I’m a fan of ready to use appliances for development and demo purposes. Recently it was announced that additional developer Virtual Machines have been released by Oracle. These in addition to the SOA Suite and BPM appliance mentioned before.

Developers can simply download a few files, assemble them with a script , and then import and run the resulting pre-built VM in VirtualBox. This makes starting with these technologies even easier. Each appliance contains some Hands-On-Labs to start learning.

Java Developement

This VirtualBox Appliance contains:

• Java SE (JDK) 1.6.0 u20 (note: Mac OS X 10.5 users must use Apple update)
• Java FX 1.3.1 runtime
• NetBeans IDE 6.9.1
• GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.0.1 (installed with NetBeans)

The Aquarium says about this Java EE6 VM:

This is everything you need to get started with Java EE 6 development and you’ll even find three labs (with code and instructions) to start using JSF 2, JAX-RS 1.1, EJB 3.1, Servlet 3.0, JPA 2.0 and CDI 1.0!

For detailed instructions and downloads go here…

Oracle Database Development

This VirtualBox Appliance contains:

• Oracle Enterprise Linux 5
• Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition
• Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database Cache
• Oracle XML DB
• Oracle SQL Developer
• Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler
• Oracle Application Express 4.0
• Oracle JDeveloper
• Hands-On-Labs (accessed via the Toolbar Menu in Firefox)

For detailed instructions.

It is expected that more flavors will be available in 2011.