This is a conference report of JBoss World 2006, held in Las Vegas, NV. This one focuses on the news highlights from the show. More coverage next week.

  • Red Hat’s acquisition of JBoss is now final

The acquisition is final, and JBoss is now fully integrated as a division group within Ret Hat, a public company.

  • JBoss Seam 1.0 released

JBoss Seam is a lightweight open source standards-based Java EE 5 framework that allows developers to “seamlessly” integrate EJB 3 components and persistence (Hibernate or Java Persistence API in EJB 3) for Web-based JSF components for efficient tier-to-tier Web application development. It is essentially JBoss’ counter to the lightweight open source Spring Framework. Seam will be Web 2 (Ajax) compliant soon as Seam will enable developers to build/integrate with Ajax. Look for more integration with JBoss Portals, JBoss AOP (Aspect Orienced Programming) tool/library, business intelligence and reporting, and maybe a Rich Client Platform component down the road.

  • JBoss and Sun Microsystems are close partners

JBoss is now a key contributor to many of the Java EE 5 standards in Sun’s Java Community Process at JCP.org. It’s a governing standards body that standardizes specs for safety, security, and to assure long-term viability. And Sun is trying to get the message across that they are indeed an open source company, and that there is Open Source Java. Do not confuse standards with open source. Open Source communities like Apache are where projects are proposed and innovations happen. It’s JCP that assures the those innovations of interest survive. I think developers get confused on the two types of communities and their purposes.

  • JBoss extends certification to SaS applications

Many of JBoss customers/clients’ goals are building and deploying SaS or Software as a Service applications. Certification is important for assuring that these are J2EE/Java EE 5 standards-based when deployed using JBoss application server and other tools. Before, JBoss certification was only on software products. Many of JBoss customers were at JBoss World who develop and deploy SaS applications including FiveRuns, a server performance monitoring service, Agistics, Jamcracker, and more.

  • JBoss unveils open source enterprise management strategy

This announcement deals with open source implementations of agent technology to drive application management across hetergeneous customer environments. For more on this and other JBoss News, click here.

  • Java EE 5 is final

As announced at JavaOne and carrying over into JBoss World, Sun’s lightweight Java EE 5 platform for enterprise Java development is now final. Java EE 5 includes the EJB 3, Java Persistence API, JSF Web Framework, JSF integration with JSP, Java API for XML/Web Services (JAXWS) - which now works more in the background -, and much more. The standards here are the base standards that JBoss Seam and other frameworks and tools use.

Sun was also promoting the forthcoming NetBeans 5.5, Sun’s open source lightweight Java IDE which will include Java EE 5 API and frameworks.