All Things WebSphere

If you are in Vancouver  on Thursday November 10 and interested in listening about the new faster and lighter footprint version of WebSphere Application Server 8.5  please come to MacKenzie Room (1st Floor) at 7PM at theThe Westin Bayshore Vancouver 1601 Bayshore Drive, Vancouver, BC, V6G 2V4.

Please note that this session is open to ALL users and customers not just ApacheCon attendees.

See announcement here
http://na11.apachecon.com/posts/32726152
https://twitter.com/#!/ApacheCon/status/131098166429892609

This will be a presentation and hands-on demo followed by a Q&A session run by Eric Covener and Rohit Kelapure.

Hope to see you there!!

From a mobile perspective , the new WebSphere Application Server (WAS) Feature Pack for Web 2.0 and Mobile V1.1.0 provides developers with ready-to-use components, simplified, standards based development of mobile web applications, rich Ajax websites, and REST web services. This feature pack can be installed on WAS 7 as well as WAS 8 and contains an implementation of the JAX-RS specification that provides for building RESTful webservices. Feature packs are fully supported by IBM. See whitepaper http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_ca/3/897/ENUS211-143/ENUS211-143.PDF for more details.

For dependency injection we strongly recommend using the Contexts and Dependency Injection  (CDI) specification , part of the web profile in Java EE 6.  CDI provides type safety and loose coupling between POJOs and other EE resources using dependency injection. CDI  (JSR 299) provides context and semantics to the lower level Dependency Injection Specification in Java EE6 defined by JSR 330.   CDI also provides a way to extend the Java EE platform via extensions which allow customers to build custom components and modify EE in a specification compliant fashion. For a detailed overview  and a presentation on CDI see http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12872475/CDI_Impact_2011_RohitKelapure.pdf

The CDI specification is currently ONLY available in WebSphere Application Server v8.  A less desirable option would be to bundle a CDI implementation such as from the Apache Open WebBeans project  in your own application on WAS 7. In this scenario when the CDI is bundled inside the application, IBM will not be able to fix CDI issues as it is a part of the customer application.
For an overview of features in WAS 8 see http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_ca/9/897/ENUS211-139/ENUS211-139.PDF

For migration to  WAS 8  see the following resources
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27008724
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/downloads/migtoolkit/vtov.html

WAS 8 can coexist with WAS 7. The links below will  explain mixed cell coexistence, where you can add servers at a  later version of WAS for the new features and keep the production environment stable on an older version WAS.
Running multiple application server versions        
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v8r0/topic/com.ibm.websphere.migration.nd.doc/info/ae/ae/tins_coexistep.html
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v8r0/topic/com.ibm.websphere.migration.nd.doc/info/ae/ae/cmig_coexist.html
Setting up Version 8.0 coexistence
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v8r0/topic/com.ibm.websphere.migration.nd.doc/info/ae/ae/tmig_70coexist70.html
Setting up Version 6.x, Version 7.0 and Version 8.0 coexistence
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v8r0/topic/com.ibm.websphere.migration.nd.doc/info/ae/ae/tmig_6coexist70.html

Things that we recommend to customers who  are dealing java and native heap issues due to excessive DirectByteBuffer allocations.


Switching AIO to NIO
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21366862

Setting the WebSphere Application Server WebContainer to synchronous mode
http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21317658

Introspection of  system dumps generated on an OOM with IBM Product Extensions into Memory Analyzer Tool: Run the following query
Open Query Browser → IBM Extensions → Java SE Runtime → DirectByteBuffers

Fixed size Major thread pools (WebContainer, etc.) (min=max)
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21368248

IBM Health Center has native memory monitoring
Generic JVM argument -Xhealthcenter
-Xhealthcenter:level=low to not gather profiling data
Support Assistant  -Xhealthcenter:level=headless for writing to an HCD file

Javacore memory analysis script
get_memory_use.pl
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/j-nativememory-aix/index.html

Enable explicit GC
If ExplicitGC has been disabled please enable it

The JSPs below force the creation of a cache instance and allow for invalidation of the cache instance. Drop these JSPs in the /installedApps/Dynamic Cache Monitor.ear/CacheMonitor.war/WEB-INF directory.

https://github.com/kelapure/dynacache/blob/master/scripts/Invaliddatereqs.jsp
https://github.com/kelapure/dynacache/blob/master/scripts/invalidateIT.jsp

The primary purpose of these JSPs is to force the creation of the cache instance and make the cache instance show up in the list of cache instances in the CacheMonitor or the Extended Cache Monitor. The JSPs also allow for a specific cache ID to be invalidated.

 Excellent Session by WebSphere Application Server 8 Release Architect Dana Price on WebSphere application Server 8 Migration.

Another excellent resource on Migration is the Migration Toolkit. The version-to-version Migration Toolkit information is here.  Documentation and the tool itself can be downloaded from that page.

See Migration resources for WAS http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27008724

Today, just slightly over 100 days since we eGA'ed WAS V8, we officially introduce the WAS 8.5 Open Alpha to the world.  This Alpha introduces for the first time a brand new lightweight tooling and runtime environment that is easier to setup than your phone, starts faster than your TV, and requires less disk space than your digital camera.

Based on OSGi standards, it is also completely modularized so that it can extended with only the functions and programming models that you require.  This new environment gives users the freedom to 'customize' their infrastructure for their specific industry demands.

WAS 8.5 is lighter, faster and has more features than Tomcat.Check it out, it *will* surprise you what we've done :o) http://www.ibm.com/wasdev

The IBM Monitoring and Diagnostic Tools for Java - Health Center is a lightweight tool that monitors active IBM Virtual Machines for Java with minimal performance overhead. The Health Center suggests live tuning recommendations for garbage collection, profiles methods including call stacks, and highlights contended locks.

Please see demo's of IBM Health Center recorded here:

1. Overview of Health Center features http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tcktcl0qxs&feature=related

2. Install IBM Support Assistant and Health Center  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WjE9U0jvEk

3. How to enable a Java application for live monitoring by the Health Center http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdp0mJ13NLQ&feature=related

4. What's new in version 1.2 of the Health Center http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdp0mJ13NLQ&feature=related

5. What's new in version 1.3 of the Health Centerhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZrVVCdv7l0

For the IBM Health Center 1.3 Infocenter see http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/hctool/v1r0/index.jsp


For starting a Java application with the Health Center agent enabled see http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/hctool/v1r0/topic/com.ibm.java.diagnostics.healthcenter.doc/com.ibm.java.diagnostics.healthcenter.gui/docs/connecting.html
 
For downloading and installing the server side agent i.e.  healthcenter.jar use -
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/hctool/v1r0/topic/com.ibm.java.diagnostics.healthcenter.doc/com.ibm.java.diagnostics.healthcenter.gui/docs/installingagent.html

This slide deck will compare Spring and Java EE stack in terms of web frameworks. It will re-examine the motivations behind the Spring framework and explore the emergence of the Java EE programming model to meet the challenges posed. This session will provide insight into when Spring and/or Java EE is appropriate for a building web applications and if they can coexist.

Presentation can be downloaded from  http://db.tt/1q9us2JH