According to the boys at Sun, the super-saturated market for application servers is cracking open again because of the money it takes to keep them stoked.

Sun made this observation when it turned up the other day to usher in the new major version of the open source Java EE 5 application server, GlassFish v2, along with its commercial counterpart, Sun's Java System Application Server 9.1, both JBoss competitors, not to mention rivals of IBM's WebSphere and BEA's WebLogic.

The new release adds enterprise features like clustering, advanced administration and jazzier performance (supposedly 10% faster than BEA's) and, while GlassFish comes at a price point that can't be beat, Sun has dramatically cut the license and support cost of its application server, which never made much of an impression on the market in the first place, so that it's cheaper than what it likes to call proprietary code.

The Sun code will now run $4,500 a year for four sockets, down from $10,000.

The new rev also supports Project Metro, which lets Web Services hosted on Java and Windows interoperate.

And there's also integration with the NetBeans 6.0 IDE beta so developers can deploy SOA applications by designing BPEL workflows. It includes JRuby so Ruby on Rails can be used with existing Java code as well as a redone editor.

Once NetBeans 6.0 goes production, it will be offered under a dual license with GPL 2 - not 3 - 2 added beside Sun's own CDDL, the Common Development and Distribution License.

GlassFish can be had for Windows, Linux, Apple and Solaris at http://glassfish.java.net/.