What's New in Sun Java Enterprise System 6
This document is maintained by the Java ES team.
Sun Java Enterprise System (Java ES) 6 includes several improvements and advancements compared to past Java ES releases. Of at least equal importance, however, are the features and qualities Java ES 6 carries forward unchanged. As with past Java ES releases, Java ES 6:
Uses a subscription-based pricing model that reduces cost of ownership and simplifies license-tracking and bookkeeping
Includes a wide range of tiered services to meet the needs of small businesses up through large enterprises
Provides a selection of software products to meet a broad spectrum of infrastructure needs
Offers a set of suites that provide features to meet specialized business needs
Supports multiple operating systems and a variety of system virtualization technologies
The new features and qualities found in Java ES 6 include:
New Software Products and New Versions of Existing Products
To keep pace with new technologies and tools, some products from past Java ES releases have been replaced in Java ES 6:
Sun Java System Portal Server has been replaced by GlassFish Web Space Server, the next-generation portal server platform from Sun. Based on the Liferay open-source portal project, it enables businesses large and small to pull together applications and content from a variety of Web-based and internal sources and present them as a unified, customizable portal on Web browsers, kiosks, and mobile devices.
Sun Java Studio Enterprise and Sun Java Studio Creator have been replaced by NetBeans, a premier, open-source Integrated Development Environment for software developers. It provides all the tools needed to create professional desktop, enterprise, web, and mobile applications with the Java language, C/C++, and even dynamic languages such as PHP, JavaScript, Groovy, and Ruby.
Java ES 6 also includes the new versions of products from past Java ES releases:
Solaris Cluster (previously called Sun Cluster)
Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server (previously called Sun Java System Application Server)
Sun OpenSSO Enterprise (previously called Sun Java System Access Manager)
Sun Java System Directory Server Enterprise Edition
Sun Java System Message Queue
Sun Java System Web Server
Sun Java System Web Proxy Server
New Installation Method
Past releases of Java ES provided a common installer for the core Java ES products. While this common installer had some advantages, especially when performing simple, single-system installations, it also had some disadvantages:
It required superuser access to run, and gave superuser ownership to installed software.
It permitted only a single product instance per system.
It supported only native-package software distributions.
Quite often, one or more of these disadvantages made the task of installing a robust, enterprise-strength deployment of Java ES more complicated or convoluted than necessary.
In Java ES 6, this common installer has been retired in favor of the installers provided by the products in Java ES. Because each product installer is tuned to the features and capabilities of the product it installs, the overall installation experience is smoother now than in past releases.
Expanded Platform and Interoperability Testing
To meet the reliability, flexibility, and rapid integration needs of businesses both small and large, Java ES has, since its first release, always undergone extensive platform and interoperability testing.
In Java ES 6, this testing has been expanded to provide more coverage than in any past release:
Compatibility and interoperability testing covered more products, including those in Java System Suites as well as in Java ES Base, more rigorously
Deployment testing covered more common deployment scenarios utilizing more product features
Platform testing covered more platforms (both native and virtualized)
Platform testing validated Java ES support of Solaris 10 Trusted Extensions
This expanded Java ES testing was conducted over and above the rigorous testing that each individual products undergoes, thus ensuring testing coverage both of a product's individual features and its ability to interoperate with other Java ES products on a variety of platforms in different deployments architected to meet different business needs.