Here are my Glassfish point why I like it better than JBoss.
o The admin GUI and the CLI -- these alone are true differentiators. When you're new to these systems, the hand holding of a good interface are really important. You get up to speed very quickly.
o JEE 5. JEE 5 w EJB3 is just so much better to work with. I know that JBoss is working toward JEE 5 compliance, and no doubt they are very close. But GF does JEE 5 really well.
o Integration with NetBeans. I don't know how well NB integrates with JBoss (I know it does, I just don't know how well). NB integration with GF is pretty well seemless, and the combination is just really powerful and useful. Again, this combination lets you get up to speed readily.
o Solid, consolidated documentation and information. The GF/SJAS docs are really good. A bit terse at points, more a reference manual than a users guide, but overall really usable. I've never been a fan of JBoss' docs, and I don't care much for their book as it focuses more on how their server is implemented rather than how to use it. As an JEE programmer, I'm not that interested in how the server is implemented. Unfortunately, those implementation details are pretty much directly exposed to you in order to configure the server.
So, simply put, overall GF is just plain easier to use and that's my major pain point. I've never compared performance (but to be fair, JBoss has never published a benchmark either, even tho Sun has for SJAS), but GF is "fast enough" for what we do with it.
The new clustering looks spectacular, though JBoss has a cluster component as well.
GF isn't perfect, no complex software is, but GF is really a joy to work with and we haven't had any major problem using it. Having the source is handy (it's nice having a stack dump in NetBeans where all of the lines are blue and clickable), of course JBoss has this as well.
Bottom line, I feel that you will be up to speed and productive more quickly on GF than JBoss, and just as important, you will stay that way.
[Message sent by forum member 'whartung' (whartung)]
http://forums.java.net/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=223382