The question still remains for IBM: When is WebSphere App Server 7 coming out? The response is still the same: deer-caught-in-the-headlight stare from the IBM software reps. Some inside information tells me a few clues about what to expect. First off, from my conversation with a certain Distinguished Engineer last year, was that WAS 7 … Read more
I am currently installing WebSphere Application Server 6.1 on Fedora Core 6. Just some tips on this: If you are running Fedora under VMWare ESX as I am, you will hopefully be able to use the Virtual Infrastructure Client. You can download this from the VM host server site. I am using a DVD disc … Read more
If you are new to WebSphere Portal, and setting up a test/staging /production environment, then you should closely familiarize yourself with the XmlAccess interface. This is the command line scripting interface. Yes, you are probably thinking “command line?? why got out of the green screen stone age years ago!”. Well that’s fine and dandy, but … Read more
We’ve all been wondering what’s going on with WebSphere App Server’s near glacial release cycle, which IBM has indicated that it will be 2008 until a certified JEE 5 version appears. Based on what IBM has done with Eclipse and their Rational Software development platform, my guess is that IBM will eventually ditch the original … Read more
When you first start Portal 6 up (or Portal 5.1 for that matter), no matter what gear you are running it on, its going to seem slow. If you are doing an install, or planning on doing one, add this to your post-install task list: wpsconfig action-precompile-jsp This will precompile all JSPs within Portal. It … Read more
In looking at the troubleshooting section of the Portal 6 infocenter, I ran across a good troubleshooting article. http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=688&context=SSHRKX&q1=enable-security-wmmur-ldap&uid=swg27008792&loc=en_US&cs=utf-8&lang=en To reiterate one of the key points in the LDAP setup, you MUST disable global security before running the enable-security task.“wpsconfig disable-security” Then validate your LDAP setup with“wpsconfig validate-ldap-wmmur” (the wmmur is for realm support) Once … Read more
This is a very informative article on how WebSphere Portal security works. It also does a great job of explaining WebSphere app server security, and how external security managers can hook in. It was written by the guys who architected the whole Portal security, so it is from the horses mouth, so to say. http://download.boulder.ibm.com/ibmdl/pub/software/dw/wes/pdf/0611_buehler-WP60-SecurityOverview.pdf(note: … Read more
This is a question I get frequently from new customers running WebSphere Application Server, and its a good question as its not well documented anywhere (or at least anywhere convenient). Every shop will need to IPL their iSeries at some point, and subsequently you want to bring down the Application server and HTTP servers gracefully … Read more
Portal installs out of the box using Cloudscape (a.k.a. Apache Derby). Needles to say, this is not a scalable database, but is appropriate for demos. A RDBMS is very CPU and disk intensive and often memory intensive as well. Separating the db from the Portal is the first step in scaling a Portal environment up. … Read more
In JavaScript and CSS its very helpful for an element to have an id attribute (not just a class attribute). For those of you not in the know, the id attribute should be unique across the entire HTML. Only one element should have value of that id. Class attributes allow HTML elements to be grouped … Read more