Serviceability gem: HTTP Session debugging in WebSphere Application Server - IBMTrackerDebug. servlet

Techniques for HTTPSession debugging in WebSphere Application Server

To dynamically view the number of sessions as a Web application is running, enable performance monitoring for HTTP sessions. This will give you an indication as to whether sessions are actually being created.

Alternatively, a special servlet can be invoked that displays the current configuration and statistics related to session tracking. This servlet has all the counters that are in performance monitor tool and has some additional counters.

• Servlet name: com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.httpsession.IBMTrackerDebug.
• It can be invoked from any Web module which is enabled to serve by class name. For example, using default_app, http://localhost:9080/servlet/com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.httpsession.IBMTrackerDebug.
  Note: If you have enabled the serve-by-class-name feature and want to disable the IBMTrackerDebug servlet, then specify the web container custom property, com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.donotservebyclassname.See Web container custom properties for more information on how to set this property.
• If you are viewing the module via the serve-by-class-name feature, be aware that it may be viewable by anyone who can view the application. You may wish to map a specific, secured URL to the servlet instead and disable the serve-servlets-by-classname feature.

WebSphere Application Server V8.5 Cross Component Trace

Have you ever tried to piece together the log entries from a request that spanned multiple application servers?  When you've got lots of concurrent activity on your server it gets hard to figure out which entries are from each request using timestamps alone.  Clock skew between systems doesn't help, and coarse timestamp granularity in log and trace files can make you long for simpler days.

In WebSphere Application Server V8.5, we introduced a capability called Cross Component Trace (XCT) that augments your log files so it's easy to tell which threads and server processes were involved in processing each request.

Check out this video showing how to use XCT to mark log and trace entries with a request ID, and how to use High Performance Extensible Logging (HPEL) to find all log and trace entries that share a common request ID.

Once you see what XCT is all about, you may also want to investigate a new tool we've released for the IBM Support Assistant called the IBM WebSphere Cross Component Trace Logviewer.  As the name suggests, it takes advantage of XCT content in log and trace files.  This video shows how to use it to group log content into request hierarchies.

WebSphere Application Server V8.5 is Now Available

I first talked about WAS V8.5 back in October 2011 when we started the early program. And in June 2012 we shipped it...Walt Noffsinger, WAS Product Manager, describes our new release in some more detail here but the 1-line summary is that V8.5 has both big news and small news...

The big news is the inclusion of Intelligent Management capabilities in WAS Network Deployment (ND) and WAS for z/OS. This integrates capabilities into WAS that were previously only available in the separate WebSphere Virtual Enterprise and WebSphere Compute Grid offerings: all the features of WVE including application editioning, server health management, dynamic clustering and intelligent routing, and the batch processing capabilities of WCG are now included in WAS ND. And its faster, servicing more requests per core, then any other AppServer on the market.

The small news is the WAS Liberty profile, now part of all commercial editions of WAS. "Small" means a lightweight server profile of WAS for web applications along with a lightweight distribution of the WAS Developers Tools as an Eclipse feature. My previous posts talked about both the development simplicity and lightweight production characteristics of the WAS Liberty profile. Here though, I want to show how quick and easy it is to get hold of the Liberty profile and the WAS developer tools for Eclipse and become productive in 3 easy steps. Take a look at this brief video...

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...then give it a try. The full-function, non-time-bombed developer distribution of the runtime and the tools (which are shown in the video) are free for non-production use on developer desktops so it costs nothing to try it out. Let us know what you think by visiting wasdev.net.
Ian

WebSphere 2012 Trends And Directions

Long time no blog (from me personally).

Just wanted to shoot out a quick pointer to an excellent blog post by our WebSphere CTO, Jerry Cuomo. Jerry talks through our work in mobile platforms, PaaS, DevOps, cloud benchmarking, 20/20 Analytics, Workload Integrated Systems, DataPower-as-a-Service, Internet Scale Computing, Business API management and social business. Also, he has a facebook page to promote discussion of each. Finally he has a SMS app written that allows you to interact with the trends and be notified of updates.