WebSphere Community Blog

WebSphere 2012 Trends And Directions

2012-01-12T10:19:00.002-05:00

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.

WebSphere Application Server 8.5 alpa overview session at ApacheCon 2011 in Vancouver BC Thursday November 10

2011-11-06T17:28:00.000-05:00

If you are in Vancouver on Thursday November 10 and interested in listening about the new faster and lighter weight footprint version of WebSphere Application Server 8.5 alpha, 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 by Eric Covener and Rohit Kelapure.

Java EE 6 and the Spring Framework

2011-10-10T09:22:00.000-04:00

Recently two sessions at JavaOne 2011 covered the relationship between Java EE 6 and the Spring Framework.

Java EE vs Spring Framework Shootout - This session compares the Spring and Java EE stacks in terms of Web frameworks. It re-examines the motivations behind the Spring framework and explores the emergence of the Java EE programming model to meet the challenges posed. The presentation provides insight into when Spring and/or Java EE is appropriate for a building Web applications and if they can coexist.

Best Practices for Migrating Spring Applications to Java EE 6 - The Spring Framework has no doubt played a major role in evolving how we write enterprise applications on the Java platform today, but it is still a proprietary framework owned by a single company. The age of having to rely on such proprietary frameworks in order to develop decent enterprise applications is now over, and using Java EE 6 has become an even easier way to develop enterprise applications based on standards, which makes it the best choice for any enterprise application. In this session, you will experience how to migrate a typical full-stack Spring application to a standards-based, completely portable Java EE 6 application, including integration tests.

Both these presentations bring forth Java EE as a standards based, easier and better alternative to the proprietary Spring Framework. They also cover scenarios of migrating and co-existence with Spring. Please go through these presentations for re-evaluating the usage of Spring Framework in your application stack.

For best practices on integrating the Spring Framework with the WebSphere Application Server please look at the following whitepaper.

Announcing the WebSphere Application Server V8.5 Alpha

2011-10-07T13:40:00.003-04:00

The year was 1911. While most were trying to understand how to create accounting machines and punch card readers, one man had a vision. He created a company with the sole intent of constructing a lightweight, fast, consumable application server that was so fast and easy to use, a developer could run it on even the slowest of punch card readers. "The server must start within 5 seconds" he exclaimed! "The server footprint cannot be bigger than 50 megabytes!" he mandated. While some of his more forward-thinking colleagues questioned how a production-ready server with such strong enterprise qualities of services could run in just 50 MB of space, others were puzzled by what an application server was and baffled by this talk of a "megabyte". They called him a dreamer and questioned whether this was even possible. "I want this application server technology to be available, even if it takes a hundred years!" he replied.

The rest is a history that is very much left out of the IBM Centenary literature. However, WebSphere Application Server V8.5 Alpha provides all this and more, using the new Liberty profile. Want to know more? Why not take a look round this new development community, WASdev. You can download the alpha server and tooling. We'd love you to let us know what you think on our forums, and to collaborate with us to help create a next generation development platform that works for you.

Modularity - the next generation of programming

2011-10-07T09:23:00.002-04:00

One of the issues that the industry has been wrestling with for quite a while has been integration. Application servers are big and integrate lots of code to provide the right set of functionality. Applications are growing in size and are integrating third party code to do the same thing. Sometimes there are conflicts. The application server may have integrated one version of Apache Commons Logging and the application needs another because the third party code they need to use requires it. This can even happen within the application itself.

The only way we're going solve this kind of problem is to remove the hierarchical classloader structure in Java and replace it with a managed classloader tree that allows versioning and control resolving dependencies. In other words, we desperately need a modular programming model.

The Java EE platform has known about this issue for some time (since before Java EE 6). It was not addressed in EE 6, but was supposed to be part of the EE 7 discussion. However, as of this month, the Java EE 7 Expert Group has dropped the ball once again on delivering modularity, citing a need for modularity in Java SE first.

However, do not despair. It's extremely unfortunate that EE 7 is not addressing industry concerns, but vendors are providing modular support today in most every app server and OSGi seems to be the predominant form. WebSphere Application Server V8.0 supports building and deploying modular apps and the WebSphere Application Server V8.5 Alpha has a Liberty Profile that shows just how much modular programming is going to change how we program. Think about WebSphere, but with roughly the size and startup speed of Tomcat and an even simpler config model than Tomcat. Best of all, it's OSGi based and gives you the control to resolve dependencies the way you want.

If you want to learn more, see http://www.ibm.com/wasdev and if you want to voice your displeasure in not addressing modular applications in Java EE 7, then send email to the spec leads (found at http://jcp.org/en/egc/view?id=342) or the public comment mailing list, users@javaee-spec.java.net.

Great overview of WebSphere Application Server V8.0

2011-06-28T16:00:00.002-04:00

Tom Alcott put together a great overview of version 8.0 of the WebSphere Application Server. Take a spin through his article on developerWorks.

He covers the Java EE 6 standards, additional integrated programming models (OSGi, Service Component Architecture, Java Batch, Communications Enabled, and XQuery/XSLT 2.0), additional feature packs (Web 2.0, dynamic scriptiong), system management improvements including installation, high availability, logging, recovery, security and migration.

Well worth the read.

I'm not dead yet

2011-06-27T17:44:00.002-04:00

From time to time, I see posts asking whether or not Java EE is dead. To paraphrase with a Java EE twist, "The reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated." It takes a lot of effort to build and deliver a Java EE release and it should be no surprise that it takes a while for vendors to get support out the door, but WebSphere Application Server V8.0 is now out and Java EE 6 support is one of the major pieces of it.

I've been prepping education material for various groups, but I thought I'd take a moment to reflect just how far we've come in improving the platform.

Once UI frameworks start taking advantage of Servlet 3.0 web fragments, it will be a snap to drop a UI framework into a web app and have it auto configured. JSF Facelets are a great improvement on UI composition and reuse. JSF Managed Beans have been split out into their own basic component model that will serve as the core for the platform's future evolution. This means a lean and mean component model that developers can easily grasp and use. The annotated POJO programming model is used everywhere and makes developing and describing components easy. Managed Beans and EJBs now form a graduated component programming model that starts simple and lets you add capabilities as needed with nothing more than an annotation. You can now package your EJBs in your WARs and Contexts and Dependency Injection for EE (CDI) will let you use them as Managed Beans. That means you can start with Managed Beans in your web app today and easily switch to EJBs as needed without repackaging or changing coding patterns. EJBs can be used anywhere a Manage Bean is used and just as easily.

Need to provide access to resources over the web? JAX-RS provides a simple POJO pattern for RESTful services.

Want to stop writing validation logic throughout your application to ensure data integrity? Try Bean Validation and have it done automatically for you.

Lastly, there's a new set of scoped JNDI namespaces that extend beyond java:comp into java:module, java:app, and java:global scopes. These allow a developer to share resources and refs at each of their respective scopes without having to replicate resource declarations in numerous places. It also makes it easier on admins, who only have to bind the shared resources once, instead of everywhere they are used.

I'd have to say that EE 5 and EE 6 have been some of the most productive releases from a developers point of view. This is about as far from being dead as a platform can get. If you haven't tried it yet, pick up a developer or trial edition of WebSphere Application Server v8.0 for free and give it a shot.

WebSphere ... going Mobile and the Cloud

2011-06-23T09:12:00.004-04:00

In my recent travels, two topics have come up over and over again. The first is mobile and the second is cloud. I'll see if we can get some content on mobile, but for now here is a great overview by Chris Mitchell.

On cloud, I wanted to point folks to some excellent sources of information on cloud that are by my WebSphere colleagues, but not on this blog.

Jason McGee has alot of demos on his blog that show how the IBM Workload Deployer help you leverage your middleware in the private cloud.

Dustin Amrhein reflects on how these technologies relate to real world deployments on his blog.

Matt Hogstrom has talked about his views of the cloud based as well on his blog.

Last, but not least, Jerry Cuomo has talked about our strategy around cloud and IBM's views on what private cloud means and how to consider performance around cloud (something I'm personally involved with at this point) on his blog.

Please take some time to spin through these blogs and let me know if there are additional aspects of cloud and mobile you'd like to hear from WebSphere folks.

WAS V8 is Here

2011-06-18T13:59:00.004-04:00

Its been in Beta for over a year - a program in which 9000 individual companies participated, 3 time more than any previous WebSphere early program. Now, in the week that IBM turns 100, WebSphere becomes a teenager (yes, we started in 1998) and WebSphere Application Server V8 is here.

First and foremost WAS V8 is a production-ready, fully certified Java EE 6 platform. Some of the primary component technologies, such as JPA 2.0 for persistence and JAX-RS for RESTful Web Services, have been available on WAS V7 through the additive WAS V7 feature packs, and now WAS V8 brings them together as part of our complete Java EE 6 platform support. Building web applications from composable framework technologies is significantly simpler using Servlet 3.0, with the introduction of web fragments. EJB modules can now be packaged directly in WAR archives to simplify the assembly of web applications. The embeddable EJB container continues the simplification of application development, providing a lightweight standalone container for testing EJBs. A common theme here is " development simplification", something further enhanced in WAS V8 with the new monitored directory support for faster compile-edit-debug cycles - drag your new or modified app to the monitored directory and WAS will automatically update or deploy it. Comprehensive Java EE 6 productivity tools are included in RAD v8.0.3, which is also now generally available. Of course, its not all just about Java EE 6. WAS V8 and RAD V8.0.3 support a broad range of programming models to address a wide spectrum of business problems:

Web applications can be assembled, deployed and managed as OSGi applications to dramatically reduce the size of EARs, increase the reuse of common libraries used by multiple enterprise applications, eliminate version conflicts between applications and enable in-place managed updates of modules of running applications.
Service Component Architecture (SCA) enables SOA assets to be assembled into coarse-grained composites and to be exposed over a variety of protocol bindings which can be decorated with declarative policies for security, reliability and transactional integrity.
The Web 2.0 and Mobile feature pack extends the reach of enterprise assets and provides a rich client experience for popular mobile devices including iPhone, Android and Blackberry.
Communication enabled applications (CEA) simplifies the application use of IP telephony through a catalog of customizable and extensible Web 2.0 widgets.
Support for batch workloads, alongside standard OLTP workloads, is provided directly in WAS V8 via the POJO-based Java Batch programming model and batch container, consolidating into WAS V8 the core batch support from WebSphere XD Compute Grid. At the same time, a new V8 release of Compute Grid provides enhanced support for massive batch jobs through management of job parallelization as well as managing end-to-end jobs across disparate execution environments such as WAS and CICS.
Processing large XML documents using XPATH 2.0, XSLT 2.0 and XQuery, exploiting a highly-optimized XML processor and Java XML API for navigating XML data in the most efficient manner.

Operationally V8 has seen a significant investment in reducing cost through improved performance and greater efficiency in common operational tasks. We haven't wasted any time in publishing our first SpecJEnterprise2010 results for WAS V8, which immediately takes first place on EjOPS/Core to add to WebSphere's lead for overall EjOPS/AppServer.

And its not just raw throughput that is faster in WAS V8. Product installation simplification through use of the IBM Installation Manager (IM) and new template-driven cell creation has reduced product installation time by 15%, large-topology server creation time by 69% and large-topology cluster-creation time by 31%.

Look out for more WAS V8.0 posts soon from the WAS team.

Tuning for idleness -- Server Consolidation

2011-05-03T14:20:00.006-04:00

Over the years, WebSphere has come to leverage server whitespace to keep our runtime hot to service the next new request as fast as possible. This has served us well in the past as our performance metrics have demonstrated over the years.

With the transition of workloads from dedicated server footprints to big machines which are logically partitioned or hosting hundreds of virtual guests, idle times in one guest or JVM may not necessarily translate to low-utilization of the entire platform. A typical development machine hosting hundreds of developer's guests may have many guests active, but idle. It is important that the idling machines impact overall system performance minimally.

We've written a whitepaper which focuses on how to configure WebSphere V7 to minimize idle-time processing available here. We hope you find the paper informative and helps you reduce the load of idling WebSpheres in your environment.

Steve Kinder

XML Feature Pack Tech Preview Available

2011-04-18T16:44:00.003-04:00

Just in time for IBM Impact, the IBM XML team cranked out an updated tech preview of the XML Feature Pack with three key new features.

First - XQuery modules is a way to break up larger XQuery based programs into modular units. This was the last optional feature of XQuery not yet supported and rounds out the XQuery 1.0 support. Not only does this feature help you break up your own XQuery programs, but it also allows you to use open source XQuery libraries such as FunctX.

Next is support for easier to bind Java functions. In previous releases you could binding to existing Java logic and data, but now binding to existing Java logic is even easier. The support is common across both XSLT 2.0 and XQuery and supports invocation of both instance and static methods. Here is an example that I showed at Impact:


package org.company;

public class Calculator {
    public static int sqrt(int val) {
        return (int)Math.sqrt(val);
    }
}


<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0"
     xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
     xmlns:xltxe="http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/prod/xltxe-j"
     xmlns:calc="http://com.example/myApp/calculator">
 
<xltxe:java-extension prefix="calc“ class="org.company.Calculator"/>

<xsl:template match="/">
     <xsl:value-of select=“calc:sqrt(64) "/>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

You can see in the XSLT that using our extention, we were able to map any functions starting with calc to Java calls to org.company.Calculator. Specifically the function sqrt was called in this example. With this support, no Java code is needed to link existing Java logic to an XSLT or XQuery program.

Finally, we spent alot of time on runtime error messages. We have made sure that error messages now include line and column numbers that help you track back to the error that caused execution to fail.

You can read more about these features on developerWorks and download the tech preview from the IBM download site.

Announcing the IBM WebSphere Application Server Migration Toolkit V3.0 Beta

2011-04-18T12:00:00.000-04:00

The IBM WebSphere Application Server development team is pleased to announce the availability of the IBM WebSphere Application Server Migration Toolkit V3.0 Beta.

The V3.0 Beta builds upon the capabilities delivered in the V2.1 release, expanding support for migrating your Java Enterprise Edition applications to WebSphere Application Server. The V3.0 Beta continues to enhance the developer's migration experience with new support for migration to WebSphere Application Server V8.0 Beta. Simple remediation tools utilize Rational® source code scanning technology to identify and resolve known application migration issues. This enables developers to quickly identify changes required to migrate from previous product versions or from competitor's Application Server platforms.

More details on the new features and beta program can be found on the IBM WebSphere Application Server V8.0 Beta home page. Just look under Integrated tooling. You can directly Download IBM® WebSphere® Application Server Migration Toolkit v3.0 Beta.

We're excited to continue learning about your experiences with the Beta in the WebSphere Application Server 8 beta forum.

WebSphere Application Server V8 Announced

2011-04-05T12:27:00.003-04:00

Planned availability date

June 17, 2011 - electronic delivery
July 22, 2011 - media packs

The formal announcement letter is available here.

V8 contains, as you may recall from previous blog posts, integrated versions of SCA, OSGi, XML, and CEA feature packs.

Please continue to enjoy the beta in the meantime!

--> updated link to remove mid-page jump. :-)

WebSphere Application Server v8.0 Beta, March refresh

2011-03-19T13:07:00.000-04:00

IBM have released a WAS v8.0 Beta refresh which includes some great new OSGi Applications functionality, including: In-place application update, a feature that allows administrators to manage and migrate their OSGi bundles at runtime, without application restart. Application extensions allow administrators to extend their applications at runtime with a Composite Bundle Archive (CBA), again with no application restart. There are also performance monitoring, security, session management, servlet 3.0 support for OSGi applications/components.

For more information on OSGi in the Beta, why not check out this short video on the Enterprise OSGi YouTube channel. http://www.youtube.com/user/EnterpriseOSGi#p/a/u/0/3vRmzqHiJBY

To download the WAS v8.0 Beta and get playing with all the new features, visit the download site here ->
https://www14.software.ibm.com/iwm/web/cc/earlyprograms/websphere/wsasoa/download.shtml

Introducing the new Enterprise OSGi YouTube channel.

2011-03-08T17:25:00.002-05:00

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been putting together a list of OSGi related talks that act as a useful resource for OSGi beginners. I'm lucky enough to work in a development team full of talented people who are very happy to share their knowledge and experiences to customers and at conferences. I wanted this youtube channel to provide a web resource so that we can share this information to a wider audience.

The short overview presentations are designed to giev the viewer a high level understanding of concepts without going into too much depth. I'll put up links and follow up material which goes into more depth at our main OSGi home at

The new channel can be found at http://www.youtube.com/user/EnterpriseOSGi

Videos available right now on our new Enterprise OSGi channel include:

Big EARs and OSGi - Part 1, by Ian Robinson, IBM, Distinguished Engineer
Big EARs and OSGi - Part 2, by Ian Robinson, IBM, Distinguished Engineer
An Interview with Zoe Slattery, by Zoe Slattery, IBM, OSGi Technical Evangelist
JPA in OSGi, by Tim Ward, IBM, OSGi Applications developer in WAS.

More will be uploaded soon, so why not subscribe to the channel to get notification of when new videos are uploaded. To subscribe, you'll need a YouTube account. Click on the subscribe button on the top left of the Enterprise OSGi channel, shown below.

Originally posted on http://www.devangelist.blogspot.com/

Great set of articles on Native Memory

2011-02-25T12:09:00.003-05:00

I am currently helping a customer with a native memory issue causing OutOfMemory (OOM) exceptions. Most folks are familiar with Java heap memory issues (eg. too much caching eating up live memory or leaking objects), but native memory is also important especially when your application isn't so "pure" (spawning threads, lots of JNI, etc). How do you know if you have a native out of memory? You'll see that you'll get out of memory conditions when the Java heap still has plenty of room left over. In the case I'm working on now, we actually saw the out of memory well before the memory in the heap grew to the maximum size (-Xmx) of the heap. In trying to help the customer out, I found the following articles excellent. The first is a very good overview of native memory and how to diagnose. The second is our app server tech note on things to try in the case you believe you have a native memory issue.

Thanks for the memory - Understanding how the JVM uses native memory on Windows and Linux (Windows/Linux version, AIX version).

Troubleshooting native memory issues

ONLINE SAMPLES

2011-02-08T17:00:00.007-05:00

The Samples section of the WAS V8 BETA Information Center is now live!! http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/beta/index.jsp

WebSphere Application Server V8 Beta samples are new and improved and now available for early testing to our WAS V8 Beta customers! Although clients will continue to find key samples installed with the product, additional samples are available online and can be accessed from a new section in the WAS V8 Beta Information Center. Now, samples, documentation, and other resources reside online, under one roof. This will increase availability and collaboration while providing samples in a time-sensitive manner.

Increasing Availability. The sample applications are now on the web, and users can browse individual samples with a direct link or find them using search engines. This is a first for WebSphere Application Server!

Adding Collaboration. As part of the new collaborative information center, users can comment on and rate samples, receive quick feedback, and sign up for updates.

Providing relevant samples in a time-sensitive manner. Online delivery allows samples to be added or updated periodically with regular updates to the information center.

The samples currently available in the Samples section of the WAS V8 Beta Information Center demonstrate the following technologies: Service Component Architecture (SCA), Communications Enabled Applications (CEA), OSGi applications, XML, and Internationalization service.

Look for more to come!

Help keep posts to this blog active in 2011

2011-01-03T09:07:00.003-05:00

Unfortunately, none of my New Year's resolutions included blogging more often. I notice that the posts on this blog have fallen to approximately once a month. That likely isn't enough to keep all our great readers interested in repeating their visits (and Google analytics confirms this for me). The idea of this blog is to get experts across the WebSphere development labs blogging about topics across the application infrastructure set of products. I'm certain I will be blogging about XML, SOA, and performance topics this year. I'm also sure you'll hear more and more about WebSphere Application Server V8.0 (the forum is very active). However, what other topics and products/technologies would you like to see talked about here? If you tell me, I'll line up the right people to blog. That is a resolution I can keep.

Happy New Year WebSphereains!

System Test Team Reports Available on developerWorks

2010-11-11T16:15:00.002-05:00

Have you been wondering what the WebSphere system test team has been up to lately? Visit our wiki for access to our collection of test reports. The test reports document results from representative product scenarios that have been validated by IBM system test groups. They cover testing we've done with WebSphere Application Server v7.0, the v8.0 Alpha and Betas, and several Feature Packs.

For example, in a recent report, "Leverage Business Level Applications (BLA) to Improve Management and Operational Capabilities Over Stand-alone Java EE Applications", Feng Yue Li from the WebSphere system test team describes a test scenario that focused on the use of shared libraries within BLAs. She explains how she verified that shared library relationships between BLA composition units work properly when a new version of the BLA asset is rolled out and describes how command assistance can be used with BLAs.

In another recent report, "Test Infrastructure: OSGi FeP and JEE applications", tester Tam Dinh outlines a scenario in which the WebSphere system team deployed, exercised and stressed WebSphere Application Server V7.0 OSGi Feature Pack using three OSGi applications and three JEE applications in a WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment cell.

We'd like to hear your feedback about our work and your ideas about how our testing can be improved. Visit our developerWorks test team wiki and let us know what you think.

New: WebSphere Batch Feature Pack !

2010-10-08T08:02:00.005-04:00

Announcing IBM WebSphere Application Server V7 Feature Pack for Modern Batch !

This new feature pack provides support for a Java Batch programming model, offers tools and operational controls for Batch workload execution, enables development and deployment of batch applications, and allows concurrent execution of batch and OLTP workloads.

The Batch Feature Pack is targeted toward developers and basic production deployment. It delivers a subset of the functionality of IBM WebSphere Extended Deployment Compute Grid. Batch applications built using the feature pack are fully upward compatible with the Compute Grid environment.

The Compute Grid product offers advanced features, including support for parallel processing, workload scheduler integration, usage accounting, and more. You can start with the Feature Pack (FeP) for Modern Batch and grow it into a full Compute Grid environment. The Batch Deployment Options Chart outlines the functional continuum among these offerings.

Joint WAS XML Feature Pack and DB2 pureXML Article on FpML Lives

2010-10-05T17:00:00.003-04:00

I've mentioned this work a few times on the blog, so I wanted to make sure people saw the final article on DeveloperWorks.

Programming XML across the multiple tiers, Part 2: Write efficient Java EE applications that exploit an XML database server

This article uses the example of Financial Products Markup Language (FpML) to show how to program realistic native XML across the Application Server and DB2 pureXML. It shows how you can use one consistent programming model (XQuery) and one consistent data model (XML) across data access, transformation, and filtering across both the mid tier and database tier. Using this one data model which doesn't require mapping to Java objects should increase the agility of your XML centric applications as no mapping code needs to be generated or maintained across both tiers.

Even though the article is based upon FpML (which is really useful to the financial sector), the concept is applicable to all industries that have substantial amounts of XML data.

The article has code attached (both a Rational Application Developer ear project and Eclipse/ANT builds) and database load scripts, so you can play with the code to see how it works. All you need to do is define the JDBC resources to point to your DB2 instance. I also have a virtual image for this based upon the free of charge WebSphere Application Server For Developers and DB2 Express-C in case you're interested.

WebSphere V8.0 Beta Feature Focus Weeks

2010-09-27T17:31:00.003-04:00

I hope people have been following the WebSphere Application Server V8.0 Feature Focus weeks on the beta forum. If not, you should check them our here:

IBM WebSphere Application Server V8.0 Beta Forums

Many include demos and extensive information on the features.

Some topics that recently were discussed include XML Application Programming, SIP Servlets, Communication Enabled Applications, Installation on z/OS, JSP 2.2, JAX-RS, Java EE6 Web Services, EJB 3.1, JPA 2.0, Security Enhancements, and Servlet 3.0.

Many other topics have been discussed as well. Just scroll back through the thread to find and comment on many of the new useful features coming in version 8.0.

A view from the road

2010-08-13T10:54:00.003-04:00

It's been a very long time since I blogged. Twitter seems to keep me from thinking about blogging as often. Also, I've been hitting a second travel season.

Last week I was at Balisage 2010 talking about Web 2.0 and XML discussing how to introduce MVC frameworks into DOJO (and other Web 2.0 widget libraries) that provides all sorts of interesting value add to DOJO. Also once MVC is in place, XML centric models integrate better into the browser. Specifically I discussed Ubiquity XForms. The goal of this work would be a clean XML story of storage to mid tier joins and query that exposed REST/XML in its original form to the browser. This avoids having to write XML to POJO to JSON conversion routines for data that originates and is stored in XML - a common case in many clients I talk to.

This week, I've been between New York and New Jersey. I've been hearing about how the financial and insurance industries work with XML. I've heard about how enterprise content management systems and data storage systems are closely related. I've heard about how XQuery as a general purpose programming model on top of such data is being used. However, I've heard of challenges that relate in linking systems together. I've also heard that having "hybrid servers" that allow XML to bridge into relational and Java systems and JSON is important. Finally, I built a nice VMware based demo of FpML processing across DB2 pureXML and the WebSphere XML Feature Pack. If you're interested in seeing how to efficiently program native XML end to end (whether you're into FpML or not), let me know and we can arrange a demo.

RAD Tooling for OSGi Applications

2010-07-09T02:06:00.003-04:00

RAD V8 Beta 2 is now available with updated support for developing, deploying and testing OSGi Applications using the WAS V7 Feature Pack for OSGi Applications and JPA 2.0. I'll describe some of the new OSGi capabilities of RAD in this post.

Built on top of the latest version of Eclipse (Helios), the RAD V8 Beta provides OSGi tools for enterprise Java developers. While most of the development activities, and hence development tools, for enterprise OSGi applications are common with Java EE there are some new considerations. Primarily, these are around the compile-time classpaths, the authoring of new metadata (the OSGi bundle and application manifests) and, optionally, Blueprint bean definition files. RAD introduces new project types for OSGi Bundle projects and OSGi application projects and a variety of new editors and tools for developing components in these types of projects. OSGi modularity semantics are honored in the project build paths to actively encourage modular design: each project has the scope of a single bundle, with Java package visibility between projects restricted to those packages explicitly imported/exported by the project's bundle manifest. This supports the careful and deliberate exposure of only those Java packages that are intended to be used external to a project . RAD's facet-based configuration enables OSGi projects to be configured as OSGi Web projects or OSGi JPA projects and integrates tools for authoring web.xml, persistence.xml and blueprint.xml. OSGi application projects - representing a complete enterprise application consisting of multiple bundles - can be imported from or exported to enterprise bundle archives, and can be tested and debugged on WAS V7 from the RAD workspace. RAD's SCA development tools are also extended to support "OSGi Applications" as a new implementation type for SCA components. The SCA tools accelerate the assembly of SCA composites; these can include OSGi application components which may selectively expose OSGi services outside the OSGi application and define remote bindings for these services. There's more about the relationship between OSGi services and SCA services here.

One of the quickest ways to explore the new OSGi features in RAD is to import one of the sample applications provided with the WAS V7 feature pack into a RAD workspace. The feature pack's Blog Sample, was described in an earlier pos t so I'll use that as my example. Start RAD and run the File->Import->OSGi Application (EBA) wizard, enterng the location of the com.ibm.ws.eba.example.blog.eba file (found in the WAS_INSTALL/feature_packs/aries/installableApps directory). Since one of the features this sample is designed to show is the deployment of an application which includes content provisioned from a bundle repository, you also need to make the com.ibm.json.java_1.0.0.jar available in the workspace - which you can do through File->Import->OSGi Bundle. The result is 4 OSGi bundle projects and an OSGi application project in the workspace, with everything correctly resolved.

You can see the relationships between the bundles in this application using RAD's new Bundle Explorer. The figure on the left shows the Bundle Explorer view of the Blog sample application project. Click on the image to enlarge it.

RAD gives you all the syntax assist, refactoring support, and problem quick-fixes you expect as well as new editors for bundle manifests, application manifests and blueprint bean definitions. By encapsulating business logic in POJO Blueprint beans and accessing persistent data through JPA entities, unit testing can be performed with simple frameworks like JUnit without requiring an application server to be running. And, of course, RAD includes integrated support for running and debugging entire OSGi applications on a WAS server, straight from the workspace.

WebSphere Application Server V8.0 Beta

2010-07-09T02:00:00.004-04:00

Last week, the beta for WebSphere Application Server V8.0 went live and was announced by Dana Price on the beta forum. There were some initial issues over the weekend with the download, but that is fixed, so if you tried to download -- try it again now.

There is a download for Windows, Linux, AIX, z/OS, Linux for System Z, HP-UX, and Solaris.

You can find out about the features offered in the beta via the following links:

Overall "What's New"

What's new for Installers which includes a new unified installer and customization tools

What's new for Developers with new servlet, EJB 3.1 JAXB/JAX-WS, JAX-RS, XML centric programming (XPath2/XSLT2/XQuery), SAML support as well as auto-deploy of apps in a monitored directory

What's new for Administrators and Performance adding web service management support, high performance logging, and enhanced caching under JPA

What's new for Security which adds security hardening

What's new for Problem Determination

There are far too many features to list here on the blog, so hopefully the above gives you enough reason to give it a spin. See the InfoCenter for further information.

Go ahead, download the beta, try it out and leave feedback on the forum.

Humor for Friday - Java-4-ever

2010-06-25T09:18:00.005-04:00

I don't want to post funny videos here too much as I think people come here for technical information. However, this is just too good to not share. There is one slightly NSFW (not safe for work) section. Even mentions XML, so its truly great.

Watch the Java 4-Ever Video

Now on YouTube

OSGi applications and JPA2 feature pack has gone GA

2010-06-03T08:03:00.007-04:00

WooHoo!!!!!!

Releasing any product involves a lot of hard work, sleepless nights and the occasional lost weekend, so you'll understand why I am happy that the feature pack for OSGi Applications and JPA 2 is now GA and can be installed either from the web, or locally, using installation manager.

Some highlights of what we have delivered:

Support for development and deployment of enterprise applications using OSGi
Support for Enterprise OSGi specs around Web application, Blueprint and JPA
The ability to update the individual bundles in an OSGi applications
Support for integrating OSGi and Java EE applications using SCA
Support for Java Persistence API 2, both from Java EE and OSGi applications
Development tooling for OSGi and JPA2 via the Rational Application Developer beta
Good performance increase measured using the SPECjEnterprise2010 benchmark.

I could go on and list some of the other cool features, like the bundle repository support for OSGi, and the JPA2 criteria API, but some of they have been discussed on the blog already, and then I wouldn't have an excuse to write more about them later.

Download, use, enjoy!

Alasdair

P.S. There is an iFix available for the feature pack and we recommend you install it.

P.P.S. You'll need to have 7.0.0.9 of the application server and JDK to install the feature pack.

The Cure for XML in Web 2.0?

2010-05-30T23:16:00.004-04:00

Earlier, I blogged about the Pain of XML in Web 2.0. I alluded to not being happy with the answer I ended up with. I'm happy to say that I'll finally be talking about a possible solution. As you see here, I have submitted a paper for the Balisage 2010 Conference entitled Where XForms meets the glass: Bridging between data and interaction design along with Charles Wiecha and Rahul Akolkar.

Here is the abstract:

XForms offers a model-view framework for XML applications. Some developers take a data-centric approach, developing XForms applications by first specifying abstract operations on data and then gradually giving those operations a concrete user interface using XForms widgets. Other developers start from the user interface and develop the MVC model only as far as is needed to support the desired user experience. Tools and design methods suitable for one group may be unhelpful (at best) for the other. We explore a way to bridge this divide by working within the conventions of existing Ajax frameworks such as Dojo.

Interested? Let me know and we can get a review copy of the paper to you. I have talked to many clients that want to integrate their meta data driven XML dominant data to the Web 2.0 work with DOJO and run into the impedance mismatch wall. Hopefully that wall will be coming down soon.

BTW, if you'd like to attend this great conference to hear about this topic and many others on the jam packed agenda, here is a great link to use to convince your management to let you join us in Montreal.

XQuery: Powerful, Simple, Cool .. "Demo"

2010-05-27T12:32:00.012-04:00

At IBM Impact this year, I did talks about the XML Feature Pack as well as basic introduction to the XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0. I think one of the most useful parts of my talk was when I demoed code in XQuery. I found that people really saw the light (how simple and fully functioned XQuery is) once people saw the code in a useful application. Also, people that were experienced with XPath 1.0 appreciated the new features and people who had experience with XSLT 1.0 appreciated the syntax (closer to imperative coding). The application I used in the demo was the download stats program I have blogged about before. Let me take a second to do the same "demo" here.

First, I have an XML input file of all the downloads over a certain time period. That XML file could come from a web services, a JMS message, or be loaded from a XML database. The data looks something like:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<downloads>
  <download>
    <transaction>1</transaction>
    <userid>user1</userid>
    <uniqueCustomerId>uid-1</uniqueCustomerId>
    <filename>xml_and_import_repositories.zip</filename>
    <name>Mr. Andrew Spyker</name>
    <email>user@email.com</email>
    <companyname>IBM</companyname>
    <datedownloaded>2009-11-20</datedownloaded>
  </download>
  <!-- more download records repeating -->
</downloads>

First I want to quickly get rid of all downloads that have "education" in the filename. Next I want to split the downloads that come from IBM'ers (email or company has some version of IBM in it) vs. the downloads that come from clients. Of those groups, I want to quickly group repeat downloaders (by uniqueCustomerId). I won't include it here, but I've show how to write some of this with Java and DOM in the past. It's sufficient to say that this code is very complex (imagine all the loops through the data you'd write for each of these steps). Let's look at these steps in XQuery:


(: Quickly get rid of education downloads :)
declare variable $allNonEducationDownloads := /downloads/download[not(contains(filename, '/education/'))];

(: Split the IBM downloads from non-IBM downloads :)
declare variable $allIBMDownloads :=
  $allNonEducationDownloads[contains(upper-case(email), 'IBM')] |
  $allNonEducationDownloads[contains(upper-case(companyname), 'IBM')] |
  $allNonEducationDownloads[contains(upper-case(companyname), 'INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES')];
 
(: Get the unique IBM downloader id's :)
declare variable $allIBMUniqueIds := distinct-values($allIBMDownloads/uniqueCustomerId);

(: Get the non-IBM downloads :)
declare variable $allNonIBMDownloads := $allNonEducationDownloads except $allIBMDownloads;

(: Get the unique non-IBM downloader id's :)
declare variable $allINonIBMUniqueIds := distinct-values($allNonIBMDownloads/uniqueCustomerId);

I think the most powerful line of the above code is the "except" statement. In that one quick statement, I can quickly express that we want to take all the downloads and remove the IBM downloads which leaves us with the non-IBM downloads. I think it's quite impressive that XQuery expresses the above statements in about the same amount of lines as the English language I used to describe the requirements.

Additionally, since you are telling the runtime what you want to do instead of how you want to do it, our runtime can aggressively optimize the data access in ways that we couldn't if we had to try to understand the Java byte codes were doing on top of the DOM programming model. Also, since XQuery is functional (the above variables are final) we could span this to multi-core more safely than imperative code as we can guarantee there are no side-effects. This is why, as a performance guy, I think declarative languages are a key to the future of performance.

Back to the code. For people used to XPath 1.0 and its lack of all the built-in schema types, dealing with things as simple as dates was problematic (they were just strings). Here are a few functions that show, with schema awareness, XPath 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 are much more powerful than before:


declare function my:downloadsInDateRange($downloads, $startDate as xs:date, $endDate as xs:date) {
  $downloads[xs:date(datedownloaded) >= $startDate and xs:date(datedownloaded) <= $endDate]
};

declare function my:codeDownloadsInDateRange($downloads, $startDate as xs:date, $endDate as xs:date) {
  let $onlyCodeDownloads := my:onlyCodeDownloads($downloads)
  return my:downloadsInDateRange($onlyCodeDownloads, $startDate, $endDate)
};

These two functions give me a quick way to look for "code" downloads within a date range. In the first function, it's very easy to understand that this functions take the downloads and returns only the subset that has a datedownloaded that is after the start date and before the end date. In the second function, you can see it's easy to call the first function. At this point, I think most Java programmers might be saying "this isn't like what I expected based on my previous work with XSLT". While XSLT is a great language for transformation (XSLT 2.0 even better), I think XQuery gets a little closer to a general purpose language with the ability to declare functions and variables in a more terse syntax.

Finally, let's cover two more important powerful features - FLOWR and output construction. Once I have sliced and diced the data, I need to output the data into a XML report. XQuery gives you a very nice way to mix XML and declarative code as shown below:


declare function my:downloadsByUniqid($uniqid, $downloads) {
  for $id in $uniqid
    let
      $allDownloadsByUniqueId := $downloads[uniqueCustomerId = $id],
      $allCodeDownloadsByUniqueId :=  $downloads[uniqueCustomerId = $id and (contains(filename, 'repositories'))]
    return
      <downloadById id="{ $id }" codeDownloads="{ count($allCodeDownloadsByUniqueId) }" >
        <name>{ data($allDownloadsByUniqueId[1]/name) }</name>
        <companyName>{ data($allDownloadsByUniqueId[1]/companyname) }</companyName>
        <codeDownloads>
        {
          for $download in $allCodeDownloadsByUniqueId order by $download/datedownloaded return
            <download>
              <filename>{ data($download/filename) }</filename>
              <datedownloaded>{ data($download/datedownloaded) }</datedownloaded>
            </download>
        }
        </codeDownloads>
      </downloadById>
};

This shows how you can create new XML documents and quickly mix in XQuery code. Some people I've talked to think this looks like scripting languages in terms of simplicity. Also, you'll see a For ($id in $uniqid) Let ($allDownloadsByUniqueId, ohters) Return (downloadsById). These three parts make up part of what people call FLOWR (and pronounce flower) which stands for for, let, order by, where, return. The FLOWR statement is a very powerful construct -- able to do all the sorts of joins of data you're used to in SQL -- but in this example I've chosen to show how it can be used to simplify code in the general case where joining data wasn't the focus. For Java people, think of it as a much more powerful looping construct that integrates all the power of SQL for XML.

In the end, I have a 200 line program that takes all the download reports and organizes them by unique IBM vs. unique non-IBM ids and produces a month by month summary. I'd be surprised if you could come up with anything shorter and more maintainable that worked with Java and DOM. I hope this "demo" encourages you to consider using XQuery in your next project where you need to work with data.

Finally, if you find people trying to convince you that XQuery isn't capable enough to be a general language, take a look at a complete ray tracer written in XQuery in a mere 300 lines of code (a real statement of XQuery's power and brevity).

PS. You can download this XQuery program here and some sample input here. You can run them by getting the XML Feature Pack thin client here. The thin client is a general purpose Java based XQuery processor that you can use for evaluation and in production when used with the WebSphere Application Server. All you need to do is download the thin client, unzip and run the below command:


.\executeXQuery.bat -input downloads-fake.xml summary.xq

Why the -outputfile switch in XML Thin Client is useful

2010-05-26T09:54:00.004-04:00

A simple tip...

I was recently working with a set of files that contained non-English Unicode characters and trying to process the data with XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0. I was using the Thin Client for XML that is part of the XML Feature Pack which offers J2SE and command line invocation options for XSLT and XQuery when used in a WebSphere environment.

I did something like:


.\executeXSLT.bat -input input.xml stylesheet.xslt > temp.xml
.\executeXQuery.bat -input temp.xml query.xq > final.xml

And this resulted in something like:


... executeXSLT "works" fine ...
... executeXQuery "fails" with ...
An invalid XML character (Unicode: 0x[8D,3F,E6,8D]) was found in the element content of the document
.
An invalid XML character (Unicode: 0x[8D,3F,E6,8D]) was found in the element content of the document
.

I figured something was wrong with the encodings in the XSLT output method or the xml encoding of the files themselves or -- worse yet -- something wrong with our processor. After some quick thinking by my excellent team, they had me replace the output redirection (where my OS and console got a chance to see/mess with the data between the processor and temp.xml) with the -outputfile option (which allows the processor to directly write to the file) like:


.\executeXSLT.bat -input input.xml -outputfile temp.xml stylesheet.xslt
.\executeXQuery.bat -input temp.xml -outputfile final.xml query.xq

Problem solved. No corruption of the data.

Lesson learned: Keep all the data inside of the processor and don't introduce things (like the Windows Console) into the pipeline that won't honor (or know) the encoding.

New CEA demo videos..

2010-05-03T10:08:00.003-04:00

Here are some more demos of the WebSphere Application Server Feature Pack for Communications Enabled Applications (CEA). We'll be using some of these in the IBM Impact 2010 sessions that I referenced here

The first one is doing some of the contact center widgets (like click to call then cobrowsing) on the iPhone:

Here is the coshopping between a user on an iPhone and a Desktop:

The next is a shorter and HD version of our JavaScript widget walk through:

WWW2010/FutureWeb Conference Summary

2010-05-01T06:25:00.003-04:00

I had the opportunity to attend the Future Web part of the WWW2010 Conference this past week in Raleigh, NC. This conference was quiet amazing both in the scope/influence and the fact that it was in my hometown.

I was able to hear some technical giants like Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Danah Boyd and Doc Searls. I was able to meet up with many people locally (including Paul Jones) as well as folks from across the world working to make the internet move into the future.

The content was as technical as it was social and political. While it's interesting to hear about the Semantic Web and HTML5 and all the cool new areas for search/data mining, it was equally valuable to hear about the impacts the Web is having on education, healthcare, and media to name a few. Also, I hear about the work of many of the conference attendees to change government processes for the better and how involved that can be with the web spanning countries in ways no other technology can/does.

Some reflections on the technical content:

1) Facebook was bashed (a lot). I actually learned that yet again, Facebook had opted me into sharing information without my understanding. The key take away from all of this bashing was that Facebook (and all web technologies) have become a critical part of our culture. The information we all are producing to create value for sites like Facebook/Twitter/etc needs to be treated with care. Marketing folks salivate at the opportunities that this community created content provides. However, just because we can share and use such data in ways that benefit our companies, we shouldn't assume we should.

2) Adobe/Apple was based (a lot). The value of open standards on the web is clear. Some of the stories shared by the panelists were quite interesting -- Talk about how the internet was just a radical idea that would never compete with the "serious networks" of the time prove how valuable standards can be and how they have and will continue to change the world.

3) There was a great presentation by Carl Malamud talking about "Rules for Radicals" that documented 10 rules to make large changes to government and technology, but the rules applied equally well - I can apply them to working within a large corporation. Note that while take aways #1 and #2 got a lot of press, the fact is there were many iPad's, Mac Books and Facebook borne meetups. Carl's presentation showed that we need to work to affect change within these communities. Here is a quick video summary of the rules.

4) I've had it on my TODO list for some time now to look at the building blocks of the Semantic web. I needed to understand how RDF/RDFa and SPARQL relate to XML and XQuery. I'm starting to form some opinions now based upon what I've heard at the conference and the work I've done this week to play with the technologies. I can say with certainty that this Web 3.0 (the web for machines vs. Web 2.0 which was the web for human) and its related technologies - RDF, SPARQL are not going away. I can also say that RDF/SPARQL doesn't compete with XML/XQuery. I can see that we'll need to bridge the gap between these worlds as we look to unleash not only the XML stored in many enterprises but also relational data. We'll also need to do this quickly as this world is moving fast and those people who don't embrace Web 3.0 will be as left behind as those that are still moving towards Web 2.0. An example of this speed that impressed me was the creation of a Facebook Open Graph Protocol vocabulary that was peer edited during a session on Thursday but then live by Friday. Amazing.

5) Twitter is a business tool. I've known this for some time and had success stories, but given the audience of this conference (passionate web technologists) I saw the value of Twitter magnified by at least an order of magnitude. Every academic attendee was communicating via Twitter. I used it to find the IBM attendees and collaborate with them in ways I'm sure I would have missed without Twitter. I used it to meet people I've never met before (even led to a lunch out with Doc Searls and Kathy Gill and another with a local company that is working with SIP technologies). If it wasn't for twitter, I'd say the value of the collaboration at this conference would have been decreased by that same order of magnitude. Another funny story that proves Raleigh is well connected was a fight between two bars on Twitter that broke out trying to earn our patronage for a dinner on the town. If you're a business that isn't paying attention to Twitter are you losing the cost of a few beers or worse?

I'm sure there were more take aways I'll remember, but for now that's a good starting point. If you were at Future Web and had other big take aways, post them in comments.

PS. I got to meet a bunch of great local XML/XQuery folks at the XQuery meet-up I organized. I look forward to collaborating with these folks locally in the future.

Here comes WebSphere CloudBurst 2.0

2010-04-30T23:40:00.003-04:00

Lifted from Dustin's Blog.

Just over a year ago, IBM announced the availability of the initial version of the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance. Today, an announcement signals the coming availability of WebSphere CloudBurst 2.0, and that brings the major release count up to three in a period of about 12 months (the release of 1.1 came at the end of last year).

You can read the announcement for yourself, but here is a quick overview of the new features and enhancements delivered in the latest version:

- WebSphere Process Server support: You can now provision fully functional, virtualized WebSphere Process Server environments using WebSphere CloudBurst. This adds to the existing support for WebSphere Application Server, and the beta and trial versions of WebSphere Portal and DB2 respectively.

- Multi-image pattern support: In previous versions of WebSphere CloudBurst, all patterns mapped to a single virtual image. This meant your custom patterns could only contain parts (or nodes) from a single product. Now you can build patterns that contain parts from multiple different images. This allows you to represent diverse application environments, for instance, one that includes WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Process Server, and DB2 components, as a single pattern. Of course, this also means installing and initializing these different product components becomes as simple as deploying a single pattern.

- Dynamic system management: During the lifetime of an application environment, it is commonplace to add additional capacity. Specifically for WebSphere environments, this often means adding more nodes and application servers into your landscape. WebSphere CloudBurst 2.0 makes it simple (click of a button) to add more nodes and application servers to a virtual system you previously deployed. Using this new capability, you can quickly scale up your application environment to meet the changing demands of its users. Conversely, you can scale down the environment and remove unnecessary nodes with the simple click of a button as well.

- Intelligence for the runtime: I always talk about the WebSphere intelligence the appliance delivers in terms of deploying and constructing WebSphere application environments. The addition of the WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition Intelligent Management Pack means this intelligence starts to make its way into the runtimes of your application environments. Use the new intelligent management pack to enable a policy-based approach to managing your applications. You can enforce application health actions, govern application response times, and even manage the rollout of new versions of your application with no service disruption.

- New Red Hat WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition: The WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition is a virtual image that includes everything from the operating system all the way to the WebSphere Application Server, pre-installed and pre-configured. Initial versions of this virtual image shipped with Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Staring in WebSphere CloudBurst 2.0, users can use a new WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition virtual image for VMWare ESX that packages the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server operating system.

As WebSphere CloudBurst marches forward with new releases, a theme becomes apparent: Give users a choice. What do I mean? Well, just look at where WebSphere CloudBurst stands with the 2.0 release:

- You can use WebSphere CloudBurst to provision environments to VMware ESX, PowerVM, and z/VM hypervisor platforms

- You can use WebSphere CloudBurst to provision WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Process Server, DB2, and WebSphere Portal

- You can run your virtualized WebSphere application environments on SUSE, Red Hat, AIX, and zLinux operating systems

Want to see more about the 2.0 release? Check out my new video. This much is inarguable: For running WebSphere application environments in an on-premise cloud, nothing comes close to the capabilities of WebSphere CloudBurst.

CEA Impact Sessions

2010-04-30T21:37:00.004-04:00

In case you are looking to learn more about Communications Enabled Applications (CEA) at Impact, here are some talks you can come into:
Enabling Cobrowsing and Coshopping on your website - 2040A Tue, 4/May 10:15 AM - 11:30 AM Venetian - San Polo 3506
Adding Rich Interaction Support to your Enterprise Application - 2272A Wed, 5/May 10:15 AM - 11:30 AM Venetian - Lido 3103

Also, we have a lab on Enabling Coshopping and Two Way Forms on your Web Applications with CEA - 2027A Tue, 4/May 04:45 PM - 06:00 PM Venetian - Murano 3304

Finally, here is a less than 3 minute video showing cobrowsing and the new mobile widgets we have made available and will be demoing at Impact here as a tech preview

WebSphere Application Server Feature Pack for Dynamic Scripting

2010-04-30T10:37:00.002-04:00

Lifted from Project Zero blog:

Today we announced a new feature pack for WebSphere Application Server based on WebSphere sMash. This new feature pack delivers the sMash programming model for use on entitled / current subscription WebSphere Application Server V6.1 and V7.0 servers.

Complete details can be found in the IBM.com announcement letter.

When the Feature Pack becomes electronically Generally Available, downloads will be available on the official IBM.com web site for WebSphere Application Server Feature Pack for Dynamic Scripting.

Also being made available through Project Zero, the sMash Enterprise Packager allows WebSphere Application Server V7 to deploy and manage sMash applications through the administrative console as an EAR file. Read more info about this and download the sMash Enterprise Packager on ProjectZero.org.

Find out more about this new Feature Pack and more at IBM Impact 2010.

Based on technology from WebSphere sMash V1.1.1, the feature pack for dynamic scripting provides support for dynamic scripting languages including PHP and Groovy all the while allowing you integrate with AJAX, REST, ATOM, RSS, etc. There is also a resource model as part of the included Zero programming model that simplifies the creation of RESTful services. Want a quick way to create a Web 2.0 application in these languages .. then give this feature pack a try.

Video Blogs on Impact 2010 Sessions Next Week

2010-04-29T10:27:00.004-04:00

Are you heading to IBM Software Impact 2010 next week? I hope so!

I will be presenting on WebSphere XML Strategy. I will be presenting a session on the WebSphere Application Server Feature Pack for XML talking about usage scenarios, how to use the feature pack, and best practices (Sessions 1635A/B on Monday and repeat Thursday). I will also be providing a general education session on XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 (Session 1634 on Tuesday) focused on basic education as well as noting whats new with the standards - with a cool give away! I will be assisting a lab where you can get hands on experience with the XML Feature Pack and the Rational Application Developer tools (Session 1606 on Monday). Stop by any of these session or hit me up on twitter (@aspyker) if you have any questions about XML or data strategy within your enterprise.

Along with the XML Feature Pack and XML strategy talks, I'll be participating in a SOA and BPM Performance update (1321) talking about SPEC SOA and multiple panel discussions around the values of the application server, performance, and feature packs.

You can hear me talk about the sessions here:

Some other videos about sessions next week are available as well.

Erik Kristiansen on RESTful, dynamic scripting, and OSGi programming models:

Lan Vuong on extreme transaction processing and elastic application architectures:

Looking for XPath/XSLT/XQuery Education?

2010-04-08T22:27:00.003-04:00

Last year, I attended the XML-In-Practice 2009 conference. One person I met there is Ken Holman. Ken works for Crane Softwrights Ltd. which is a consultancy delivering computer systems analysis and training services with focus in structured text processing related to XML and SGML including XSL/XSL-FO, XSLT, XPath and XQuery, and UBL.

Ken and I have been collaborating recently on enabling the hands-on in-depth XSLT/XQuery classes offered to use the IBM Thin Client for XML with WebSphere Application Server V7.0. Now students with the feature pack can quickly configure Crane's exercises to utilize the latest XSLT/XQuery support from IBM.

The three upcoming publicly-subscribed deliveries for XSLT/XQuery are:

West-coast North America: April 26-30, 2010 - San Francisco area

East-coast North America: May 10-14, 2010 - Ottawa, Canada

Europe: June 7-11, 2010 - Trondheim, Norway

Ken travels the world teaching a number of XML-related classes both privately and publicly. He is willing to consider teaching anywhere and he welcomes anyone to contact him regarding a possible private or public class of any of his material. Ken has taught and offers other classes. You can see them here.

XML Feature Pack 1.0.0.3 Available

2010-04-07T18:06:00.003-04:00

I'm happy to announce another major update to the XML Feature Pack and its impact on our development tooling - Rational Application Developer for WebSphere.

We just released the 1.0.0.3 version of the XML Feature Pack that has two major new features (as well as some small bug fixes). The two new features are:

XQuery Schema Awareness

In the initial release we had Schema Awareness for XSLT 2.0. In this release we add similar function to XQuery. Specifically this means we started to support the optional XQuery 1.0 features of schema import and schema validation. With these features you can use your own type information in XQuery programs. A common scenario would be looking for all addresses in an input document, regardless of they were "billingAddress" or "shippingAddress". Programming based on type information is a powerful concept that leads to more flexible implementations. Also, validation allows you to validate incoming documents, xml trees and whole output documents. This allows for greater reliability in your XML processing.

Debugging support for XSLT 2.0 under Rational Application Developer (RAD) for WebSphere

Previously with RAD you could debug XSLT 1.0 stylesheets. With this new release of the XML Feature Pack and with RAD 7.5.5.1 you can debug XSLT 2.0 stylesheets. This isn't just about moving to a newer stylesheet level. With all the changes in the data model and advanced new concepts like grouping, there are many improvements in visualization with debugging over the XSLT 1.0 debugger.

What is also interesting is that this is a converged debugger. While there are other XSLT 2.0 debuggers out there, they only work on the stylesheet itself. With this support in RAD, you can debug not only the stylesheet, but also the Java code in your web application that invokes the XSLT engine along with any Java extension functions you might have. If you are using XSLT 2.0 in the application server, this is the tool you want for debugging end to end.

I hope to do a video demo of this Rational Application Developer functionality. Imagine setting breakpoints in XSLT as well as Java and being to jump between them. Anyone interested in seeing such a video demo?

Have fun with the new functions!

Options for WebSphere Application Server Scripting

2010-04-04T21:40:00.002-04:00

WebSphere Application Server (WAS) provides a scripting interface called wsadmin. wsadmin supports two scripting languages jacl* and jython. Five objects are available when you use scripts:

AdminControl: Use to run operational commands.
AdminConfig: Use to run configurational commands to create/modify WAS configuration.
AdminApp: Use to administer applications.
AdminTask: Use to run administrative commands.
Help: Use to obtain general help.

WAS provides a number of aids to developers and system administrators for the development of wsadmin scripts. Different options that can be leveraged in developing wsadmin scripts are explained below.

WAS V7 Script Libraries (new in v7 .. supported)
WebSphere Application Server V7.0 includes script libraries that can simplify the use of these objects.
Script libraries can be used to perform a higher level of wsadmin functions than can be done using a single wsadmin command. Only a single line from a library function is needed to perform complex functions. Each script is written in Jython, and is often referred to as “the Jython script”. The script libraries are categorized into six types (Application, Resources, Security, Servers, System) and the types are further subdivided into application and utilities. See the WAS V7 Administration and Configuration Guide chapter 8 for additional details. The script libraries are located in WAS_INSTALL_ROOT/scriptLibraries directory. These libraries are loaded when wsadmin starts and are readily available from the wsadmin command prompt or to be used from the customized scripts.

Command assistance ( supported)
The command assistance feature in the administrative console was introduced in WAS V6.1 with limited scope in function. The command assistance feature has been broadened in V7.0. When you perform an action in the administrative console, you can select the View administrative scripting command for last action option in the Help area of the panel to display the command equivalent. This command can be copied and pasted into a script or command window.You also have the option to send these as notifications to the Rational Application Developer V7.5, where you can use the Jython editor to build scripts.

wsadminlib.py ( 'as-is' see note below)
Another resource for WebSphere System Administrators for scripting is the wsadminlib.py script library.
wsadminlib.py wsadminlib.py is a large python file containing hundreds of methods to help simplify configuring the WAS using scripting. A wide variety of methods have been developed. These methods perform tasks such as creating servers, starting servers, creating clusters, installing applications, proxies, core groups, core group bridge, dynacache, shared libraries, classloaders, replication domains, security, BLA, JDBC, etc. Please note that wsadminlib is provided on an 'as is' basis under the IBM DeveloperWorks license agreement. It is not a supported product. The underlying wsadmin calls made by the scripts are however supported by IBM.

Happy Scripting!

* jacl has been stabilized

Programming XML Across Multiple Tiers

2010-03-31T10:20:00.004-04:00

In the XML Feature Pack, we ship a sample that shows how to use XML centric programming in the middle tier. The sample shows how to unlock data in Web 2.0 ATOM XML encoded feeds using XQuery and present the data in a typical web application using XSLT. As an extension to this sample, we also have a sample that shows how to persist data from these feeds into an XML Database such as DB2 pureXML or Apache Derby. We included this example as we found, frequently, that people working with XML centric programming typically had large XML datastores in XML centric databases.

While the sample is there, with source code, in the XML Feature Pack, we don't explain why we coded the sample the way we did. In this new developerWorks article (Programming XML across the multiple tiers: Use XML in the middle tier for performance, fidelity, and development ease), we go into detail why for simplicity, performance, and flexibility reasons we coded the sample the way we did.

The article is worth a read. It will walk you through the new features in the XML Feature Pack and JDBC 4.0 that allow an end to end native XML programming model across the XML Feature Pack and an XML database. We hope to expand this article over time to cover more advanced concepts when working with XML databases.

Finally, here are two quick videos that show how to get the sample working with DB2 pureXML and Apache Derby.

DB2 pureXML (Part 1/2)
Direct Link (HD Version)

Apache Derby (Part 2/2)
Direct Link (HD Version)

XQuery as a replacement for VBScript?

2010-03-30T15:18:00.005-04:00

I was discussing with a colleague the leaning of folks to use JavaScript to process data on the server. I have seen a few products recently move to JavaScript as a programming model aimed towards folks that aren't skilled in languages such as Java. I always wondered why. JavaScript doesn't seem like the right language for a server environment and isn't the best language for data navigation. The colleague told me that his belief was that JavaScript was much closer to VBScript that "business users" are used to using in Excel. After looking at a presentation on XQuery I did, my colleague believes that XQuery could have filled the same need as JavaScript (high level language, script like, etc.).

In this presentation, I showed how I replaced a process we had internally using Excel and VBScript with an online application using XQuery running on the XML Feature Pack. I also showed how others have done non-query based applications using XQuery (like the XQuery Ray Tracer) proving that XQuery is a full language.

I wonder if others out there also believe that XQuery is a good language to replace VBScript and "programs" currently locked in Excel documents?

IBM WebSphere Application Server V8.0 Alpha

2010-03-29T17:00:00.000-04:00

The WebSphere Application Server team is proud to announce the availability of the IBM WebSphere Application Server V8.0 Alpha.

Building upon the capabilities of our previous releases, some of the Alpha features include:

Key portions of Java™ Enterprise Edition 6.0 specifications

Increased developer productivity

Simplified product install with integrated prerequisite and interdependency checking

Enhanced security and governance capabilities

JPA L2 cache and JPA L2 cache integration with DynaCache

High Performance Extensible Logging

Our architects, designers, engineers, testers, information developers, and user experience professionals are eager to participate with you in the Alpha forum, discussing what's new, learning about your experiences with all aspects of the product, and answering questions.

Also, the WebSphere Customer Experience Program (CEP) offers opportunities for interactive sessions with our development teams, including demos of potential new features and opportunities to provide feedback that we can use to drive improvements into each version of the product.

More details about the Alpha program, how to download the product, and the CEP program can be found here:

https://www14.software.ibm.com/iwm/web/cc/earlyprograms/websphere/wsasoa/index.shtml

And, here's a link to the Alpha forum:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=2180&start=0

We're looking forward to hearing from you about your experiences with the IBM WebSphere Application Server V8.0 Alpha.

Enjoy!

More OSGi goodness

2010-03-17T07:31:00.005-04:00

There is a new feature in the Beta refresh of the OSGi feature pack which went out last week - a tool to inspect application bundles. Here are some brief instructions on how to use it.

First, install the feature pack (see here) and start the application server, then at the shell command line navigate to:

[AppServerHome]/feature_packs/aries/bin

There is a script in there called osgApplicationConsole.sh (or .bat), run it and you should get a "wsadmin>" prompt. Use the list() at the prompt and it will show you ... nothing. That's fine, you need to install and start an application before you can see anything.

Install and start the Blog Sample (as described here), then try list() again, you will see something this:

Two frameworks are listed, 'shared bundles' and the Blog application. Connect to the first like this:

wasadmin>connect(0)

Use the ss() command to look at what is in it:

You don't have to disconnect from a framework explicitly, so to look at framework 1 (the Blog application) just connect to it:

wsadmin> connect(1)

then ss() shows the blog sample bundles.

This may by now be looking slightly familiar to anyone used to the Equinox OSGi console. The difference is that WebSphere is partitioning the space into separate application frameworks which you can look at individually - nice feature if you have a lot of applications. By the way, if you forget which framework you are connected to, list() at the wsadmin> prompt will tell you.

Other console commands can be found in the documentation, or by using 'help()' at the wsadmin> prompt. Have fun!

The pain of XML in Web 2.0

2010-02-26T15:42:00.012-05:00

I have continued to think about the end to end XML story across database, middle tier, and the browser client. I have talked to many organizations that work with standard industry XML documents (HL7, OAGIS, ACCORD, etc) where the XML view unifies the data of their entire enterprise. To these organizations, they work data out from the message queues to data storage to middle tier. However, what does it look like when they want to expose this data to the web tier? There are products that handle this well like Lotus Forms based on XML centric standards like XForms. But what about Web 2.0 libraries like DOJO or jQuery?

I took the download sample I described here, and tried to visualize the data to Web 2.0 webpages. The data format of the XML of interest is:

First, I looked at the DOJO bar chart code and did something like this in a server side XQuery program that generated HTML with the following under JavaScript:

This works as XQuery can return sequence of primitive types and in this case, I'm just returning a string and inserting it inside of the JavaScript code that expects value/text values. But what if I want to have a REST endpoint serve up XML directly and have the browser consume it?

DOJO DataGrid can read from a DataStore which can be hooked to an XmlStore. This means I can use a browser side control to read from my server side XML. All seems good until you get into the details. Here are snippets of the code to make this "work":

What are the some of the issues with this? First, the XmlStore has to map to a simpler format for the DataGrid to understand the XML data. That is why I had to manually tell the XmlStore to promote all the attribute values to similarly named element names. Nicely, the XmlStore supports allowing the ability to drill down to something other than the root item for the data, but it really just allows you to pick the name of an element (you'll see I specified "month"). The second problem is that for any complex industry specific data, likely that wouldn't be sufficient. What if I had multiple month elements at different parts of the XML tree? I'd end up getting a table that combined months that meant different things. What I'd really want is XPath as the root selector. Third, even though the Store abstraction is nice for handling multiple data formats, if I wanted data to be combined from different parts of the XML tree or multiple trees, what I really would like is XPath from the DataGrid formatter function itself.

Assuming this might be easier in the other very popular library for JavaScript query, I went off an investigated jQuery. I quickly found articles that talked about jQuery and XML. I patterned the next part of the article after this example. So, rewriting, I ended up with:

Now, with jQuery, I'm actually able to do a little more "native" xml query. You'll see that I can access attributes directly. You'll see that I can navigate only to the months or the monthByMonthDownloadStats. However, as someone that knows XQuery, this syntax seems very unnatural (I'm sure it's very clear to JavaScript and/or CSS writers). Unnaturalness aside, this seems more verbose. In XQuery I can write this like:

With this I get all of the same benefits that jQuery has (plus more - I'm almost sure jQuery wouldn't support the rich Functions and Operations of XPath 2.0 or any mixed XML content common in document centric XML approaches). XQuery mixes the construction of the content with the query of input much better in my opinion (I believe if we showed date comparison for example you'd see a worse comparison). Of course the benefit of jQuery over XQuery is XQuery doesn't run in the browser. I had to run the previous XQuery sample on the server. That is a pretty big benefit.

I think the summary of all of this, if you stayed with me this long, is that Web 2.0 technology in the browser isn't really ready to handle the complex XML documents that exist within most enterprises. This means if you want to marry Web 2.0 with the enterprise XML data, you'll need to write data conversions essentially extending the presentation tier across the browser and middle tier that simplify the data or use feature like the Web 2.0 Feature Pack to do this for you. Also, you'll need to learn two languages (arguably three if you consider jQuery a language) and programming styles when dealing the with XML data.

Given I look at WebSphere XML Strategy, I'm not sure I'm happy with this answer. I am currently looking towards other solutions to this issue. Given I'm rather new to Web 2.0, feel free to point out other things I didn't consider in the Web 2.0 space for XML processing (outside of XForms of course).

XPath, XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 in five minutes

2010-02-22T14:04:00.008-05:00

You may remember a similar demo back in the open beta timeframe. Now, the IBM Thin Client for XML with WebSphere Application Server v7.0 is available based upon the shipping version of the XML Feature Pack. The following video will show you how to get up and running in about five minutes (including download time).

The thin client for the XML Feature Pack allows you to use the XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 runtime in your client applications of the application server using the same API's as when running in the application server. Before, you could get the thin client by installing the XML Feature Pack on top of the application server. Now, we've made the thin client separately downloadable which makes prototyping very simple.

Here are the links shown in the demo:

Direct link to download the thin client, Demo files

XML Feature Pack Thin Client Demo

Direct Link (HD Version)

Please note that the thin client is only supported on Java 1.6 JVM's.

Simple XQuery execution in Eclipse using XQDT/XML Feature Pack

2010-02-17T15:20:00.017-05:00

I recently was shown that the current version of XQDT works with the XML Feature Pack. XQDT is working to become a main Eclipse project, currently under incubator. You can follow the instructions here on how to install .

After installing, here is how to setup the right things to make it call the XML Feature Pack:

1. Setup the interpreter to point to the XML Feature Pack thin client (note you can obtain the thin client from here for evaluation, or obtain it from a XML Feature Pack installation)
2. Create a new XQuery project
3. Setup the run as XQuery options to set the input file
4. Run and view the output

This will get you to a place where you can quickly edit and run XQuery programs. It won't allow you to debug and doesn't integrate with your Rational Application Developer projects, but for quick edit/run/fix development of XQuery it does a decent job. Its worth noting that this is something I discovered as working and given you get this from Eclipse/open source, there is no IBM support. However, if you give it a try and have some feedback, post it on the forum and I'll get it back to our tooling teams.

In the spirit of another big post, here are some images that show these steps, using the locations.xml and simple.xq that I used in this previous post.

To setup the interpreter to point to the XML Feature Pack thin client, load up Windows -> Preferences and navigate to XQuery -> Interpreters and click Add.

The settings to put into the dialog are:


Interpreter type:  Java XQuery Engine
Interpreter name:  XMLFEP
Interpreter JAR/WAR:  C:\ibm\WebSphere\AppServer\feature_packs\xml\runtimes\com.ibm.xml.thinclient_1.0.0.jar
Main class:  com.ibm.xml.xci.internal.cmdline.ExecuteXQuery
Interpreter arguments:   ${query_file}

And it looks like this:

Next you need to create an XQuery project. It would be nice if you could use this functionality outside of an XQuery project, but I haven't been able to get that to work yet. You can create a new project by right clicking the project window New -> Other -> XQuery -> XQuery Project. Give it whatever name you want. Make sure you pick the XMLFEP (or whatever you named it) as the default interpreter. This looks like this:

Next, copy the simple.xq and locations.xml into your project and refresh. Once you have done that you should be able to right click on simple.xq and do Run As->Run Configurations.... That looks like this:

Once you're in there, navigate to Arguments. You can add any command line options here, but most importantly you want to add the -input parameter and point it to the input file (locations.xml in this simple sample). That looks like this:

Once you have this setup, you can Run the XQuery file in the project by right click Run As->XQuery or simply Control-F11. If it all is setup right, you'll see the output in the console window. That should look like this:

Update 2010-02-22: Note that if you have Java 1.5 on your path, make sure you replace it with Java 1.6. Otherwise you'll get an error about invalid class formats or magic numbers since the thin client only supports Java 1.6 JDK's. You can tell if your system have Java 1.5 on the path by opening a command prompt or shell and typing java -fullversion. Hopefully XQDT at some point will allow you to control what Java the execution is run on instead of defaulting to the global path version of Java.

Update 2010-10-06:

XQDT has moved to WTP Incubator at Eclipse. The XQDT team just release a new milestone, which in particular brings compatibility with the latest Eclipse Helios (Eclipse 3.6). For more details changes, go look at the New and Noteworthy page on the Eclipse web site:

http://wiki.eclipse.org/XQDT/New_and_Noteworthy/0.8.0

To install the latest XQDT build from Eclipse, make sure to stop using the old XQDT update site. Instead use the Eclipse update site:

http://download.eclipse.org/webtools/incubator/repository/xquery/milestones/

Try out WebSphere's OSGi Application Feature

2010-02-12T08:01:00.003-05:00

The open Beta version of the WebSphere OSGi Application and JPA Feature Pack hits the streets today. This brings together the JPA and OSGi Application Alpha programs and makes them installable features within a managed install. This post focuses on the OSGi Application feature of the Beta which and adds many new and good things beyond the Alpha including a completely re-factored version of the original Blog Sample application. In this post I will step through instructions for running and and modifying the Blog Sample application. Detailed instructions on how to run the Blog Sample are supplied in the Readme.txt that comes with the sample, so I will go over some of the steps quite briefly.

I will refer to your WebSphere home directory as WAS_HOME throughout this post. I ran through this using the free-for-developers version of WebSphere running on Ubuntu, so there may be a slightly Linux-y flavour; I'll document the 'assume nothing' Ubuntu install here. Everything should, of course, work on any supported WAS platform.

The Blog sample

The Blog sample is an OSGi Application that demonstrates the main concepts and many of the benefits of assembling and deploying an enterprise application as an OSGi Application. It comprises four main bundles and an optional fifth bundle, the relationship between the bundles is shown below:

The blog sample demonstrates the use of blueprint management, bean injection, using and publishing services from and to the osgi service registry, using optional services and the use of java persistence. In the main application, supplied as an EBA (enterprise bundle archive), the four bundles are:

The API bundle - describes all of the interfaces in the application
The Web bundle - contains all of the front end (servlet) code and the 'lipstick' (css, images)
The Blog bundle - the main application logic. This bundle publishes a 'blogging service' that the Web bundles uses.
The persistence bundle - the codes that deals with persisting objects (authors, blog posts ..) to a database (Derby in this case). The persistence bundle supplies a service for this which is used by the Blog bundle; the persistence service in this implementation uses JPA, with OpenJPA as the JPA provider.
The final bundle is an upgrade to the persistence service, it contains an additional service that will deal with persisting comments as well as authors and blog posts.

Running the Blog Sample

The first steps in running the sample are to set up some data sources and create the database that the sample will use. There are instructions on how to do both in the Readme.txt file which can be found in WAS_HOME/feature_packs/aries/samples/blog; when you run the blogSampleInstall.py script use the 'setupOnly' option which will just create data sources. I'm going to step through the rest of the installation using the WebSphere Admin Console.

Start up WebSphere and point your web browser at the Admin Console, if you are running on a local machine and have not set up administrative security you will find the console at http://localhost:9060/ibm/console. Before going any further check that the data sources were set up properly by navigating to Resources->JDBC->Data sources, you should see something like this:

In the next sections I will work through installing the sample, starting with the bundles that it depends on.

Deploying bundles by reference

The Blog sample uses a common JSON library; while it could be deployed as part of the application the Blog sample illustrates how common libraries can be installed to the new WebSphere OSGi bundle repository and provisioned as part of the installation of an application that requires it. So the first thing we do is add the common JSON library to the WebSphere bundle respository. Navigate to Environment->OSGi Bundle Repositories->Internal bundle repository, the repository will be empty if you are using a new installation.

Click on 'New' to add a new bundle, on the next screen add the asset WAS_HOME/feature_packs/aries/InstallableApps/com.ibm.json.java_1.0.0.jar. Click 'OK' and then save the configuration, you should see this screen:

Creating the Blog Asset

Installing an OSGi Application through the Admin console is accomplished in two steps, described in this section. The blogSampleInstall.py script mentioned above illustrates the underlying wsadmin commands for a scripted install. The first step is to add an EBA (enterprise bundle archive) archive as an administrative asset, the .eba extension just indicates that this is an OSGi Application. Navigate to Applications->Application Types->Assets. Click 'Import' and add WAS_HOME/feature_packs/aries/InstallableApps/com.ibm.ws.eba.example.blog.eba. After saving you should see this:

Creating the Blog Sample Business Level Application

The second step is to to create an application which uses the EBA asset. Navigate to Applications->Business Level Applications, add a new application called Blog Sample:

After you have added the application you must associate it with the Blog sample asset, click on the sample and add com.ibm.ws.eba.examples.blog.eba under Deployed Assets.

As usual, save the configuration.

Start and run the Blog Sample application

At this point everything is in place and ready to run the application. From the Business Level Application screen, select the radio button beside the Blog sample and click start. If the sample starts as expected then point your web browser to
http://localhost:9080/blog, and you will see this:

With the blog sample running you will be able to add authors and posts and see that they are persisted to the database. Here is my first post to the Blog sample:

There isn't a great deal of functional code in this 1.0.0 version of the sample but a 1.1.0 version of the blog.persistence bundle is provided which adds a functional service to enable you to add comments to blog posts. We'll now illustrate how to update an application to add a new service by moving from version 1.0.0 of the blog persistence bundle to version 1.1.0 which contains the new service.

Changing the bundles that the Blog Sample application uses

First you will need to add the blog.persistence_1.1.0 jar to the internal bundle repository. This means repeating the same steps as for adding the JSON jar above. The path to the archive is WAS_HOME/feature_packs/aries/InstallableApps/com.ibm.ws.eba.example.blog.persistence_1.1.0.jar. Add it to the internal bundle repository and save the configuration.

Now you need to allow the application to use the new bundle. To do this, select the blog sample asset by navigating to Applications->Application types->Assets and clicking on com.ibm.ws.eba.examples.blog.eba. Scroll down to close to the end of the next screen where you will find this link:

Clicking on the 'Update bundle versions...' link will take you to this page:

Click on the the drop down arrow to the right of the line for the persistence bundle, you will be offered a choice of using the 1.0.0. or the 1.1.0 bundle. Choose 1.1.0 and follow through the preview and commit screens. You will need to restart the Blog application (from the Business Level Application screen) to make it use the new bundle, after that, navigating to http://localhost:9080/blog should show you the blog application with a new link to add comments. Unfortunately, it doesn't. This is what you will see:

This turns out to be entirely my mistake. In the last minute scramble to get the sample into the Beta delivery I didn't notice that some changes had been made to the JPA support had been made at the same time. The consequence of those changes is that my MANIFEST.MF requires an additional line. This is an easy fix and in the next section I'll describe how to make it.

How to modify the Blog Sample

All of the sample source code and Ant build files can be found under WAS_HOME/feature_packs/aries/samples/blog. Before making any other changes you should modify the build.properties file in this directory so that the first line refers to your WAS_HOME, you will need this file to build code with later on.

The best way to fix the problem with the MANIFEST.MF is to create another version of the persistence bundle, it should be a 1.1.1 version since the fix is very small. To start with, create a new directory under WAS_HOME/feature_packs/aries/samples/blog called com.ibm.ws.eba.example.blog.persistence_1.1.1, then copy the entire contents of com.ibm.ws.eba.example.blog.persistece_1.1.0 into it. Two files need to be modified, the META_INF/MANIFEST.MF needs to be changed to add the pink highlights shown below:

be very careful with the Meta-Persistence: line, it must have a space after the colon and the code will not compile if it doesn't. The second file that needs a small modification is the build.xml file, the project name needs to end 1.1.1, not 1.1.0.

After making the changes, run the build.xml file in your new 1.1.1 directory, like this:

ant -propertyfile ../build.properties -buildfile build.xml

This will create the archive target/lib/com.ibm.ws.eba/blog.persistence_1.1.1.jar. To install the new archive, go back to the WAS console and repeat the steps for adding it to the internal bundle repository and making the Blog Asset use it. Finally, restart the Blog application, point the web browser to the Blog and hit refresh. Et voila! A new link has appeared so that comments can be added to the post. Here is a screen shot with a comment added:

How does it work?

This Blog sample is designed to demonstrate how easy it is to change bundles and how to use optional services. To make this work we had to think about how to design the sample to be able to use the additional comment service from the start. This isn't really unrealistic, how often have you had a complete design in mind but not had time to implement the whole thing before delivering it? In this case we stopped short of delivering the service in the first version but we were able to supply it as an upgrade with an almost undetectable interruption to the service.

The sample is designed so that the bundles can be maintained completely independently of each other - I want the ability to upgrade one bit at a time. This might be overkill for an application of this size but the principle applies to applications of any complexity.

The other thing I have rather glossed over is that I didn't change the database, again the database had to have the right structure for the comment service from the start. However, this follows fairly naturally from designing the application to expect to be able to use commenting.

The best way to understand what is happening when the application is running is to look at the META-INF.MANIFEST.MF and OSGI-INF/blueprint/blueprint.xml files for each bundle. As the code is fairly simple, it's easy to follow through to the Java code and see where properties are injected by the container as specified in the application blueprint.

In the next revision of the Beta release I will fix the mistake in the MANIFEST.MF and will also correct a horrible anti-pattern that I introduced in trying to keep the persistence blog layers separate. In fact, I'll buy a beer for anyone that can see it and send me a good fix for it!

Some Learning Experiences with XQuery/XSLT2

2010-02-08T17:49:00.004-05:00

While working on a demo of XQuery, I ran into issues with the following things and wanted to share in case others new to XQuery could benefit. The demo was the first time I linked XQuery to Web 2.0 (was populating DOJO graphs from XML data) in an application.

First, DOJO is based upon JavaScript. When you write an XQuery that generates a dynamic web pages that mixes XQuery and DOJO, you need to be careful of the "{" character. JavaScript structures love to use the "{" character, as does XQuery. XQuery allows you to escape the "{" character by using "{{" (similarly for "}"). This isn't a huge issue once you realize what is going on as the XML Feature Pack will complain when compiling a XQuery + JavaScript program telling you that some XQuery script subsection isn't valid (its trying to interpret the JavaScript structure as XQuery).

Second, similar to a problem I had before, you have to be careful with namespaces. I had something like:


<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>Title</title>
  </head>
  <body>
{
   for $i in /some/path/in/input/document
   return $i
}

And the some path in input document wasn't returning any data, even though I knew there was data at that path. The issue here is documented in the spec. The default namespace of xhtml in the direct constructor becomes the default namespace for the path step elements. I found the simplest way to fix this was to move the path logic into a declared function that was outside of the direct constructor where the XHTML default namespace wasn't in scope. I could have also re-declared the default namespace or prefixed all xhtml nodes, but that wouldn't look as clean.

Speaking of declared functions, I also was tripped up for a little bit by the fact that declared functions don't get the same context passed to them automatically as the does the main execution of the same module. This exhibited by the runtime telling that the path I was executing was invalid as the context was unknown. Again the spec tells me that the context is undefined. In order to deal with this, you just need to pass the context of interest to the function and have all relative paths work off of the passed context.

Finally, I did get tripped up on XSLT 2.0 as well. When running a stylesheet that took no direct input, I mistakenly called setXSLTInitialMode (good for defining multiple paths through a XSLT 2.0 stylesheet) instead of setXSLTInitialTemplate (good for loading data from multiple input docs or unparsed text, etc.). Luckily, the errors of IXJXE0793E and ERR XTDE0045 came out in the logs and helped me spot the code completion generated typo.

Hopefully some small help if, like myself, you're working to use XQuery/XSLT 2.0 more and more in your ever day coding. Now, if I could just stop typing ";" at the end of XQuery let statements.

The appliance form factor of WebSphere CloudBurst

2010-02-05T10:54:00.002-05:00

As with most new technologies, the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance inspires a healthy set of questions. As usual most of the questions are about features, capabilities, use cases, etc., yet there is one question that is quite frequent but a bit of an outlier from the preceding categories. Personally, I’m not sure I’ve talked to a group about WebSphere CloudBurst without getting this question. What's the question?

“Why is WebSphere CloudBurst an appliance?”

It is a very fair question and one whose frequency used to surprise me. I guess I should have seen it coming because save the WebSphere DataPower Appliance, the brand isn’t typically associated with hardware.

In this particular case though, I can confidently say the appliance was exactly the right form factor for the offering, and it comes down to three main reasons:

1) Consumability

2) Capability

3) Security

In general, appliances deliver a very high level of consumability or put another way, decreased time to value. WebSphere CloudBurst fits this mold. When you receive the appliance you hook it up to your network, do some one time initialization and you are up and ready to go. The appliance comes loaded with pre-built and ready to use virtual images and patterns. You simply define your cloud infrastructure to WebSphere CloudBurst and you can start deploying the shipped patterns or you can begin to build and deploy your own. Since the function provided by WebSphere CloudBurst is delivered on the appliance’s firmware, there is no need to install and subsequently maintain software on other machines. In addition, any updates to this function are delivered via firmware updates that can be applied directly from the appliance’s console.

From a capability perspective, appliances deliver right-sized, purpose-built compute resources. In particular, the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance contains the right amount of processing power, memory, storage, etc. to meet its needs. In many ways, this points back to consumability in that you don’t have to hunt down the right set of hardware and storage because all of that is delivered on the appliance. In addition, the delivery of function (firmware) and hardware in one unit allows for optimization otherwise hard to achieve.

Lastly, and possibly most importantly, the appliance form factor of WebSphere CloudBurst provides for a very high level of security. To start, all of the contents stored on the appliance, whether they exist on the hard drive or flash drive, are encrypted by a private key. This private key is unique to each and every appliance and it cannot be modified. The appliance provides no way to upload and execute code. There is no shell with which you can interface, and the internals operate on “Just Enough Operating System” principles to decrease the attack surface even further. Finally, the appliance is physically secure. If someone were to remove the casing in an attempt to access the internals, the box is put into a dormant state and must be sent back to IBM before it can be used again. This is in no way an exhaustive list of security features, but hopefully it gives you some background on the high degree of security provided via the appliance form factor.

I hope this helps shed some light on the decision to deliver WebSphere CloudBurst as an appliance. If you have other questions about WebSphere CloudBurst check out my top ten FAQs, or leave a comment below.

DevX coverage of CEA, XML, and SCA Feature Packs

2010-01-26T21:13:00.003-05:00

Here is a good DevX article that covers the values of the three WebSphere Application Server Version 7.0 Feature Packs - Communication Enabled Applications (CEA), XML (XQuery, XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0) Applications, and Service Component Architecture (SCA). It also covers why our strategy of feature packs helps our customers save money, get functions easier, and have more stable environments.

The WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance

2010-01-22T12:58:00.003-05:00

Up to this point, we haven't discussed the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance too much on this blog (though I've been writing about it extensively here). So if you have been following and reading along here and have only casually heard of this new appliance, you may be asking yourself "What is it?" and "What does it do?" Given that, I thought it was about time we provided a brief overview of WebSphere CloudBurst on the WebSphere Community Blog.

Very simply put, WebSphere CloudBurst is a cloud management device provided in an appliance form factor. It provides you with the capabilities to create, deploy, and manage virtualized WebSphere application environments in an on-premise cloud. Laying the foundation for the cloud-based application environment lifecycle capability provided by WebSphere CloudBurst are special virtual images. These virtual images, which are provided and maintained by IBM, provide pre-installed, pre-configured software stacks that include everything from the operating system all the way through the IBM Software middleware tier. As of right now there are three different IBM Software offerings packaged in this virtual image format: WebSphere Application Server (generally available in 6.1 and 7.0 versions), WebSphere Portal 6.1.5 (Beta version), and DB2 Enterprise 9.7 (trial).

Why did I refer to the virtual images as building blocks? Because from these virtual images WebSphere CloudBurst patterns are built. A pattern is a complete representation of your middleware application environment. The appliance comes pre-loaded with a set of best-practice patterns, and you can also build your own. A custom pattern will include the topology (i.e. the number of application server nodes, management nodes, databases, etc.) you desire, as well as your custom configuration like your applications that run in the environment. As an example, here’s a screenshot of a WebSphere Application Server pattern I built using WebSphere CloudBurst:

Once you build your custom application environment in the form of a WebSphere CloudBurst pattern, you can use the appliance to dispense it to your on-premise cloud. This cloud, consisting of a pool of hypervisors (both VMware and PowerVM platforms are supported) and associated compute resources like memory, storage, CPU, and IP addresses, is defined to and managed by the appliance. When deploying your patterns into the cloud, WebSphere CloudBurst uses an intelligent placement algorithm that considers things like available compute resource and high availability to ensure that your application environment runs as safely and efficiently as possible.

The end result of deployment is a fully functional WebSphere middleware environment running in one or more virtual machines. These environments offer the same capabilities and function as if you had deployed them in a more traditional manner, so you can run the same applications you use now unchanged. In addition, you can use WebSphere CloudBurst to apply fixes and upgrades to your application environments in a simple, fast and safe manner, and you can easily remove an environment when you are no longer using it thus returning resources to your cloud.

In my opinion, this is one of those things that is easier to understand when seen. In that regard, I’ve put together quite a few short demonstrations that highlight different features and capabilities of the appliance. If you are interested in reading more, I mentioned a blog earlier, and we have quite a few articles available on developerWorks.

Jerry's 2010 WebSphere Trends

2010-01-22T12:45:00.005-05:00

Just in case you missed it, our WebSphere CTO, Jerry Cuomo, has released his top trends for 2010. Read more to learn about our trends towards Agile Delivery and Development, Business Driven IT, and Extreme Transaction Optimization and listen to the video to find out more information on the effects to the WebSphere platform.

Service Component Architecture

2010-01-22T11:13:00.002-05:00

It's been way too long for an update on SCA in WebSphere, but wanted to let you know that not only did we release our 1.0.1 refresh of the SCA Feature Pack for WebSphere V7, but our team has also been creating collateral to support developers get started with Open SCA. The feature pack is available for V7 deployments here. I've blogged several times about the features that were added, so you can look at earlier posts in this blog for a good summary if you so desire.

The WebSphere team has been busy at developerworks refreshing and adding articles regarding Open SCA -- Exploring the WebSphere Application Server Feature Pack for SCA:

IBM Education Assistant has also been enriched with SCA collateral and you can get started here. If you never have seen Education Assistant before, you're missing out on a great resource!

We welcome your comments about the papers themselves, collateral, or the feature pack itself.

Steve Kinder

WebSphere Application Server Administration Using Jython

2010-01-18T19:00:00.001-05:00

I recently had the opportunity to review the recently published WebSphere Application Server Administration Using Jython from IBM Press and thought I would share my opinions on this book. In the spirit of full disclosure, I was provided a copy of the book to review at no cost to myself.

After spending a considerable amount of time teaching myself Jython and learning to administer WebSphere Application Server using it, I wish I had a copy of this book when I first started writing Jython scripts for WebSphere Application Server administration. The authors do a great job of both introducing the reader to the Jython language as well as introducing the reader to the WebSphere Application Server administrative objects.

The WebSphere Application Server Administration Using Jython book is brilliantly structured, first the Jython language followed by WebSphere Application Server administration. The book is also full of practical examples.

An excellent resource for both novice and experienced WebSphere Application Server administrator, this book has earned itself a spot on my bookshelf and in my list of my recommended books for folks interested in automating their WebSphere Application Server administration.

Jerry Cuomo's 2010 WebSphere Trends

2010-01-18T08:39:00.003-05:00

Jerry (our WebSphere CTO and IBM Fellow) has posted his 2010 trends and focus areas video. Besides these year kick-off videos being entertaining (mildly :) ), they are valuable to understand what we're focusing on across the entire WebSphere set of products.

Check it out here.

External Coverage of XML Feature Pack

2010-01-08T17:02:00.003-05:00

Last year InfoQ did a nice article on the XML Feature Pack. The article does a good job of talking to application scenarios where the new XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 standards are valuable. It also talks about why native XML programming is better for performance, multi-core, and cloud strategically as compared to object oriented imperative approaches. The article also mentions comparisons to other technologies.

Today, Dustin Amrheim, wrote an article that focused on the declarative vs. imperative comments in the InfoQ article and talked about how this matters in the cloud. He argues that this is an interesting approach as compared to packaging existing imperative programming models.

Both are worth a read.

WebSphere first on SPECjEnterprise2010 Java EE Benchmark

2010-01-08T09:36:00.006-05:00

In case you missed it, we published the first two results for a new benchmark - SPECjEnterprise 2010.

This new benchmark covers the Java EE 5.0 programming model running on an application server. You may remember SPECjAppServer 2004 and our work to lead in that benchmark. Given how old the 2004 benchmark is, it no longer represents the common practices of coding of new applications. This third version of Java enterprise application server benchmark covers areas such as the simplified Java EE 5.0 programming model for persistence and web programming, web services, and messaging.

By being first to publish, IBM continues to demonstrate its commitment to driving standard third-party trusted benchmarking. Also, we show how the WebSphere Application Server really shines on Java EE support in terms of being consistently first to market with highly performant programming models that matter to you. We published both on a simple single server (1) as well as a highly available, scalable cluster configuration (2) which demonstrates WebSphere Application Server 7.0's ability to scale from simple to complex application environments.

If you want to chat about this benchmark, IBM's results, or see some other standardized performance work we're doing at SPEC and can be in the San Jose area at the end of the month, please stop by the "First Joint WOSP/SIPEW International
Conference on Performance Engineering". I'll be in attendance talking about the SPEC SOA benchmark work.

(1)IBM SPECjEnterprise2010 result of 7903.16 EjOPS using WebSphere Application Server V7 on IBM BladeCenter HS22 (8 nodes, 64 cores, 16 chips) and DB2 9.7 on IBM System x3850 (1 node, 24 cores, 4 chips).
(2)IBM SPECjEnterprise2010 result of 1,013.40 EjOPS using WebSphere Application Server V7 on IBM System x3650 (1 node, 8 cores, 2 chips) and DB2 9.7 on IBM System x3850 (1 node, 12 cores, 2 chips).
Source: http://www.spec.org; Results current as of 01/08/10.

Using the versionInfo and historyInfo commands

2010-01-04T13:03:00.007-05:00

If you are an administrator of the WebSphere Application Server product, or if you use it frequently during the course of your job, chances are you are familiar with the versionInfo command. In short, you can run this command to get information about the installed version of the server product. The output is similar to the following:

Report at date and time January 4, 2010 12:04:52 PM CST

Installation
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Product Directory C:\was70\as
Version Directory C:\was70\as\properties\version
DTD Directory C:\was70\as\properties\version\dtd
Log Directory C:\was70\as\logs
Backup Directory C:\was70\as\properties\version\nif\backup
TMP Directory C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp

Product List
---------------------------------------------------------------------
CEA installed
ND installed

Installed Product
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Name CEA Feature Pack
Version 1.0.0.1
ID CEA
Build Level a0944.10
Build Date 11/6/09
Architecture Intel (32 bit)

Installed Product
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Name IBM WebSphere Application Server - ND
Version 7.0.0.7
ID ND
Build Level cf070942.55
Build Date 10/24/09
Architecture Intel (32 bit)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
End Installation Status Report
---------------------------------------------------------------------

From the above, I can tell that I have the WebSphere Application Server ND product installed along with the WebSphere CEA Feature Pack.

That's handy in a lot of situations, but what if I want more detail. In particular, what if I want to know about maintenance packages that I have applied to this install? The versionInfo command can provide me this information if I run it with certain options (thanks Johannes, see the comments below), but there is also another command that will give you this information: historyInfo.

The historyInfo command examines the WebSphere Application Server configuration and provides a list of changed components and uninstalled/installed maintenance packages. Here's a small snippet of output from the command:

Installation Event

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Maintenance Package ID 7.0.0.7-WS-WAS-IFPK93786

Action install

Package Filename 7.0.0.7-WS-WAS-IFPK93786.pak

Backup File Name C:\was70\as\properties\version\nif\backup\7.0.0.7-WS-WA

S-IFPK93786.pak

Timestamp 2010-01-04 07:57:46-0600

Result success

Component Installation Event

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Maintenance Package ID 7.0.0.7-WS-WAS-IFPK93786

Component Name was.rt.bundle

Action install

Update Action replace

Timestamp 2010-01-04 07:57:46-0600

Result success

As you can see above, output from the historyInfo command shows me information about an interim fix that was applied, and it shows me the components, in this case the was.rt.bundle component, that were changed as the result of the fix application. Though you can get this same level of detail with certain flavors of the versionInfo command, I thought I'd point out another option as well. For more information about using the historyInfo command check out this entry in the WAS information center.

2009 WebSphere Application Server Highlights

2009-12-22T14:49:00.006-05:00

This blog post isn't meant to "market" our app server portfolio; although I worry it may come across that way. I wanted to take a look back at 2009 and talk about some of the technologies that matter to our application server customers in case you missed the announcements. Feel free to ask questions on specific items if you don't understand the value you can derive from these technologies.

Building upon the WAS V7.0 release, three feature packs were delivered - Communication Enabled Applications (CEA), XML, and Service Component Architecture (SCA). These feature packs are free add-ons that extend the value of your application server product to support innovative and valuable programming models. CEA adds the ability to do common telecommunication scenarios without having to understand underlying SIP technologies (just add a widget to a page to get click to all for example). XML delivers XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 allowing data and document centric applications to benefit from these W3C standards resulting in simpler, more functional and reliable applications. SCA simplifies composite application assembly and management, supports OSOA standards, and allows applications to more quickly adapt to changing business requirements based upon OSOA standards.

Two other major features were delivered on top of the application server - Optimized Local Adapters (OLA) and SAML. Optimized Local Adapters offer a high speed message connection between the application server on z/OS and native language programs with full quality of service. SAML adds OASIS SAML Token Profile to standard JAX-WS web services providing for end to end security with token propagation along with a Java library that allows you to work with SAML tokens.

Two alphas of feature packs were also delivered. We shipped our Apache OpenJPA based JPA 2.0 implementation in the JPA 2.0 Feature Pack. We also delivered early support for the OSGi Blueprint specification and Apache Aries extending the value of OSGi componentization and dependency injection into WebSphere applications via the OSGi Applications Feature Pack.

Finally, four service packs were delivered for the 7.0 release (the latest being 7.0.0.7).

We also delivered the application server in Hypervisor Edition (doing things you'd want a virtualized image to do correctly). Fixpacks delivered throughout the year added support for VMware and AIX/PowerVM. We also delivered the WebSphere Cloudburst Appliance which allows you to securely and reliably manage your virtualized environment in your own private cloud.

We also allowed WAS to be consumed in two different ways. We announced an easy to download and free WebSphere Application Server for Developers. We also provided Amazon EC2 images to allow you to consume WAS in the public cloud.

We also provided for easy migration of applications from competitive application servers via the Migration Toolkit.

What a year 2009 was. I'm sure 2010 will be just as fruitful.

IBM brings the power of OSGi to WebSphere

2009-12-21T06:21:00.004-05:00

Back in 2006 we rebased WebSphere Application Server on OSGi in order to help us deliver a better application server. In 2009 we are bringing the power of OSGi to help you build better applications.

The IBM WebSphere Application Server V7 OSGi Applications Open Alpha program introduces to the application server the ability to build, deploy and run applications running on OSGi. Building on the work done in the OSGi Alliance Enterprise Expert Group (EEG) and in the Apache Aries incubator the alpha allows you to build modular applications that make use of familiar JEE technologies such as Servlets, JSPs and JPA.

There are many advantages to the support we are delivering in this alpha, some highlights include:

The ability to deploy a WAR file into the OSGi environment
Blueprint Container - A Spring-like Dependency Injection based container integrated with the OSGi service registry and standardized by the OSGi Alliance
The ability to share libraries between applications
Application composition by reference
The ability to provision an application based on the application dependencies and the content of an OSGi bundle repository

The alpha is available and includes some samples to get you going. We have also shipped the product documentation as a PDF and the Apache Aries site includes some information on the application model.

There has already been some coverage on the web about what we are doing in the alpha and I wanted to highlight two in particular. The first is a blog post by Kirk Knoernschild, who is giving a keynote at OSGi DevCon London in February. The other is an article on dzone where Ian Robinson is interviewed about the alpha.

Since I have mentioned it if you are in London in February some of my team are going to be at OSGi DevCon London running a tutorial on using Blueprint. In addition David Bosschaert one of the OSGi Alliance EEG co-chairs will be talking about the OSGi 4.2 Enterprise Release and we will be talking about the Apache Aries incubator.

Alasdair

RAD 7.5.5 adds support for XPath 2.0 and XSLT 2.0

2009-12-18T10:01:00.004-05:00

Today, RAD 7.5.5 became available. Of interest to WebSphere XML customers, you'll see major new function in the XML areas to complement the features provided by the Feature Pack for XML.

IBM Rational Application Developer 7.5.5 provides enhancements to the existing XSLT 1.0 and XPath 1.0 authoring tools to support XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0, as well as the ability to program against the new IBM XML API and invoke the XML runtime provided by the WAS Feature Pack for XML. Developer benefits include: the ability to work seamlessly with XSLT 1.0 and 2.0 artifacts using a consistent set of tools, the ability to author - create, edit, validate - XSLT 2.0 artifacts, the ability to invoke the XSLT 1.0 or 2.0 processor with ease using the enhanced XSLT launch configuration and the ability to easily configure a project's classpath to program against the new XML Application Programming Interface.

There is more info on what's new here.

- You can now compile and integrate XSL 1.0 and 2.0 stylesheet documents into Java projects. This new functionality automatically handles classpath and runtime configurations. Also, a new option is available to incorporate a Java utility class is offered so that you can integrate compiled stylesheets.
- The Expression Builder tool in the XSL Editor now supports as-you-type evaluation for XPath 1.0 and 2.0.
- The XSL Editor now supports grammars for XSL versions 1.0 and 2.0. Content assist has been enhanced to incorporate better prefix handling, customized icons and detailed descriptions for all XSL element suggestions. Version sensitive file decorations are now available for XSL documents.
- You can now run XSLT 2.0 transformations.
- Content assist for XPath 2.0 and XSLT 2.0 functions in the XSL editor and XPath Expression Builder is now available.
- The XSLT validator now supports both XSLT 1.0 and XSLT 2.0, and provides build, manual and as-you-type validation. The validator helps you ensure that your XSLT documents are correct according to the XSLT 1.0 or 2.0 specifications.
- XSL templates are now available that can be added to new XSL files from the New XSL wizard. The templates can also be inserted into XSL files through the content-assist feature in the XSL editor.
You can modify the XSL templates through XML preferences page (Window > Preferences > XML > XSL> Editor > Templates).
- A new XSLT 2.0 sample is available that demonstrates the XSLT 2.0 transformation using context menu and Java code.

There are many other improvements and new features in RAD 7.5.5 and I expect Tim or I will blog about them in an upcoming blog post.

New Application Migration Tool

2009-12-16T12:30:00.004-05:00

Ideally, one of your J2EE applications deployed on one certified application server can be taken as-is and moved to another certified application server. However, that is almost never the reality. Whether it is caused by developers taking advantage of a certain vendor’s conveniences/optimizations or application artifacts generated by the container (web services stubs, compiled JSPs, etc.), there is usually something that ties your J2EE application to a particular platform. In WebSphere, we’ve acknowledged this problem and we are doing something to make it easier to move applications from competitive application servers to the WebSphere Application Server.

The Application Migration Tool is part of the IBM WebSphere Application Server Migration Toolkit which provides assistance in moving your J2EE applications from competitive application server products to the WebSphere Application Server. This new tool is built on the IBM Rational Software Analyzer and uses its scanning capabilities to look for data specific to competitive application servers. It then provides a way to change and review this data so it can run on the WebSphere Application Server. In support of migrating applications to our server, changes can be made to java source code, JSPs, and deployment descriptors within an application.

The current version of the Application Migration Tool supports migrating J2EE 1.4 (and prior versions) applications from the Oracle WebLogic Server to the WebSphere Application Server. The tool focuses on several aspects of the application migration process including setting up the application classpath, converting WebLogic-specific classes, refactoring non-portable JNDI lookups, converting JSPs, deployment descriptors, and java package references to support industry standards, and creating the necessary artifacts for web services deployment (WSDL, service endpoint interface, mapping files, etc.). Additional manual steps may be required when migrating your application, but the tool will handle the most common migration actions. In short, the toolkit provides you with a fast path to move your applications to the WebSphere Application Server platform.

The Application Migration Tool is free and you can find download and installation instructions on the toolkit’s web page. The only prerequisite for the toolkit is an Eclipse IDE (3.4.2 or higher), which is also available for free. In addition, if you have an existing Rational Application Developer environment, you can install the toolkit into that environment. The toolkit is supported by IBM through either your existing support entitlement, or through a completely free forum.

If you are currently running J2EE applications in an Oracle WebLogic environment, I would encourage you to try out this migration toolkit to find out just how easy it is to move those applications over to the WebSphere Application Server platform. If you don’t currently have access to our application server, don’t let that stop you. Download the fully-functional WebSphere Application Server trial version or WebSphere Application Server for Developers edition and then begin the migration process.

WebSphere Application Server trial version

2009-12-14T20:54:00.004-05:00

A while back Andrew mentioned the WebSphere Application Server for Developers product. This offering is essentially the WebSphere Application Server Base product licensed for free use in development environments.

To complement this offering, we also recently announced a trial version of the WebSphere Application Server. Like the above mentioned version of our application server, the trial version provides the WebSphere Application Server Base product, but the included license allows you to run the server in a production environment during the 60 day trial period.

If you are interested in getting a free look at the WebSphere Application Server but are worried your usage would not adhere to the license agreements in the WebSphere Application Server for Developers offering, give this new trial version a try.

WebSphere XML Feature Pack V1.0 Released

2009-11-26T08:42:00.010-05:00

I'd proud to announce that we released the XML Feature Pack which means it's ready for production deployment in WebSphere Application Server 7.0 environments.

The WebSphere Application Server V7.0 Feature Pack for XML 1.0.0.0 provides an XML programming model that has support of the W3C XML standards of XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0, and XQuery 1.0. These newer standards provide developers with innovative capabilities for simplified development of XML-based and document-centric applications. The programming model consists of two parts:

- The new XML Transform and Query (XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0) runtime which has been optimized for performance, runs under Java 2 security, has an thread-safe model appropriate for server environments, and provides for reliability, availability, and serviceability.

- A new API to invoke all three languages that allows applications to navigate, transform or query XML from a single consistent Java API. This API also allows the XML runtime to incorporate existing Java business logic and data.

Other important parts of this feature pack are:

- The IBM Thin Client for XML with WebSphere Application Server provides all the same functionality in J2SE clients that are used in WebSphere Application Server environments.

- The samples (with easy to browse source code) which show over 40 different aspects of the new XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery technologies, three end to end web applications that show how to use these technologies to navigate, transform, and query XML atom blog feeds, and an end to end web application that shows how to integrate data from databases that support XML natively with other XML data sources in the most simple and performant way.

- Command line and ANT tools for pre-compiling XML artifacts for optimal performance

- Command line tools for simple execution of XML artifacts

- The Information Center for complete documentation of the XML Feature Pack

I will be posting all links to public information on the XML Feature on this blog post. Already, there is a video that shows how to get the XML Feature Pack installed (including the samples), so you can get started easily.

Update 2009-01-18: Rational Application Developer 7.5.5 tools add support for XPath 2.0 and XSLT 2.0.

More Web Services Performance Improvements in WAS 7.0.0.7

2009-11-25T13:26:00.002-05:00

Back in WAS 7.0, I blogged about impressive web services performance improvements.

We have continued that improvement in fixpack 7 (7.0.0.7). Given this is a fix pack, we decided to make the new functional optional (until 8.0). You can learn about how to turn it on in PK94109. Basically you enable it by setting a system property on your application server instance.

This improvement is on the JAXB to XML marshalling (serialization) side. On the server, this would be important when responses are large (the typical case is responses are larger than requests). On the client, this would be important on requests.

As before, this not only helps web services using JAXB, but also anyone using JAXB directly in the application server.

In our tests in the labs we see approximately 20% increase in performance for some representative web services. If you are using JAX-WS JAXB based web services, turn this one with 7.0.0.7 and let me know what you see.

WebSphere Application Server Feature Pack for XML Links

2009-11-24T17:59:00.015-05:00

As I talk to folks about the WAS Feature Pack for XML, I usually need a single link to all public information. There was a open beta link like this but now the open beta is closed. This blog post will be updated over time to include all links that are important for the XML Feature Pack.

Main Links
- Quick Blog Overview of XML Feature Pack
- New Features Added in XML Feature Pack 1.0.0.3 (XQuery Schema Awareness, XSLT 2.0 Debugging Support)
- New Features in XML Feature Pack 1.0.0.9 Tech Preview (XQuery Modules, easier to bind Java functions, better error messages)
- XML Feature Pack website

Installing on the application server
- Install WebSphere Application Server for Developers
- The If network connected, install IBM Installation Manager for WebSphere and update
- If behind firewall, download repository and install locally

Obtaining the simple Thin Client
- Download the thin client
- Download tech preview of latest thin client

Documentation
- XML Feature Pack Infocenter
- Javadoc for XML Feature API

Tools
- Rational Application Developer 7.5.5 XSLT 2.0 support
- Simple XQuery execution with XQDT

Video demos
- How to install and get running with XML Feature Pack samples
- Using the thin client to get up and running in five minutes
- IBM Education Assistant video on the XML Feature Pack 1.0
- Using the XML Feature Pack with an XML Database

Industry Coverage
- InfoQ article that overviews the XML Feature Pack contents and makes comparisons to other related technologies

Developerworks Articles
- Programming XML across the multiple tiers: Use XML in the middle tier for performance, fidelity, and development ease
- Programming XML across the multiple tiers, Part 2: Write efficient Java EE applications that exploit an XML database server

W3C Specifications
- XPath 2.0
- XSLT 2.0
- XQuery 1.0

Great books on the standards
- XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference (Programmer to Programmer)
- XQuery

Last updated: 2009-02-23 (added XQuery tools and thin client information)

WebSphere Hypervisor Edition for AIX gets a date

2009-11-18T10:31:00.005-05:00

Yesterday, IBM announced the dates for the WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition for AIX.

Borrowing from the announce letter:

Adds support for PowerVM hypervisor

Optimizes WebSphere Application Server for virtualized environments enabling higher hardware utilization, while allowing you to spend less time on installation and configuration, and more time on strategic initiatives

Manages installation and deployment of WebSphere Application Server and associated operating system in conjunction with WebSphere CloudBurst

The WebSphere Hyper Visor Edition for AIX will be available November 25th. The WebSphere Cloudburst appliance will ship preloaded with this support on January 29th, 2010.

We haven't talked much about Hypervisor Edition or Cloudburst on this blog. Anyone interested in us talking more about the benefits and typical uses of this technology? The net, net of Hypervisor Edition is its a packaging vehicle of the application server environments for virtualized environments (doing the things you'd want a virtualized image to do correctly) that works with (or without) the CloudBurst appliance that deploys such environments to your private clouds used in testing and production.

XML Feature Pack, SCA Refresh, and SAML get a date

2009-11-11T13:52:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, IBM announced the dates for the XML Feature Pack, a major update to the Service Component Architecture Feature Pack, and SAML support in the WebSphere Application Server.

Borrowing from the announce letter:

New WebSphere® Application Server V7 capabilities promote application innovation and efficient development and management through updated Service Component Architecture (SCA) support, new XML programming model standards, and support for secure, interoperable Web services using SAML1 Token:

Key updates to SCA programming model support for composite application assembly and service deployment through the WebSphere Application Server V7 Feature Pack for SCA V1.0.1 Refresh

Support for the XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 programming model standards to benefit XML application development scenarios through the WebSphere Application Server Feature Pack for XML

Support for OASIS Web Services Security SAML Token Security Profile 1.1 standard delivered in the WebSphere Application Server V7 Fix Pack 7 (7.0.0.7)

XML and SCA will be generally available on November 20th, and SAML will be available on November 13th. Hopefully you can try these out over the holiday season and be ready for deployment next year.

Introducing Feature Packs and the CEA Feature Pack

2009-11-09T20:32:00.002-05:00

Here is a quick video I had missed the opportunity to blog about when it first came out talking about our WebSphere Application Server Feature Packs and the Communications Enabled Applications (CEA) Feature Pack.

We have a lot more about the CEA Feature Pack on our blog dedicated to it: http://ibmcea.blogspot.com/

IBM WebSphere JPA 2.0 Open Alpha

2009-10-29T16:03:00.004-04:00

Hi,
The WebSphere JPA team is proud to announce the availability of the IBM WebSphere Application Server V7 Java Persistence API (JPA) 2.0 Open Alpha. Details can be found here...

https://www14.software.ibm.com/iwm/web/cc/earlyprograms/websphere/wsasjpaoa/

This JPA 2.0 Open Alpha is based off the Public Final Draft #2 of the JPA 2.0 specification, which can be found here...

http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=317

If you are looking for something a bit more readable that highlights the new JPA 2.0 features, you could also reference the following two articles...

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/0909_col_sutter/0909_col_sutter.html
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-typesafejpa/

Since the WebSphere JPA solution is built on top of the Apache OpenJPA project, you can always follow our progress via these URLs...

http://openjpa.apache.org/
http://openjpa.apache.org/jpa-20-roadmap.html

Enjoy!
Kevin

Cannot start a new UOW. A LocalTransactionContainment is already active with work

2009-10-26T04:17:00.003-04:00

I found out recently that one of the most common search terms used by people who end up at this blog is:
"Cannot start a new UOW. A LocalTransactionContainment is already active with work."

I thought it might be a good idea to write here about why you could come across this message and what you can do about it.

The most likely place you'd see this is in the text of an IllegalStateException thrown from UserTransaction.begin().

Let's have a look at the message and see what it could mean.

The UOW mentioned in the first part of the message is the unit of work you're trying to begin. In the case where the exception is thrown from UserTransaction.begin(), this is saying that it has not been possible to start the UserTransaction.

The second part of the message is the reason the UOW could not be started. LocalTransactionContainment (LTC) is the mechanism used in WebSphere Application Server to handle the unspecified transaction context defined in the EJB specification. You can read about LTC in the WebSphere infocenter here.

In a nutshell, LTC provides a way for an application deployer to specify how transacted work can be automatically completed when it's performed outside of a global transaction. For example LTC can be used to automatically commit all the work done on JDBC connections used outside of a global transaction. The important thing to bear in mind is that pretty much whenever there is no global transaction context on a thread, WebSphere Application Server will have established an LTC.

Our error message is saying that some transacted work (e.g. using a JDBC connection) has been performed and has not yet been committed or rolled back at the time that UserTransaction.begin() is called. The LTC established before UserTransaction.begin() is called is said to be active with work under these circumstances and it is illegal to start a new UOW until that work is completed.

Assuming the intention really is to have the work done outside of the global transaction, the solution to the problem is to explicity commit or roll back the transacted work before the call to UserTransaction.begin().

Speaking at RTP WUG Next Week

2009-10-21T20:10:00.004-04:00

If you're in the Raleigh/Durham area come to hear about the XML Feature Pack at the RTP WebSphere User's Group (WUG) on Tuesday. I'll be speaking through dinner to talk about what XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 bring to the table for JEE programmers, what features are in the XML Feature Pack Beta and how to get started. After that there will be a hands on session with WebSphere sMash.

Ryan Boyles from the WebSphere sMash team wrote up a great article that tells you how to get registered and maps to the location, etc here. Hope to see all my "local" people there.

WebSphere Application Server 7.0 Administration Guide

2009-10-20T11:59:00.003-04:00

I recently had the opportunity to review the recently published WebSphere Application Server 7.0 Administration Guide from Packt Publishing and thought I would share my opinions on this book. In the spirit of full disclosure, I was provided a copy of the book to review at no cost to myself.

This book is a great introduction to the world of WebSphere Application Server for people that are new to J2EE and/or WebSphere Application. In fact, I am recommending this book to all of the new developers, testers, and documentation specialists that work with me. The book does an excellent job of describing how to perform a number of the different tasks that a WebSphere Administrator will face. The book is filled with plenty of examples, sample code, and visuals.

The author does a nice job of describing the different activities from product installation to fixpack and patch installation, application deployment, securing the WebSphere environment, and managing the WebSphere configuration. The reader is introduced to the different administration tools - the WebSphere Admin Console, wsadmin, Tivoli Performance Viewer, and the administrative utilities (dumpNameSpace, manageProfiles, etc...) - as well as messaging and the new Admin Agent. Additionally, this book introduces customers to the idea of automation as a part of the WebSphere Application Server administrative process, something I feel is extremely valuable to WebSphere customers.

If you are an extremely experienced WebSphere Application Server administrator who is just looking for the very technical details of new version 7.0 features only, this is not the book for you but it might be a good book to share with your colleagues that do not have the knowledge and experience you do.

I found it to be an enjoyable read with useful information but not so technical that I felt like I was reading a specification. All in all, I recommend this as a great book to get users started with WebSphere Application Server.

David Brauneis

Chief Architect, Rational Automation Framework for WebSphere

WebSphere Application Server V7.0 New Features

2009-10-17T11:13:00.009-04:00

I've noticed that alot of folks are coming to this blog looking for a high level overview of WebSphere Application Server V7.0 (searching for things like websphere 7 features, websphere v7) and finding somewhat related articles, but never a quick overview of the major new functional areas. So, on the first birthday of V7.0, here is a quick overview.

Our themes for the release were Simplification for Developers, Intelligent Management, High Performance Foundation for SOA, and Innovation that Matters.

Simplification for Developers

V7.0 supports the important new standards for JDK 6.0 including JDBC 4.0, Java EE 5, EJB 3.0 and JPA, Web Services, new SIP RFC's, messaging, and Portlets (JSR 286). While many of these annotation driven ease of use enhancements have been available for some time as V6.1 feature packs, V7.0 ships all of the Java EE 5 standard fully certified. The ease of use comes from two things. First, annotations allow you to easily configure EJB's and web services within the application code. Second, most configuration is defaulted which means you only have to configure exceptional cases. Rational Application Developer (RAD) Assembly and Deploy tooling comes in the box which is a subset of RAD for WebSphere which is first class tooling for all of these new features.

Intelligent Management

In addition to the existing WAS 6.1 management infrastructure, WAS 7.0 adds two new topology options via Administrative Agent and Flexible Management. An administrative agent allows management of multiple standalone application servers on the same machine reducing runtime footprint and start-up cost of administration. Flexible management supports the Job Manager which can handle asynchronous administration job queuing across multiple WebSphere cells which allows scaling to very large and complex environments especially geographically distributed environments. WAS V7.0 introduces the concept of Business Level Applications (BLA) which defines multi-component applications allowing administration of applications that have a scope larger than a single war or ear. Also included is the Centralized Install Manager (CIM) which allows centralized installation of fix packs, refresh packs, and interim fixes from the deployment manager to all nodes in the cell. Update Installer and Install Factory where also updated.

High Performance Foundation for SOA

I have blogged about the performance improvements in general, on web services, on EJB 3.0/JPA, and 64-bit. With runtime provisioning based on OSGi, we also now start components selectively helping with start-up time and footprint. Our Dynacache engine has been updated and is explained here. Security is always important in the foundation and with V7.0 -- you'll see more fine grained security domains, security auditing, and a DMZ hardened proxy. We also continue to protect investments in WAS with supporting mixed older versions of the application server across a cell providing support for applications running on version of Java EE as old as 1.2.

Innovation that Matters

We continue to innovate beyond V7.0 through the use of feature packs. Feature packs allow you to absorb innovative enhancements before the next version of the application server. Web 2.0 (through the Web 2.0 Feature Pack) support includes Web 2.0 to SOA connectivity, Ajax messaging and the Ajax development toolkit. Service Component Architecture - SCA (through the SCA Feature Pack) support includes service composition and service deployment/assembly that allow binding existing web, EJB, and native SCA services into a composite SOA application. Communication Enabled Applications - CEA (through the CEA Feature Pack) allows you to add access communication services without expertise in communication technologies - such as web widgets for Click to Call and Call Notifications. XML applications (through the XML Feature Pack Beta) that use XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 allow you to unleash the power of declarative XML data programming and improve the functionality/ease of use over XPath 1.0 and XSLT 1.0.

Want to try WebSphere Application Server V7.0 as a developer for free? If so, go here and download it today.

It's hard to cover such a large release in a short blog entry. I'm sure I missed some major features. If you spot one, let me know and I'll update this post.

SIP/Converged Apps and WebSphere eXtreme Scale Performance Papers

2009-10-16T11:53:00.004-04:00

Last week we published two performance papers that talk about the great performance we have demonstrated on two interesting features of WebSphere.

First, the SIP and HTTP Converged Services Performance using the WebSphere Application Server paper talks about the performance of a sample web voice mail application. The paper talks about how we support not only the functionality required for such applications, but also performance that is measured to be "carrier grade". This paper is a very good example of how SIP and HTTP traffic can be handled in our converged web container to provide for communication enabled applications.

Second, the Scalable Caching in a Java Enterprise Environment with WebSphere eXtreme Scale paper talks about the performance of an application that uses our JPA persistence API's along with WebSphere eXtreme Scale to provide in-line caching between a typical web application and the back end database. It shows how, with minimal application updates, you can decrease the load on your back end databases while allowing your front end application to scale in an elastic fashion.

You can find both on our WebSphere Application Server performance site. Have a look and if you have any questions -- let me know and I can get them answered.

In the news .. SPEC SOA benchmark effort

2009-10-12T10:51:00.004-04:00

I wanted to shared some press coverage of the effort I mentioned back in September.

The original SPEC press release press release talked about how the work group was looking for participation, what the initial focus was on, and the unique challenges of producing a SOA benchmark.

In coverage by SearchSOA and TechTarget, the working group has been asked very interesting questions. The SearchSOA article talks about how SPEC is a good organization to take on the challenge of a SOA benchmark given its past track record in JEE middleware benchmarking and talks about the challenges of benchmarking typical implications of a service oriented architectures. The TechWorld article talks adds discussion of how the benchmark is focused on some core aspects of SOA but will likely grow over time and discusses how the benchmark will need to consider both IT and business requirements on typical SOA applications.

Also, the effort has been covered by TheServerSide and InfoQ.

As mentioned in the original press release, if your organization can contribute to the effort, contact info@spec.org

Also, kind of fun to see your quotes translated into various languages - Japanese, German for example. I do think this level of coverage indicates the value this benchmark will deliver to both technical and business communities.

Update on JPA 2.0 and Apache OpenJPA

2009-10-08T11:17:00.003-04:00

Developerworks just posted an article from Kevin Sutter, our lead for Java persistence, on JPA 2.0 and the work at Apache on OpenJPA. Click here to learn about the new features that are coming in JPA 2.0 and get an early preview via early access drivers at Apache here.

XML-In-Practice Day #2 Summary

2009-10-02T07:34:00.003-04:00

Keynote - XML and Web 3.0 - Mills David

This keynote was presented in a very interesting style. Very visual, very content packed. Not only did he talk about Web 3.0 - the semantic web, he talked about Web 4.0 and work that he believed was already being done to support it. For Web 4.0, he defined it as ubiquitous (image of computer implanted in back of skull) where everything (not just everyone) is connected and has some level of intelligence. For Web 3.0, he talked about representing the meaning of content and using that meaning to improve the way we work with the web to make the internet more relevant, usable, and enjoyable. A basic example is today, we may expose the contents of a database to the web without giving away the schema. If we instead exposed both the content and the schema, computers could find ways to link this data to another similar web repository or service and create new value based on what the data meant.

The eXtensible Business Reporting Language, XBRL - Evan Lenz

This session started with an excellent overview of XBRL (a XML usage required for US financial reporting by the SEC), then showed the issues, and then proposed a new approach.

Among the issues he cited:

a) all concepts are global (no namespaces, no hierarchy) which meant (as shown in one real world example that required 12,000 concepts) there would be no way to work with the data except in tools, no adhoc queries, and names of concepts ended up being on average 49 characters in length (hierarchy being built into the name).

b) the use of schemas and XLink really required too much plumbing for little value.

c) high noise to signal ratio meaning that with the linkages being so verbose and separate, it becomes very hard to work with XBRL without tools (not human readable, not ad hoc queriable).

In general his proposal was to use XML to represent the structure of reports. Even though XBRL is based upon many XML concepts, Evan suggested the use of XML, currently, for XBRL is incidental.

Work Flows, Standards, and Innovations Panel

Along with two other vendors, I participated in this panel. I again demonstrated the WebSphere XML Feature Pack (mostly this time focusing on XSLT 2.0). I went over some slides that show Rational tooling for XML, XSD, DTD, XPath 1.0 and XSLT 2.0 including editors, validators, wizards, debuggers, executors, etc. I then showed a live demo of some future Rational Application Developer work we're considering in the XML space.

Tools from NIST Created to Support the Development of XML-Based Content Standards Through the Application of Naming and Design Rules (NDR) - KC Morris

This presentation showed a very interesting demo of tools NIST has created to validate schemas and instance documents. This validation is centered on rules defined by an organization that ensure all applications of XML technology use consistent naming and definition patterns for data and metadata. My guess is it might have flagged XBRL instances as in error (if the format wasn't required by the SEC). Also of interest was that there were rules for OAGi BOD which is heavily used in automotive manufacturing.

The use of XML in the Irish Government's eCabinent Initiative - Michael Boses

This presentation talked about moving the old process for distributing data across the Irish government (large volumes of paper delivered by military personnel) to electronic form stored in an XML content repository and accessed through personalized portals. In the end, they showed the tablet PC's built into the cabinet table meaning that all the way to the top, there was the ability to stay entirely digital. Some interesting points where a) even though XML (DITA) made this possible, they avoided talking in XML terms in implementing the project as XML is totally behind the scenes and doesn't "sell" - instead they just used terms of like "smart documents" and b) they piloted the program with stakeholders to work out the bugs and purposely avoided turning the solution live until it was totally ready (they for a few months used electronic right up to the main cabinet meeting and then printed the documents for the meeting). Also, they avoided XML being seen by the users by using XSLT to web and Quark's tool for editing of XML content in Microsoft Word.

XML Tools Summit

As somewhat of an extension of the panel done earlier in the day, this was a session to have all participants catalog what tools they are using in the XML space, what tools they need but can't find, and exchange information with each other about what tools work well. This tools summit will be carried forward after the conference online as IDEAlliance hopes to create an "Angie's list of tools". It was very interesting to see how many tools people used (I counted over 30) and how critical these tools are to the publishing, standards, data scenarios.

XML-In-Practice Day #1 Summary

2009-09-30T23:21:00.003-04:00

I'm at IDEAlliance XML-In-Practice 2009 in DC this week talking about IBM WebSphere XML and learning about other XML products and technologies. There are four tracks -- Publishing and Media, Applications, Foundation and Interoperability AKA the technology track, Electronic Medical Records and President Obama's Economic Plan, and e-Government. Based on my totally unscientific head count, the attendance to each track is 50%, 25%, 12% and 13%.

I attended the following sessions today -

Keynote - XML Enabled Medical Records - Dr. Clement McDonald

I learned a) how technology is used to create repositories of information within hospitals/caregivers b) how much workload these systems exchange in the form of HL7 messages c) how distributed systems share data within a localized region for decision making, consistency of care d) how Web 2.0 is helping replace very complicated forms based desktop apps that are trusted currently e) how Dr's are happy to have a wealth of electronic information to help, but see putting new data into the system as something they cannot afford to do given already limited time with patient (call for smarter devices/speech to text) f) how different data is across the various medical interactions all the way from very structured to very narrative. The best two parts of the talk was the 0.5 seconds he showed an XML document which stressed the business aspect of this is key - the technology just has to exist behind the scenes to make it possible and seeing a Dr. throw stuffed pings to the audience (joke on how LOINC standards sounds like OINK).

Overview of President Obama's Electronic Medical Records Plan and Health Information Technology Architecture - John Quinn

I a) learned how much money is set aside to rewards providers that move to standardized medical health records and what timelines exist to get these rewards b) learned how these timelines are aggressive based on time to implementation of typical systems c) learned how the rewards are based upon a certified system which is challenging to guarantee for valuable use. I really took away a deeper appreciation for not only the complexity inside of a single hospital, but also how challenging a national mandate will be (especially to individual physicians).

XSLT Stylesheets from Version 1.0 to 2.0 - Priscilla Walmsley

I didn't take alot of notes in this session as I'm rather knowledgeable about this topic. However, I'd say it was a great presentation given the example (before and after) based approach.

Customer Use Case: How IBM Simplifies Complex Content Developing and Publishing Across the Enterprise. - Daniel Dionne

Great presentation that didn't go into just what DITA for content development/publishing is, but showed the entire lifecycle and processes needed to make a wide adoption work. Went into some rather impressive use cases of the technology, along with challenges, within the IBM company.

Technical Overview of Relax-NG - Bob Ducharme

Can't say I was a huge supporter of this talk, but that is likely due to the fact that I'm a data-oriented XML guy and I'm working on standards, customer situations that are very dependent on XML Schema. Bob discussed areas where Relax-NG was better than XML schema for mostly document oriented scenarios. I would have liked to see more mention of XML Schema 1.1 and how that changed the story. I did get some good value out of understanding why some document-centric customers are still using DTD's.

HL7's use of XML - Paul Knapp

Learned how HL7 V3 XML isn't really yet used in US e-healthcare apps (every hospital is exchanging internal messages in HL7 V2). Abroad, new projects that are less than three years old are very likely to be HL7 V3. We should be seeing more of this in the states with new projects, especially as we start to consider the need to share information outside of a single hospital, etc. Paul did mention binary XML and how that would help many of the HL7 V3 current issues.

MarkLogic Beer and Demo Jam

I did a 4 minute demo along with nine others during the reception. You get 5 minutes to do a demo with no preparation and the best demos win free stuff. I demoed the XML Feature Pack and the 40 samples we have along with the end to end blog checker sample written in XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0. The samples I showed had a nice CSS and dashboard we've added since Beta 4 and that visual skinning over the XML technologies drew positive comments from the crowd. Didn't win anything in the end. Oh well.

After hours

Finally, I was able to do dinner with about 15 folks who regularly attend these conferences. Some great conversation with people from all parts of the industry.

WebSphere eXtreme Scale cache provider for Dynacache

2009-09-20T10:44:00.006-04:00

The dynamic cache engine is the default cache provider for the Dynacache APIs and frameworks. Starting WebSphere Application Server 7.0.0.5 and 6.1.0.27 Dynacache allows WebSphere eXtreme Scale to act as the core caching engine for Dynacache.

You can configure the dynamic cache service to use WebSphere eXtreme Scale as your cache provider instead of the default dynamic cache engine.

This provides customers the ability to leverage transactional support, improved scalability, high availability and other XTP features without making changes to their existing Dynacache caching code.

This capability can also be enabled on WAS service packs 6.1.0.23, 6.1.0.25 and 7.0.0.3 via APAR PK85622.

Links:

XML Feature Pack Thin Client Demo - Zero to running in 6 minutes

2009-09-15T15:41:00.008-04:00

NOTE: This post is our of date. For the same demo on the released product see this link

As we announced, the latest beta release of the XML Feature Pack contains the Thin Client for XML. As well as allowing you to use this in your client applications to WebSphere Application Servers, the thin client allows for quick and easily evaluation of the technology. Here I show a quick demo of using the following simple XML, XPath, XSLT and XQuery files along with Java files to invoke them.

Demo 7 - XML Feature Pack Beta 4 Thin Client for XML

Direct Link (HD Version)

Here are the files for the demo:

thinclientdemo.zip

Which contains (HelloXSLT.java, HelloXQuery.java, HelloXPath.java, simple.xsl, simple.xq, locations.xml)

Rational Automation Framework for WebSphere

2009-09-14T13:19:00.005-04:00

Leigh and David spent the better part of 8 years working on the WebSphere Foundation Architecture and WebSphere Application Server - specifically in the areas of administration, configuration, systems management, and performance tooling. In mid-2007 both David and Leigh took the opportunity to expand their horizons and explore new options in IBM, though never really moving too far away from WebSphere systems management. Since leaving the WebSphere Architecture and Development organization in 2007, we have been working in the IBM Rational brand focusing on software delivery automation. We are excited to announce that the result of that effort is the announcement and delivery of the Rational Automation Framework for WebSphere - available as of May 15, 2009.

IBM Rational Automation Framework for WebSphere is an optional feature that extends and enhances IBM Rational Build Forge around WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Portal environments. This customizable management framework is designed specifically to automate installation, patching, configuration management, and application deployments for IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Portal.

Rational Automation Framework for WebSphere reduces the complexity of managing your IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Portal environment due to common pains, such as:

The lack of consistency and/or repeatability in the installation, configuration, and application deployments in IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Portal environments as a part of the Software Delivery Lifecycle.
The challenge of connecting disparate application development, test, and operations groups into a single traceable and enforceable process for the Software Delivery Lifecycle.
The inability to manage IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Portal environments across multiple Software Delivery Lifecycle environments and/or beyond the cell scope leading to the development of costly, difficult to support, homegrown solutions.
The lack of change history, auditability, and governance around the changes to the IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Portal environment configurations.
The need to be able to quickly reproduce IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Portal environments in the case of a disaster.

For those companies facing IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Portal infrastructure management challenges, the key to delivering greater operational productivity with quality is automation. By eliminating manual and complex tasks when managing IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Portal environments, Rational Automation Framework for WebSphere can provide accuracy, reliability, repeatability, and consistency to help cut costs and improve productivity and quality.

You can see a demo at: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/kits/dw-bfdemos/

David Brauneis

Chief Architect, Rational Automation Framework for WebSphere

Leigh Williamson

Distinguished Engineer & Chief Architect, Rational Software Delivery Automation

XML Feature Pack Beta 4 - Now With Thin Client

2009-09-14T10:19:00.003-04:00

A month ago, we announced the Beta 3 refresh which was specification complete on XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0. On Friday we released a Beta 4 refresh which continues to remove any remaining restrictions as well as adds one new major feature - The Thin Client for XML with WebSphere Application Server.

As noted on the open beta download page,

The beta includes the IBM Thin Client for XML with WebSphere Application Server. The thin client allows access to the same Feature Pack API and runtime functionality (XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, XQuery 1.0) available in the WebSphere Application Server Feature Pack for XML. The thin client can be copied to multiple clients running Java SE 1.6 in support of a WebSphere Application Server V7.0 installation.

This means if you have client applications to WebSphere Application Servers you can copy the XML Feature Pack thin client file to these clients and get the same XML programming model support in your clients.

We also believe this thin client support will help "new to WebSphere" folks evaluate this technology. As such, we have added a download link to the jar file on the open beta website. Click on that link and then click on "Local install using Download Director or HTTP" and follow through to download "IBM Thin Client for XML with WebSphere Application Server
com.ibm.xml.thinclient_1.0.0.jar". I hope to show a demo of how fast you can get up and going with the thin client in the next day or so.

Hidden nodes in XPath - fail on namespaces by me

2009-09-12T20:06:00.004-04:00

I was working on a sample with the XML Feature Pack last week to show good integration between the XML Feature Pack Beta and databases that support XML columns, such as DB2 pureXML.

I ran into an issue that stumped me for a while and wanted to write about it so maybe others won't be slowed down as long as I. I was writing a XCollectionResolver and XResultsResolver that connected to the database. For some reason, while these resolvers returned data that looked valid, they couldn't be navigated by XPath 2.0. I saw things like this is XQuery:


let $a := trace($domainSpammers/spammers/spammer/email, "email =")

Traced nothing, while


let $a := trace(node-name($domainSpammers/*/*/*), "threestars = ")

Traced email, uri, and name. I even put domainSpammers into the output of the XQuery and could see the spammers/spammer/email tree:


<spammers xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <spammer>
    <name>Joe Smith</name>
    <email>jsmith@email.com</email>
    <uri>http://joe.uri.com</uri>
  </spammer>
</spammers>

I looked at this for a few hours. Luckily one of my team members saw the issue. You can see by the title of this post and the above xml, the issue was the elements are in the XHTML namespace.

It turns out I was writing to the document from XSLT 2.0 using the new feature of multiple result documents. While I wanted my browser returned page to be in the default namespace of XHTML, I didn't want the data written to the database to be in the XHTML namespace. However, since I didn't clarify this, it mistakenly was written to that namespace.

Next time, and maybe this will help you, I'll add namespace-uri() to my debugging arsenal:


let $a := trace(
  (node-name($domainSpammers/*/*/*),
  namespace-uri($domainSpammers/*/*/*)), "threestars = ")

Which would clearly have shown that email was in the XHTML space:


a = email http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml;

Which would have saved me a few hours of pulling my hair out.

SCA 1.0.1 Beta Refresh Available

2009-09-11T11:41:00.005-04:00

The SCA team in WebSphere has revved the 1.0.1 Beta yet again and it utilizes the Rational Install Manager (IM) software which allows the 1.0.1 to be laid down on a vanilla WAS w/o having to install the 4Q08 GA (1.0.0) level of code.

Rather than go into detail about additional capability, I'll tease you to go look at the official early program website for our beta.

Enjoy.

SPEC working on standard SOA Benchmark

2009-09-09T19:57:00.003-04:00

I continue to be interested in helping customers understand the performance of Service Oriented Architect (SOA) applications. As you can see here, I'm working (as the chair) in this SPEC working group, along with considerable input from Oracle and VMware on pushing forward on a standard benchmark for SOA based applications and the middleware infrastructure on which they run.

The interesting parts (in my opinion) of this press release are:

The benchmark will be developed by a trusted benchmarking organization with input from all SPEC members. Also, as mentioned in the press release, we're looking for participation by other interested parties. If you're interested in joining SPEC or providing input, let Bob Cramblitt know. I'm truly excited to see a SOA benchmark come from SPEC as they have a proven track record in creating industry trusted benchmarks for middleware performance.

While the initial focus is Web Services, Enterprise Service Buses, and Business Process Management (BPEL), the group realizes these technologies are only part of the entire SOA picture. It's good to see the group start with a sensible core and grow the effort over time.

The group is working to stay flexible on its support of multiple approaches to implementing these technologies. This is key, as SOA is an architectural approach and there are multiple ways to implement such technologies. However, in an industry standard benchmark it's important to audit and standardize common implementations to confirm they would be used in typical customer implementations.

I'll continue to post publically shareable information as the work group makes progress. If you have any quick questions, post them here and I'll ask them at the working group.

Apache Wink and JAX-RS

2009-08-27T08:52:00.004-04:00

I've received a number of questions from customers on IBM and JAX-RS support. I wanted to mention to interested parties that IBM started an Apache Incubator project (Apache Wink) with HP and others on building an open source JAX-RS implementation. JAX-RS (if you aren't aware) is JSR 311 - the JCP defined standard programming model for building REST-based services. You can check out the original proposal (here) and the project site (here) and lastly, the project Wiki (more useful) (here). Lastly, we've started a "WebSphere Web Services" specific blog (here) where we will be discussing features, capabilities, and other items going forward... This post (here) talks about some of the capabilities in their first (and fairly complete) release of the incubator project that was just formalized today.

Take a look...

On Twitter?

2009-08-25T14:52:00.002-04:00

A couple of us have an active presence on twitter if you use it. Andrew Spyker (@aspyker) and I (@burckart) are both pretty active as are some of our product managers like Savio Rodrigues (@SavioRodrigues) and Erik Kristiansen(@erikkristiansen). Another great person to follow is Billy Newport, (@billynewport), our WebSphere eXtreme Scale architect. Feel free to reach out to any of us on twitter.

Information Center for XML Feature Pack Beta Posted

2009-08-24T15:35:00.004-04:00

In software development, it's not just about creating the runtimes and API's and install images. As a customer, information to help understand how to use the features of any product is as important or more important than the product itself. This is why we've spent so much time on creating samples for the XML Feature Pack. Today we go a big step further by releasing the XML Feature Pack Information Center.

The Feature Pack for XML Information Center is comprehensive documentation on the XML Feature Pack. The content of this documentation is live and can change as we get more information articles. If there are features you have questions on, please let me know and I'll ensure we consider updates for future updates. Also note that we have moved the Javadoc for the API to this information center.

What's going on with Communications Enabled Applications?

2009-08-21T07:36:00.003-04:00

We have had a lot of activity on the WebSphere Communications Enabled Applications blog. I have had several blogs highlighting scenarios from retail to finance to inventory management. I even came up with another one of my non-award winning videos here describing the customer experience the CEA Feature Pack can bring to a website.

Beyond that, there has been a whole bunch of information presented and I wanted to give you all a quick summary and reference to some of those blogs.

First, Roger wrote a great and verbose cheat sheet in PDF format on how to get up and running with the CEA Feature Pack and Plants by WebSphere sample. If you are looking to try it out, his document is a great place to start.

James has written some specific details on which version of vendor systems we tested our CEA Feature Pack against. He also wrote a more in depth piece on how to configure the feature pack to work with Avaya AES.

Andy wrote some getting started and advanced usage blogs on the Web 2.0 widget capabilities in the CEA Feature Pack. To get started, he wrote a blog on embedding the telephony widgets like click to call and embedding the peer to peer cobrowsing (aka coshopping) widget. He also wrote several more advanced blogs on how to create a two way form, how to handle personalized content and actions in cobrowsing scenarios, and how to add CEA widgets to a page already using another version of dojo.

Finally, we had our first guest blogger. Dustin Amrhein tried out the feature pack for the first time this week and found good ways to easily extend the Web 2.0 widgets included. He wrote his first blog showing how you can customize the click to call widget to add the ability to select a specialist. We are looking forward to him writing several more blogs on the other scenarios he tried out.

Other XML Feature Pack Beta 3 Highlights

2009-08-18T07:48:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I blogged about one of the major focus areas of the Beta 3 of the XML Feature Pack. In today's video demo, I show the other major items of note in Beta 3. The major features of Beta 3 are:

- Spec complete on XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery
- Changes to the XML Feature Pack API to adjust for new features and results of usability studies
- Focus on development and deployment issues with full command line support to pre-compile XML artifacts for performance, ANT commands to do the same, and support for running with Java 2 Security enabled.
- As always, more samples. In addition to the end to end sample of XQuery I demoed yesterday, we have over 40 samples that show the new features of the new standards.

Here is the video that overviews these features:

Demo 6 - XML Feature Pack Beta 3 Highlights

Direct Link (HD Version)

For more information on the WAS V7.0 XML Feature Pack Beta, please go here to download the code, samples, documentation as well as see other demos.

XQuery End to End Sample for XML Feature Pack (Demo #5)

2009-08-17T14:05:00.002-04:00

So far in the XML Feature Pack demos, I have talked about topics such as the introduction to the feature pack, specific features in how to use the feature packs, and demonstrations of XPath 2.0 and XSLT 2.0 in end to end web applications. Today I'll continue the demos building upon the same application used in previous demos - the Blog Comment Checker that mines data from blogger.com feeds (encoded in XML) and presents a web application that identifies problematic user supplied comments. I hope you'll see how different XQuery is as a language and how similar it is to concepts you might already know like SQL and JSP templating. I imagine, for some users, the learning curve of XQuery won't be near as steep as other XML processing languages.

Demo 5 - End to End XQuery 1.0 (Part 1)

Direct Link (HD Version)

Demo 5 - End to End XQuery 1.0 (Part 2)

Direct Link (HD Version)

Download Stats Extreme Makeover - The Value of XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0

2009-08-15T07:13:00.004-04:00

On Friday, I had the opportunity to use XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 in a way that proved the value of the new standards.

For our Beta programs, we get a weekly report of how many downloads have occurred. Over time we have asked for more and more breakdowns of the data (how many were from IBM'ers vs. non-IBM'ers, how many were from non gmail/hotmail/etc email addresses, how many for code vs. how many for documentation, how many unique users have downloaded, etc.). We use these reports to gauge the interest in our betas and the effectiveness of our beta programs.

Currently the process for doing these reports is:

1. Load a webpage somewhere on the intranet that returns in either HTML or space and newline separated text the download records (and I don't have the time nor contacts to change this "service").
2. Import these download records into Excel
3. Write VBScript that processes the rows into summary tables, but not all summaries have VBScript written for them due to the fact that VBScript can get quite complicated.
4. Read the summary tables and hand compute some summaries and transpose them into emails and presentations to beta teams.

This process can take a few hours and is error prone.

I asked for the raw data for the service as I knew there had to be an easier way.

First I started with the HTML as its pretty much XML and I figured I could just write some simple XQuery summaries. This failed as HTML isn't XML (if its not XHTML). Don't get me started on that rant (in this case, we had things like width=-1 with no quotes)! So I restarted with the text file version of the data.

XSLT 2.0 has a new function - unparsed-text() that lets you load from text files. This allows you to load any data into XSLT 2.0, but only as a string. As the XSLT 2.0 specification shows the real power of this function is magnified by XPath 2.0's support of regular expressions. Combining the unparsed-text() with regex tokenize() with newline as the separator allowed me to for-each across every line in the file. Adding another new XSLT 2.0 function into the mix - analyze-string() with a regular expression that did capturing of each of the fields allowed me to transform each line into a well formed XML element with sub-elements for each of the fields (download element with elements for filename, email address, etc). Ah, now I have data in a well formed structured XML format. Life is good.

Once I had this transformation of the input data, I returned to the task of creating the summaries. With XQuery, any query I want is just moments away. To prove the point, I decided to write a simple query that would break down the downloads for IBM'ers and non-IBM'ers separately. I would also group each unique user and list all the downloads that user had done with summaries at all levels of how many code vs. how many documentation downloads had occured. I want to put this in XML format, so others could query my summaries or I could put the summaries into HTML or load back into Excel (if you really really want to).

It took me approximately 30 minutes to create all of the above queries. The code is approximately 20 lines long and is well designed into re-usable functions that could be customized later. The code is easy for most of my peer Java developers to understand as XQuery looks alot like an imperative language with SQL like queries mixed into templating of output.

My next step is to move this to a web application (what I did so far was prototyped it with sample data) that connects directly to the service. The web application could easily offer up web forms that allowed the user to specify search criteria supported by the back end service (date range for example) along with what XQuery/summary view was required.

There are still some items that can't be automated and need human intervention. As an example, the process of deciding what constitutes an IBM'er is complex as some IBM'ers have "ibm.com" email address and some do not. Also, IBM could be "IBM, International Business Machines, or mistyped". It would take a bit of time to create some services that approximate what a human eye could spot manually. Adding a human facing pop-up that allowed visual inspection of the automated data analysis steps would be valuable. Also, I admit that I didn't create the charts and graphs - just the raw data that could be loaded into Excel to create charts and graphs.

But in the end I have converted a manual error prone data processing scenario into an automated approach (for data query and summaries) that creates all the same valuable raw data for reports with the potential to add more reports much more quickly. All of this was made possible using well documented W3C standards that have all the needed features (some new with XPath/XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0) that make this scenario possible.

Specification complete on XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, XQuery 1.0 - Beta 3 of XML Feature Pack Released

2009-08-13T10:48:00.005-04:00

I'm happy to announce another update of the XML Feature Pack. The first beta focused on XPath 2.0. The second beta focused on XSLT 2.0. This third beta rounds out the specs with support for XQuery 1.0.

Once we're not in beta, we'll post final numbers on the W3C website on the XML Query Test Suite conformance. Currently we're at 96.8% on minimal conformance and we have support for the optional full axis and serialization features. As for XPath 2.0, and XSLT 2.0, we consider this beta release to support all of the specifications with minor restrictions as listed in the getting started guide. This means that we now have support for all for the W3C recommended standards for Querying, Transforming, and Accessing XML data (except the less popular XQuery/X).

We have expanded the XML Feature Pack API to handle feedback from usability studies and to handle new features required by the standards.

We have focused on items that make the feature pack easier to use. We have made changes to allow the feature pack runtime to run under Java 2 Security, without requiring an application to enable any more security than minimally needed. We have expanded the options for the command line tools for pre-compiling xml artifacts. We have also added ANT tasks for integrating this pre-compilation support into your build scripts.

With the full standards support, updated API, and runtime and development time improvements, this feature pack release should be quite useful. In the next few days, I'll post some videos to demonstrate the new capabilities on YouTube. In the meantime, you can download the feature pack beta and join the web forums to ask questions.

Another reason for DataPower SOA appliances - XML Threat Protection

2009-08-10T13:06:00.008-04:00

I've gotten a few questions on recent XML security buzz. On today's blog post by Rich Salz (lead architect of our appliances) discussed how XML threat protection is a required tool when exposing important services to untrusted sources. He talked about this due to the recent press interest in "XML Exploits" which was started by some XML fuzzing work by Codenomicon.

I wanted to post about it here to make sure this wasn't an unknown concept to our customers. Rich talks about "defense in depth", which is what most of our WebSphere customers are doing today. To quote Keys Botzum (one of our lead security consultants for WebSphere, "Anyone that is exposing services to untrusted sources absolutely needs to be running a XML firewall, like DataPower)". In my world, defense in depth means putting a WebSphere DataPower XML Security Gateway XS40 in front of any services that could be called by untrusted sources. Also, given the performance characteristics of the DataPower devices (basically no latency impact), you likely want to do this on all services (as sometimes hacks aren't intention and sometimes hacks come from internal sources).

If you haven't heard of XML firewalls or XML threat protection, think about network firewalls. Network firewalls are great for protecting us from threats that can be detected at the network level (like the recent Twitter and FaceBook distributed denial of service attacks), but they don't help you with threats that are in the payloads of messages themselves. XML Firewalls help you with such application level threats by turning away bad messages before they enter your enterprise applications.

If you have any questions on the concept, feel free to pop over to Rich's blog and ask.

Interviews of WebSphere architects

2009-08-05T09:32:00.004-04:00

Recently we have made a set of informal videos interviewing various WebSphere architects about the numerous advantages of WebSphere Application Server in the areas of developer and management efficiency, application innovation, and performance. These are focused on the difference between WebSphere and JBoss but also cover in detail many of the WebSphere Application Server strategical focus areas.

There are two playlists which can help you view all the videos. This playlist of WebSphere vs JBoss Developer Discussions walks through the specifics around how development is getting better and easier. This playlist covers WebSphere vs JBoss Operations discussions and covers more of the systems management side of the product.

Here is one of the videos (you'll note I didn't include one of mine ;-) ) on developer efficiency.

CEA Feature Pack available for download!

2009-07-31T10:40:00.003-04:00

We are happy to announce that the CEA Feature Pack is available for download. The CEA Feature Pack can be downloaded here: http://www.ibm.com/software/webservers/appserv/was/featurepacks/cea/.

Additionally, the new documentation (aka InfoCenter) is available here: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/webservers/appserv/was/library/v70/fp-cv/index.html.

Finally, here are the support pages: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=180&uid=swg27016107.

You can learn more about CEA at its blog, http://ibmcea.blogspot.com/ (Link also in the sidebar). If you need a refresher on some of the cool features, here is a YouTube video showing the widgets helping solve problems in the contact center.

Quick summary of Summer XML Conference

2009-07-28T23:46:00.004-04:00

I attended the Summer XML Conference in Raleigh on Monday and Tuesday. I presented on what is new in XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 and how similar technologies are being used in Java based middleware.

I was a little worried, given the crowd, about how well the "what's new" presentation would go as a) I'm knowledgeable with the new standards, but don't use the standards in very large programs every day (some of the crowd were deeply knowledged XSLT 1.0 users) and b) it was the first time I've given the presentation. I did get two points of good feedback from the attendees, so I guess it better than I had hoped. I'm going to look to post the slides as they were information packed and other conference attendees said they would be useful for other members of their companies.

I, along with two of my team members, attended sessions on XSLT patterns, XML Schema 1.1, Schematron, HTML 5, XForms, SVG/Canvas, Testing XML Documents, and many presentations related to XML based document publishing for books and electronic help. The conference seemed to be 1/3 focused on XML technologies, 1/2 on document publishing with the rest being focused on data/application programming. Hopefully my talk on how these technologies are being used in middleware helps the group keep focus on XML scenarios outside of the document publishing space.

On the document publishing front, I learned even more than I ever imagined about what our documentation teams deal with on a daily basis. I also got great insight to the challenges of companies or parts of companies that deal entirely in products centered about content management and document re-use.

Summary: Great conference. Thanks to Kay and all the other conference presenters and attendees.

Two years of blogging, now tweeting, what is next?

2009-07-24T09:04:00.002-04:00

I just realized that I started blogging here on June 24, 2007, two years and one month ago today. I knew blogging would take time away from writing code and doing performance work, but I gave it a shot. Wow, even I'm amazed what it has turned into.

I started using Twitter on May 6th, 2009 and usually do, on average, at least an update a day.

I showed up on Youtube for the first time in February of 2008. I started my own Youtube channel for education on technology I work on three months ago. I was recently interviews on YouTube about performance as it relates to IT operations.

I started using Facebook well before blogging/tweeting, but still keep that social network separated from work. Unless you know me outside of work, don't try to friend me. Nothing personal, but need some part of the internet that is work free.

I started using Linkedin well before blogging/tweeting. I try to connect on Linkedin with as many folks there as possible as I believe above all else, this community represents real users of technology I work on. Feel free to link to me there if you are using IBM technology or if you're interested in XML, SOA and/or performance.

What social network will we all need to support next? I personally hope it's one that unifies all of the above social networks and respects work vs. personal boundaries.

XForms hooked up to earlier prototype of (-)RX with XML Feature Pack

2009-07-16T18:00:00.004-04:00

I talked about in my last post about getting the XML Feature Pack hooked to JAX-RS REST (Wink) and a back end XML data store (DB2 pureXML), but said I hadn't yet connected the REST endpoints to XForms.

Today I crossed that final gap. Didn't end up using Ubiquity XForms for this first try - just used the XForms plug-in for Firefox. What took the longest in this was ensuring that I set the appropriate @Provides in JAX-RS to ensure the APPLICATION_XHTML_XML headers were sent to the browser, so the XForms runtime knew to do its magic.

I had to write alot of system code around the XML Feature Pack to get this to work, but now that that system code is written the amount of configuration needed to get new interesting samples is very small (as compared to doing the same with a bunch of API layers and objects in J2EE and JavaScript). Quite excitingly small.

Time to make a more complicated example.