WAS XML Feature Pack Demo #4 - More XSLT 2.0 Features and Compilation

I released the first demo two months ago introducing the XML Feature Pack:

Demo 1 (Part 1, Part 2).

Two days ago I released the second demo showing how to use XPath 2.0 in an end to end J2EE application:

Demo 2 (Part 1, Part 2).

Yesterday I released the third demo showing how to use XSLT 2.0 in an end to end J2EE application:

Demo 3 (Part 1, Part 2).

Today, I'll wrap up the demos with demo 4 which talks to about XSLT 2.0 schema awareness, validation and various other XSLT 2.0 features we've added to round out the XSLT 2.0 standard support. Finally, I show a demonstration of how to use the pre-compilation support added in the Beta refresh.

Demo 4 - XSLT 2.0 Features (Part 1)

Direct Link (HD Version)

Demo 4 - XSLT 2.0 Features (Part 2)

Direct Link (HD Version)

WAS XML Feature Pack Demo #3 - End to End XSLT

I released the first demo two months ago introducing the XML Feature Pack:

Demo 1 (Part 1, Part 2).

Yesterday I released the second demo showing how to use XPath 2.0 in an end to end J2EE application:

Demo 2 (Part 1, Part 2).

In this third demo, I expand upon this same basic application to show how to use XSLT 2.0 in an end-to-end J2EE application. In the demo, I show some of the new valuable features of XSLT 2.0. I show how to bridge the gap between Java and XML processing by showing binding of Java data to the XSLT stylesheets and calling user defined Java extension functions as part of the XSLT processing. As compared to the XPath 2.0 example where data was stored in JavaBeans then JSP formatted to the user, this sample directly transforms data from XML to XHTML user presentation. Also, I show how some of the Java logic used in the XPath 2.0 example can be recoded in simpler XSLT 2.0 temporary trees and stylesheet functions.

Demo 3 - End to End XSLT 2.0 (Part 1)

Direct Link (HD Version)

Demo 3 - End to End XSLT 2.0 (Part 2)

Direct Link (HD Version)

WAS XML Feature Pack Demo #2

As announced last week, I have created three new demos for the WAS XML Feature Pack.

I released the first demo two months ago introducing the XML Feature Pack:

Demo 1(Part 1, Part 2). Remember to click, view in HD.

In the second demo, I expand upon this same basic application to show how to use XPath 2.0 in and end-to-end J2EE application. In the demo, I show some of the new valuable features of XPath 2.0. Also, I show how to bridge the gap between Java and XML processing by showing binding of Java data to the XPath queries and calling user defined Java extension functions as part of the XPath processing. Finally, I show how to gather data from the returned XPath sequence cursors and how to integrate that data with Java beans.

Demo 2 - End to End XPath 2.0 (Part 1)

Direct Link (HD Version)

Demo 2 - End to End XPath 2.0 (Part 2)

Direct Link (HD Version)

WAS V7 XML Feature Pack Beta Refreshed (With focus on XSLT 2.0)

Today we have released an updated XML Feature Pack Beta. The beta is available here.

Since the first release two months ago (which had full XPath 2.0 and partial XSLT 2.0/XQuery 1.0), we have added quite a bit to XSLT 2.0 (making us nearly spec complete) and more to XQuery 1.0.

Among the biggest features added in the XSLT 2.0 area is XML Schema awareness. This includes validation which allows you to validate (make sure it contains data that is allowed per the schema) the incoming data to transformations, temporary trees of data, and output data from transformations. Also, as is important when working with vertical industry standard schemas, our schema awareness support includes schema assessment. This means that your XSLT stylesheets know when an attribute or element content is an integer or date and you can treat it as such. Taking this to the next level, if you extend your industry standard schema type of a bill of materials, you can write templates that match that type (schema-element(*, tns:BillOfMaterialsType)). In the past you would have had to made templates that were of the industry standard element names as well as all extending element names (tns:BillOfMaterialsName, mycompany:FullfillmentBillOfMaterialsName, mycompany:PurchasingBillOfMaterialsName, etc.).

Other new XSLT 2.0 features in this refresh are collections support (allows multiple input data sources in a well defined way), "undeclare-prefixes" serialization parameter(simplifies namespace in XML 1.1), next-match (allows you to call overridden templates) element, required parameters and "as" attributes (helps guarantee stylesheet elements are called correctly) and full support of XSLT keys.

Another major feature of this refresh is ability to pre-compile XML artifacts. This refresh contains tools that compile XPath, XSLT, and XQuery to java classes. These classes are basically the same logic that previously was interpreted by the XML runtime. However, with them now being compiled, they run much faster than interpreted. The refresh offers three modes:

• interpreted - best when the XML artifacts are created ad hoc at runtime and not reused


• compiled - best when the XML artifacts are created ad hoc at runtime but reused


• pre-compiled - best when the XML artifacts are known at compile time of your application

We have also expanded our XQuery 1.0 support in this refresh.

Please let me know if any of these new features help you in your applications. I'm excited to hear of all the applications that are being tested against this functionality.

Finally, I have created another three demos to be posted on YouTube. Over the couple of days, I'll post them with links here. Hopefully they will help you understand how to use this functionality in your own applications.

Communications Enabled Applications

The IBM WebSphere Application Server V7.0 Feature Pack for Communications Enabled Applications Open Beta has begun. That means we can finally start talking about the many exciting features in the beta.

We have a blog which will help define what these Communications Enabled Applications are, talk more about those features, and show some cool homemade videos showing the use of some of the Web 2.0 widgets and capabilities included here. Click to check out that blog and learn more.

Come talk to me at Impact 2009 next week

I'll be presenting three topics at Impact 2009 next week. For those that don't know, Impact is the premier WebSphere conference - focusing this year on our Smart SOA approach.

I'll be continuing to contribute to a session we've been doing for two years now on SOA performance that includes leads across the WebSphere portfolio in SOA performance. I'll be co-presenting a session with Information Management XML expert Susan Malaika, looking at end to end strategies around XML in the enterprise (including both database and middleware focus). Finally, I'll be covering the XML Feature Pack Beta talking about the value of XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 and how the Beta provides these functions to WebSphere Application Server environments focusing on the new runtime and new API.

Here are the abstracts. If you plan on being at Impact, please sign up for the following sessions and feel free to stop by after a session to talk about performance, SOA or XML. If you aren't going to be at Impact, I'll see what I can do to post the charts/audio recordings (if possible).

1825 - SOA and BPM Performance Update


One of the cornerstones of obtaining good solution performance in an SOA environment is to use technology which is robust, efficient and scalable. The IBM WebSphere® portfolio provides this through its key SOA offerings - IBM WebSphere Application Server, IBM WebSphere Business Monitor, IBM WebSphere Business Service Fabric, IBM WebSphere IBM DataPower® Appliances, IBM WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus, IBM WebSphere Integration Developer, IBM WebSphere MQ, IBM WebSphere Message Broker, IBM WebSphere Process Server and IBM WebSphere Services Registry and Repository. Collectively these offerings provide a very rich set of functions covering basic Web services, integration, messaging, choreography, business activity monitoring and situation detection, dynamic endpoint selection and governance. Come and join the performance architects of these products as they describe both historical and recent product performance improvements.

1668 - XML in the Enterprise : Defining an XML Strategy


Increasingly, XML plays a critical part in SOA, Web-oriented architecture, mashups and cloud computing. Systems and application architects and designers need a clear vision of the role that XML plays in their system, in order to define an XML strategy for their institution or organization. This session provides an overview of some IBM products and technologies in various IBM portfolios, including WebSphere®, Information Management® and Lotus®, with an XML focus. It goes over frequently asked questions about XML in various areas, including namespaces, versioning, storing, validating, transforming, updating and usage patterns, in order to provide guidance for creating an enterprise-wide XML strategy and to help with managing XML across organizations. The role of industry consortia-defined XML messages will also be covered.

1784 - Building XML Oriented Applications with IBM WebSphere® Application Server V7


XML structured data has become the predominant data format for data interchange. XML data is navigated, queried or transformed in almost every existing the IBM WebSphere® application. Learn how to improve these applications with the IBM WebSphere Application Server Feature Pack for XML Beta. Learn specific ease of use, reliability, and performance benefits obtained by using the new XPath 2.0 and XSLT 2.0 Worldwide Web Consortium standards. You will also learn new scenarios only possible with functional enhancements in XPath 2.0 and XSLT 2.0 standards, as well as the new XQuery 1.0 standard. You will learn how to incorporate these capabilities into your new and existing applications along with how to avoid common pitfalls. The session concludes with an overview of how this feature pack is enabled within existing IBM WebSphere Application Server environments.

Cya in Sin City.

WAS XML Feature Pack Open Beta Available (XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, XQuery 1.0)

I've been relatively quiet on the blog as of late. That tends to happen when you spend a lot of time working on something big.

My team and I have been working very hard to bring the W3C standards of XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 to life. I'm proud to announce, that today, you can download, install, and work with the WebSphere Application Server V7.0 Feature Pack for XML Beta containing these critically important standards.

We have delivered a beta XML runtime that supports these standards as well as offers a new API to interact with these standards. We believe these standards will simplify and increase the reliability of XML oriented WAS applications. The standards will also enable new scenarios never possible before in WAS - like querying large amounts of XML data located outside of databases in parallel with databases with XML support, or making navigation/transformations decisions based upon industry standard XML schema support.

You can download the beta from our open beta website.

You can discuss the beta on our forum.

In order to help you understand the feature pack, I put together a quick demo (in two parts). I hope to put more demos together soon, but let me know what you think of these first.

Demo 1 (Part 1)

Direct Link (ensure you click on watch in HD)

Demo 1 (Part 2)

Direct Link (ensure you click on watch in HD)

Open SCA 1.0.1 Beta Available!

The Open SCA Feature Team has just released a beta milestone for a refresh of Open SCA support for WebSphere Application Server V7. The new level of code adds an implementation for JMS bindings for the default messaging provider as well as JEE integration scenarios where JEE applications can be enriched with SCA annotations and leverage the SCA SOA programming model benefits from within your JEE applications. Similar to the SCA 1.0.0 Feature Pack available since Dec 2008, the implementation derives its architectural direction from specifications at OSOA and source origins are derived from the open source project Apache Tuscany.

The beta milestone is available externally here and as usual with WebSphere Beta programs comes with a support forum for Q&A. Happy SOA Programming!

Steve Kinder

SCA Whitepapers

I just wanted to give this community a pointer to some interesting new content that my team has produced and published at IBM developerWorks regarding the first delivery of Open SCA technology in a WebSphere Application Server form factor.

Part 1: Overview of Service Component Architecture
Part 2: Policy Sets for Service Component Architecture
Part 3: Policy and Intents for Service Component Architecture
Part 4: Java Annotations and Component Implementations

We are looking at other topics at extending this Open SCA dialogue at developerWorks and I'm happy to get your feedback, hate mail or other comments back either via this forum, developerWorks or you can even send your flames directly to my email address: kinder@us.ibm.com

Our team is also looking at compelling user stories as follow on work and while I could not commit to our delivery of any code or beta's in the future, if you're interested in giving us stakeholder feedback, I would love to talk to you. We have had some interesting feedback on what we've delivered already and look forward to help making this technology a compelling SOA tool for our customers.

REST and WebSphere in 2009 Trends and Directions

Jerry Cuomo recently mentioned in an InfoQ article the WebSphere trends and directions for 2009

One of those topics was a comment on the support the WebSphere was doing in the area of REST (and the need for a common REST API), and how we are working to allow our own products as well as customer applications to be developed quicker and easier (promoting an ability to react faster and be more Agile).

Anne Manes made a comment about why we need a REST API - isn't HTTP GET,PUT,POST, DELETE enough?

I've provided an update with respect to where I think Jerry was headed via his comments (and what we are doing in WebSphere to provide value to customers)..

However - I find it interesting that folks think that REST is so much easier that you don't need any more information that 4 interfaces. You still need to know what the resources identifiers are and what is the resource state actually represents in order to use them (irrespective of the actual encoding/formatting of that data). That need isn't any different than any other distributed communication mechanisms that I've worked on in the past. I've worked w/SNA, TCP/IP, DSOM (Distributed System Object Model), CORBA/IIOP, Web Services, and now REST - as I'm focusing on REST within WebSphere. Irrespective of the technologies around (and I've seen all the comments about problems w/the technologies, tight coupling between technologies, lack of interoperability, etc...) - at the end-of-the day - you have a "client" making a request for information to some "service/resource" and it needs to understand the format of that data to accurately process the data. If you change the format, you potentially break the client. In a web-presentation world and HTML, the data can change the data, but our human minds can easily understood if the data format changes. For example, ESPN.com recently changed their web site around - however, I can still manage to deal w/it - since human minds can easily comprehend it. However - I know that if I wrote a script looking for the scores of yesterday's games (thereby automating it)- that it would fail since the location/context of that information is now in a different spot and presented differently.

In the end - I think we need to take our focus off the technologies themselves, and place the focus more on the value obtained in using the technologies to achieve a business goal. Defining patterns and best practices to use technologies are as critical to making our customers succeed as the technology itself. Anti-patterns are also valuable as the prevent customers from following practices known to be error prone. WebSphere focuses on producing middleware so that it can provide to customers an ability to expose data, services, whatever is needed for customers so that they can more easily provide value to their customers. I think all Jerry was alluding to is that by trying to be consistent with how we expose data/interfaces amongst our products, we can use those as best practices and patterns for others to do the same. That is what we are doing in WebSphere. As we can, we will publish best practices and use cases for using our technologies. In addition, in cases that we know we can do better - we are learning from those efforts and will be listing those as anti-patterns. Every time I have a discussion w/our services organization that use our technologies - that's the first question they ask - please give me reference patterns and anti-patterns.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

IBM again leads Oracle (and everyone else) on SPECjAppServer2004 performance and cost

I recently had someone email me on a performance topic and they referenced WebSphere Application Server's SPECjAppServer leadership. They actually didn't know that IBM regained total leadership in this benchmark late last year. Maybe the fun of the holidays didn't allow folks to notice? I wanted to post this update, so if other folks missed it they would notice.

In these times of tough economic conditions, it's really important to focus on total cost of ownership and ways to improve efficiency. IBM's continuous leadership in performance proves we care about performance as it relates to end to end J2EE enterprise computing scenarios. This increased performance means you can host more workload and applications on the same resources that you used before. Our performance engineers are continuously improving performance of your applications and we use SPECjAppServer to demonstrate those improvements.

Sometimes people ask me how SPECjAppServer matters to them. It's this continuously increasing performance that matters to them. Originally SPECjAppServer helped the J2EE programming model transition from a programming model to a capable enterprise ready programming model (stressing basic performance and scalability). Now, SPECjAppServer leadership helps customers know the middleware they are buying from IBM is helping them improve their efficiency.

This view is a technology view (leadership at 22634.13 JOPS), however it has business impacts as well. That result was achieved at roughly one half of the cost of our closest competitor. That just acquisition cost. If you consider the power savings on top of that you're not only being more green, but saving green.

Again, great work by the WebSphere Application Server performance team!

Disclaimer: SPEC is a non-profit organization that establishes, maintains and endorses standardized benchmarks to measure the performance of the newest generation of high-performance computers. Its membership comprises leading computer hardware and software vendors, universities, and research organizations worldwide. For complete details on benchmark results and the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation, please see www.spec.org. Competitive claims reflect results published on www.spec.org as of January 23, 2009 when comparing SPECjAppServer2004 Total JOPS on all published results.

Service Component Architecture GA

Just a quick note that the Service Component Architecture Feature Pack for WebSphere V7.0 is now generally available for download here.

In addition to the code download, here are some other useful links:
SCA Feature Pack InfoCenter
SCA Feature Pack Release Notes
SCA Feature Pack developerWorks Roadmap (available here soon)

As an early Holiday Present for developers, Rational has announced an open beta program which demonstrates among other things, a new visual composite editor for Open SCA. Details about the program can be found here.

Happy coding!

Properties File Based Configuration for WebSphere

WebSphere configuration is composed of many configuration files mainly in XML format and some in other formats. These configuration files are spread across many directories in WebSphere configuration tree. Contents of these configuration files is mostly complex configuration objects. And there are different tools (wsadmin, console and java APIs ) available to query and modify these configuration objects. Each of these tools contains different tasks to modify different parts of configuration. For example, wsadmin contains AdminConfig, AdminTask, AdminApp and AdminControl tasks to query and modify different configuration objects within WebSphere configuration. In WebSphere version 7.0, a simple properties file based configuration is introduced. Simple properties file based confguration tool is a single generic tool to query and modify all configuration objects within WebSphere configuration. Thus end user needs to know just one set of commands to configure WebSphere application server. This utility allows examination of the configuration by extracting the configuration into a human readable properties file. This utility also allows user to modify the extracted properties file and apply the changes to the configuration.

The following commands are provided to perform properties file based configuration:

1. extractConfigProperties : To extract configuration of entire cell or a specified configuration object's properties to a file.
2. applyConfigProperties : To apply properties specified in the properties file to the system.
3. validateConfigProperties : To validate a properties file before applying the properties file to the System.
4. deleteConfigProperties : To delete properties specified in the properties file from the system.
5. createPropertiesFileTemplates: To create template properties files to use to create or delete specific object types.

For more information can be found here:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v7r0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.websphere.base.doc/info/aes/ae/rxml_7propbasedconfig.html

Customer feedback in Barcelona

Last week, the 2008 European WebSphere Technical Conference and the 2008 European Transaction & Messaging Conference were held in Barcelona.

From 2008-November-Barcelona

Yes, there are worse things than spending a week in Barcelona. I've never been there before, and I definitely needed at least another week to see everything I wanted to see.

From 2008-November-Barcelona

I was there to run our Customer Feedback Program, which is a new track that debuted last spring at Impact 2008. The idea is that at most IBM conferences, the attendees naturally spend most of the week listening to IBMers speak. Where are we headed? What's new in the products? What's our newest three letter acronym? We wanted to turn this around and have sessions where the customers do the talking and the IBMers do the listening.

From 2008-November-Barcelona

These are small roundtable sessions with a couple of IBMers (usually a technical architect, designer, and/or product manager) and around four customers. After the sessions, we consistently hear from customers that they are the most valuable sessions of the week from their perspective, and the IBMers always walk away with great feedback about our products.

From 2008-November-Barcelona

We're trying to make these customer feedbacks sessions a staple for all of our conferences - so the next time you attend a conference (like Impact 2009 at the Venetion in Las Vegas) look for the feedback sessions. It's time well spent.

And if you ever get an opportunity to go to Barcelona, take it!

But watch out for the pigeons...

From 2008-November-Barcelona

Speaking tomorrow at the Charlotte WUG

Ying Ding has invited me to talk tomorrow at the Charlotte, NC WebSphere User's Group about our WebSphere Application Server version 7 release. If you happen to be in the Charlotte area, check out this link to the User's group for more information on the details for tomorrow's event. Look forward to seeing you there!

Centralized Installation Manager (CIM)

Performing a WebSphere installation and configuration and/or applying maintenance is relatively easy (OK, don't shoot me, I said "relatively"). But having to repeat that over and over again on many different remote machines throughout an organization is both time-consuming and error-prone. To address this problem WebSphere Virtual Enterprise (previously eXtended Deployment XD) v6.1 created and shipped a "Centralized Installation Manager" (CIM), and it worked so well that it is now even included in WebSphere v7 Network Deployment (ND).

The CIM program can be installed into a v7 ND Deployment Manager, and then can easily install and maintain the workstations in a WebSphere cell. An administrator can remotely install or uninstall product packages and maintenance to specific nodes directly from the administrative console without having to repetitively log in and perform these tasks on each individual remote machine. CIM operations can be done through its Graphical User Interface or can be scripted for full automation. Since CIM only previously shipped with XD-6.1, almost no "ND" WebSphere customers currently know about it. For details about CIM and how you can leverage to simplify and automate your enterprise servers please see the WebSphere v7 InfoCenter CIM information. If you are an ND cell administrator then CIM is something you need to seriously consider, it is certainly a way to significantly simply your day-to-day operations.

Videos available that quickly walk you through WAS V7 functionality

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a video with pictures worth?

I just found out that there is a series of about 50 videos available in the WAS V7 InfoCenter that cover many of the new features of WAS V7. I have watched a few of them and find them very clear and short enough to consume on breaks between other work.

Go here to find the IBM Education Assistant videos for WAS V7.

More information on the TPC SOA benchmark

As I mentioned previously, the TPC (Transaction Processing Performance Council) is looking at SOA benchmarking. SearchDataCenter.com has an article that summarizes alot of the new and upcoming TPC work. You will see the TPC chairman, Mike Molloy, talk about the popular existing TPC benchmarks (TPC-C, TPC-E, TPC-H, and TPC-App) as well as new benchmarking efforts around energy (consumption with focus on greening of the data center), virtualization (across all new workloads), ETL (Database Extract, Transform, Load), and SOA.

On SOA, Mike explains, "TPC's SOA benchmark is only in the proposal stage, but the tentative plan is to focus on common industry-accepted portions of SOA infrastructure, mainly Web services, the enterprise service bus, and business process choreography. As advanced SOA practices become more standard in the industry, TPC will expand the benchmark to incorporate additional SOA infrastructural services".

I'm excited to work within the TPC to continue driving this SOA performance benchmark to reality. There are no other standard benchmarks that tackle these common SOA infrastructural components. If you have interest in seeing such a benchmark or comments on how it would help you, please post a comment. I'll relay them back to the TPC.

WebSphere Application Server V7.0 What new for Security

WebSphere Application Server V7.0 shipped some exciding new features for Security. WebSphere delivered a rich set of feature in providing greater granularity management of security controls, offering new Audit and Complicate features, and enhanced secure Proxy to meet your business.

Our new WebSphere Security Domains provide greater granularity management of security controls by offers more flexibility in configuring security under centralized management. WebSphere Security Domains is designed to allow for a separation of WebSphere administrative security and your business application security. For example, Business applications can be configured to use your external LDAP registry while the WebSphere administration can use your Federated Repository’s file base registry containing internal user. Further granularity can be further expanded between business applications by allowing separate security configuration between business applications using new security configuration scoping to a cell, a cluster, or application server level. This new level of security granularity provides significant new flexibility in the security mechanism implemented across various application portfolios.

Our new WebSphere Security Auditing feature offer enhanced complicacy and auditing capabilities. The auditing capabilities allow tracks a number of security related events. For Example of administrative actions that can be logged include: security configuration changes, key and certificate management, and access control policy changes. Business applications can be audited to record a number of security events such as authentication or authorization attempts. This new security logging and auditing capability ensures accountability for administrative actions. In addition, we offer a temper proof audit file to prevent any tempering of recorded audit data. For z/OS customers, the generated Auditing data optionally intergrades with the z/OS System Management Facility leveraging by recording the WebSphere Auditing data as part of the Auditing Type 83 records.

Our WebSphere Secure Proxy has been become a lot easier and more. The WebSphere Secure proxy offers a new DMZ Hardened Proxy profile option. The DMZ Hardened Proxy improves security by minimizing the number of external ports opened, loading only signed JARs, and running as an unprivileged user when binding to well known ports. Both static and dynamic routes are supported by the DMZ Hardened Proxy.

We encourage you to visit our WebSphere Application Server’s Infocenter under What New for more information on these features as well as the many other exciding features we are offering for WebSphere Application Server V7. http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v7r0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.websphere.nd.multiplatform.doc/info/ae/ae/welc_newsecurity.html

EJB 3.0 and Web Services in WebSphere App Server v7.0

One of the questions I get most frequently on the EJB 3.0 feature pack for WebSphere App Server 6.1, is where a customer has installed both the EJB 3.0 feature pack and the Web Services feature pack, and wants to expose their EJB 3.0 bean as a JAX-WS web service endpoint, like so:

@WebService

@Stateless

public class MyEJB3WebServiceBean implements MyCoolService {

...

}


Unfortunately, we weren't able to directly support this scenario via the v6.1 feature packs, since doing so would have required that each feature pack depend on function in the other feature pack -- something that wasn't allowed in the overall definition for the v6.1 feature packs. We published a workaround for this, where you use a "helper class" as the JAX-WS implementation and have that class just forward the incoming requests to the target EJB 3.0 bean. It works just fine, but is nowhere near as nice as just having a single class that's both the endpoint definition and implementation.

The good news is that with WebSphere App Server v7.0, you can directly annotate your EJB 3.0 beans with the @WebService or @WebMethod annotation (just like the code above) and have them directly accessible via a JAX-WS endpoint; no "helper" class required. The Rational Application Developer (RAD) 7.5 tooling also makes it easy to code up your EJB 3.0 beans this way.

The ease-of-use combination of EJB 3.0 and JAX-WS is really, really nice. WebSphere App Server v7.0 makes it easy to implement this powerful combination of function.