Johan's blog
Using Glassfish Embedded in offline mode
I have been using Glassfish Embedded (or is it Embedded Glassfish) in a customer project recently. At first, I just considered it as a customer project, but now that I think about it, the concept of Glassfish Embedded opens lots of possibilities.
Unfortunately, I am not allowed to talk about this specific project and
what kind of application it is. But the reason for using Embedded Glassfish
is clear. We created an Enterprise Application for this customer in the
past. The customer is happy with it and uses the application inside the company
and with a few other customers.
Then, the customer receives questions from his own customers that could
be addressed with the Enterprise Application. We are talking about a big
customer here, and big customers have typically meetings with big companies
in large meeting rooms without public Internet access.
Also, many presales people are afraid of giving live demonstrations
over the Internet and prefer their own laptop. In many cases they show a
PowerPoint presentation, but the number of potential customers who
can be convinced with slideware is decreasing.
And here is a perfect opportunity for Glassfish Embedded. It can be preinstalled and configured on a demo laptop, and (pre)sales people can show exactly the functionality that would be available in a full-blown Internet-enabled application. They have everything under control, no server that might go down, no dependency on a guest-account on a semi-private Internet, no interference with other people using the application at the same moment,...
It may sound strange to some to demonstrate a complex Enterprise Application on a simple laptop (and laptops of (pre)sales people are often great in design and pathetic in performance), but with Glassfish Embedded it is possible:
- * laptops have much more power than some years ago, even the build-for-design laptops
- * The performance of Glassfish is great.
- * Glassfish is easy to use and to configure.
- * The footprint of glassfish is small. All Java EE functionality is implemented, still the embedded jar is below 50 MB. That is probably the size of 2 power point presentations on a (pre)sales laptop.
- * Complex problems often require simple solutions.
This example is just one usecase where Glassfish Embedded can make life easier. There are probably lots of others as well.
For more information about Glassfish Embedded, see the following links:
- https://embedded-glassfish.dev.java.net, the official home
- http://blogs.sun.com/alexismp/entry/glassfish_embedded_reloaded, an overview + hello world app from Alexis
- http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/821-1208?l=en, the official guide.
