/java directory under each component contains source code for the sample.

• The src/conf directory under each component contains the deployment descriptors.

With a few exceptions, sample applications follow the standard directory structure described here: http://java.sun.com/blueprints/code/projectconventions.html.

The samples-install-dir/bp-project/main.xml file defines properties common to all sample applications and implements targets needed to compile, assemble, deploy, and undeploy sample applications. In most sample applications, the build.xml file imports main.xml.

In addition to the Java EE 6 sample applications, samples are also available at GlassFish Samples and at as-install/samples/.