Web Sphere

WebSphere is an IBM brand name for products that implement and extend Sun's JavaTwoEnterpriseEdition (J2EE) platform.

Some of the information below predates the 2005 V6 release of WebSphere (the EnterpriseServiceBus ready version) and await cleaning up.

An Oct04 industry report on WebSphere 6 shortly before its release can be found at http://www.networkworld.com/cgi-bin/mailto/x.cgi

The two main products are:

People often speak of "WebSphere" as a product. When they do, they usually mean the application server.

Another well known product is WebSphereMq, formerly MqSeries, a messaging system product. Other products include the WebSphere Edge Server (consisting of a Caching Web server, an HTTP load-balancer (called an HTTP "Sprayer") and the Andrew File System), WebSphere Commerce Suite, WebSphere Personalization Server, WebSphere Business Integrator, and WebSphere Site Analyzer.

WebSphereFaq, WebSphereNewsGroup, EnterpriseJavaProgrammingWithIbmWebSphere the book

Historical information

WebSphere used to be associated with the IbmSmalltalk product, but it would appear that IbmSmalltalk is dead or dying (it's been impossible, in practice, to purchase the product for years). Ibm seems to believe that rearranging the names of their suites (apparently this falls under the rubric of "brand management") will help improve business. I've simply given up on them.

WebSphere EnterpriseServiceBus possibilities

It is not quite an ESB as yet, but take a look at a reference architecture at http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/newto/

May05 it was said BigBlue is considering a product in this arena via WebSphere. See http://www.datamonitor.com/~df37149b834f4f8fa68713718ef8e850~/industries/news/article/?pid=44400A8C-8E88-48F4-95BD-90E60E54539E&type=NewsWire

Apr05 WebSphere MQ Version 6 was announced and it merged the MQ messaging stack with the WebSphere stack, paving the road for an offering in the area.

WebSphere 6 as a toolkit for BUILDING EnterpriseServiceBus

In an updated redbook that focus on the use of WebSphere 6, BigBlue is saying

Service Data Object (SDO) concept introduced in WS 6

It was previously named "Web Data Object". It is supposed to be an extension of the JavaDataObject? concept and unlike the latter, can pass information between J2EE tiers. from http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-sdo/

WebSphere and BigIron integration

An associated IBM product is CustomerInformationControlSystem, or commonly known as CICS, which now supports EnterpriseJavaBeans - see EnterpriseJavaBeansInCics.

Integration with CICS via JCA and CICS-ISC http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/0408_wakelin/0408_wakelin.html

Building DB2-Based WebServices Using WebSphere at http://websphere.sys-con.com/read/43221_p.htm It has been said in trade articles that WebSphere can use GridComputing technology to deliver cluster based solutions. Would be interesting to see this get adopted by commercial organizations.

BusinessProcessManagement in WebSphere

JSR207 is the relevant specification for JavaPlatform Process Management. BPEL (BusinessProcessExecutionLanguage) support is introduced in WS6, but I am unsure whether it was done in the JSR207 approach.

References on IBMway of ServiceOrientedArchitecture

Why all the interest in SOA now? at http://www.websphere.org/blog/archives/000052.html, http://www.websphere.org/blog/archives/000063.html,

Why the ESB will help you say "I don't care" at http://www.websphere.org/blog/archives/000080.html

Moved from TheAdjunct...

Websphere Commerce Suite

A commercial application to manage stores. This was deleted earlier, for whatever reason, probably because it was considered spam. But before you condemn the mentioning of commercial products, consider downloading the PDF, and take a look at Chapter 4 where some helpful information about the programming model used, which is in this case the MVC (ModelViewController).

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks.nsf/0/eaad4e49c615f8e0852569bb00530a00?OpenDocument

There are many Commercial Products from which an individual might learn things which programming types consider uninteresting or elementary. Those who WouldLikeToKnow? can be helped by documents such as the Handbook referenced in the link above.

One might also look at chapter 3 which is about RuntimeArchitecture?, to learn something of what it takes to install, support and maintain such an application.

I don't know what's been going on with this page, but I think you're misinterpreting things. Pages about commercial products are not inherently OffTopic, not at all. But the question is whether a page presents info about a product so as to be of reasonably general interest.

If [the readers of the page] need to investigate to get any idea at all, then the page has failed, and such a page could indeed be claimed to be nothing better than commercial spam. (Further, that makes for extremely poor marketing, too!)

On the other hand, a page about a commercial product that let the reader know in which ways the product is interesting could make it quite OnTopic. It seems to me that something being an example of MVC is insufficient; that's like saying it was written in C++/Java -- the same is true of a hundred thousand other things, so that's more just a side point of interest if the product itself has already been pointed out to be of interest for a more central reason.

I know very little about WebSphere stuff, but from the little I've heard, I would think it would be easy enough to describe things that make it interesting. -- DougMerritt

Websphere is the worst J2EE app server I've ever worked with. It's bloated, sluggish and unfriendly. It fails in mysterious ways for mysterious reasons and produces mysterious error codes instead of useful exception messages. I recently looked up one of these mysterious error codes at IBM's web site and all it told me was to "see exception for more details". I suspect that Websphere is primarily a marketing tool for IBM's technical services department. Anyone who has to use it eventually sells their IT department to IBM.

You misunderstood the error code note; they mean, see "Ronald Exception", he's head of QA. :-)

Anyway, there you go, you've listed some very, umm, exceptional qualities, so that's surely of interest! -- DougMerritt

Not Pro MS or pro BigBlue - but pro Business, the company that pay my salary

I do not know WebSphere and I do not even know JavaPlatform, but I know a bit more about BigBlue track record (in the past), and had work relationships with real working level technical people there.

BigBlue had a reputation of taking care of customers, especially in the area of migration. Whereas their main opposition out to change things so you have to move up, most of the time (in the past) shops that did not want to change could run their assembler code routinees in newer OSs for decades.

In regards to WebSphere, from my readings it is the number 1 of the big three J2EE supplier. In the beginning WebSphere (like Visual Age before it) was a brand name of a mix of products, but the problems you still have with WebSphere should be lesser than other J2EE alternatives. Now if you need interoperability (up with BigIron and down with MS) and want to go semi-standard you do not have other options.

If you want to use JavaPlatform but don't need to use J2EE it becomes an entirely different story. I would be interested in EH views on what technical infrastructure he would build from scratch, if he have multiple sites in different countries and timezones that need to work together.

-- DavidLiu

If I had to build a technical infrastructure from scratch that had multiple sites in different countries and timezones I'd build a technical infrastructure that expressed all times in GMT. I'm not sure how those requirements relate to Websphere or J2EE, though.

I probably shouldn't share my views on BigBlue and Websphere, but what the hell. I've started to suspect that Websphere is purposefully cryptic because it helps IBM sell support/service contracts. All equivalent J2EE products suffer from the overly complex yet incomplete state of the J2EE spec. Websphere has the worst documentation and greatest additional complexity of all of them I've used (Weblogic, Oracle, Orion and JBoss).

-- EH

I find this very informative - http://www.gse-nordic.org/forum/wg/nrtc/2005/S19_IntroductiontoWMQ.pdf -- PeterLynch

Comments on WebSphere in TheMostComplexWhichCanBeMadeToWork

CategoryEnterpriseComputingConcerns

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