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BM is generally considered one of the most important software vendors, and this is even more true in the e-business space. In fact, many would say that IBM is the most influential vendor and has the best vision and product scope in spaces such as Web application development, Java, middleware, and enterprise systems. This chapter gives a brief look into the IBM e-business product landscape. WebSphere is IBM’s cornerstone in this blueprint and is both the application server platform on which IBM’s e-business blueprint is built and the umbrella product name of a full suite of products for building applications. This chapter discusses the application server, as well as some of the products belonging to the business product family such as WebSphere Portal Server, WebSphere Studio, and WebSphere Voice Server. WebSphere is Internet infrastructure software known as middleware. It enables companies to develop, deploy, and integrate next-generation e-business applications, such as those for business-to-business e-commerce; it also supports business applications from simple Web publishing to enterprise-scale transaction processing applications. WebSphere transforms the way businesses manage customer, partner, and employee relationships. For example, you can use it to create a compelling Web experience that improves the quality and quantity of site traffic, to extend applications to incorporate mobile devices so the sales force can service clients faster, or to build an electronic e-marketplace that lowers sourcing costs.
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WebSphere: A Product Family or an Application Server? WebSphere is the cornerstone of IBM’s Internet strategy. In essence, it is a product line comprising a variety of tools for developing, deploying, and maintaining Internet Web sites and e-business systems. At the center of this product line is the WebSphere Application Server. WebSphere Application Server is an application deployment environment for applications implemented as Java server-side code. WebSphere Application Server comes in three different flavors, differing in their complexity and in their coverage: ■ Advanced Single Server Edition This edition provides most of the Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) functions offered in the Advanced Edition, but for an environment that comprises only a single server. This version is limited in many ways, partly in its deployment and performance options and partly in its administration features. ■ Advanced Edition, Full Configuration This is the flagship application server offered by IBM. If you are running your applications in a production environment, you will most likely need this version. It includes support for servlets, JavaServer Pages (JSP), Extensible Markup Language (XML), Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), messaging, and much more.
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WebSphere Application Server was introduced to the market in the fall of 1998. Since then, several new releases have been made; at the time of this writing, the latest version is 4.0. The material in this book pertains to this version. An important aspect of version 4.0 is that it is the first version to comply with the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) specification. Because it is based on J2EE, version 4.0 ensures compatibility and interoperability with products from other vendors, as well as conformance to a methodology that is used by a large number of developers. WebSphere as a product suite is the central and most important element in IBM’s e-business strategy. In fact, the term “IBM WebSphere family” is used by IBM-ers as a synonym for e-business, and the IBM WebSphere family includes much more than the WebSphere server itself—such products as development tools, monitoring components, configuration management utilities, and more. This framework is very broad, and it is sometimes difficult to understand, from reading IBM marketing documents, which products are truly part of WebSphere and which ones are just given the “WebSphere” name to make them appear as more complete offerings. In this book, we will focus primarily on WebSphere as an application server, but we will also provide information on closely related products in the WebSphere family—products you can use to build and deploy true e-business applications in no time. Two good examples are WebSphere Studio Advanced Developer and VisualAge for Java. Both of these products are development environments for Web applications, and both have connectors and integration points with the WebSphere server. The remainder of this chapter offers an overview of the WebSphere line of products. It provides a nontechnical look at the various offerings from IBM under the WebSphere name. While these products are not directly related to the subject of this book, any serious WebSphere developer should be acquainted at least with their names. Furthermore, the sheer number of products that go under the WebSphere umbrella shows how serious IBM is about building the WebSphere brand name.
WebSphere Application Server This section focuses on WebSphere Application Server and details the differences between the various editions. All of the editions provide the functionality of an application server. This term does not have a precise definition, but in this context it refers to a server that extends the functionality of a Web server. A traditional Web server is a server capable of responding to HTTP protocol requests. An application server provides the ability to execute Java server-side code, allowing for the generation of dynamic content and the implementation of complex enterprise applications.
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■ Advanced Edition, Developer License This edition offers a low-priced server that is equivalent in features to the Single Server Edition but that cannot be used in a production runtime environment. It is available from the IBM site as an evaluation download. (The Full Advanced Edition is not, which is surprising.)
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WebSphere Advanced Single Server Edition The Single Server Edition of WebSphere, new in version 4.0, is the entry-level product. Before version 4.0, WebSphere Standard Edition served this purpose, and was primarily aimed at developing and deploying relatively simple applications. Even though the Standard Edition was an entry-level product, you did get a WebSphere server, along with all the core services and supporting utilities. The main feature of the Standard Edition was the Java execution engine, which supports Java servlets and JSP. If you are not familiar with these terms, they refer to pieces of Java code that generate HTML or other content. (These concepts are explained in detail later in the book.) The Standard Edition of WebSphere Application Server has been discontinued in version 4.0. It is available with version 3.5 and previous versions, and IBM offers easy migration from version 3.5 to 4.0. The main reason for the Standard Edition being discontinued is that it is not compliant with J2EE (a Java standard for application servers), due to its lack of EJB support. The probable other reason for this line being discontinued is that it hurt IBM’s revenue stream from WebSphere—in many cases, people preferred using the Standard Edition because of its much lower price. The Single Server Edition is similar to the Standard Edition in that it serves as the entry level to WebSphere. It is different in that it offers much more than did the Standard Edition, including support for EJB. It targets department-level applications and is useful for building complete e-business solutions that do not require much in terms of performance, throughput, 24/7 operation, and so on. It is a limited edition that is useful to get your hands around. Many of the samples that appear throughout this book are based on the Single Server Edition. Examples are based on the Full Advanced Edition only when the functionality shown is nonexistent in the Single Server Edition.
WebSphere Advanced Edition, Full Configuration The Advanced Edition is IBM’s flagship application server. It is fully J2EE-compliant, and it appears to have the widest appeal. It provides the most useful functionalities of the Enterprise Edition, but without the complexities. It is, in our opinion, a world-class Java application server that is very deep in functionality for the developer, as well as for the administrator. The Advanced Edition includes support for Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), transactional database connectivity, and Web services. EJB and Web services, addressed in detail later in the book, are exciting and important technologies for developing enterprise applications. The Full Advanced Edition offers a richer deployment environment than the Single Server Edition. It allows you to run several application server instances (possibly on different hosts), while providing the illusion of a single virtual server. This means that you can bring up a set of servers that work cooperatively as one server. This feature allows you to seamlessly tie up a set of servers, boosting both the performance and the reliability of your system. While this probably is a good thing in any setting, it is critical for e-business applications, because the most basic motivation for building e-business applications is opening up the business to users on the Web. The vast number of users on the Web offers
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WebSphere Enterprise Extensions The Enterprise Edition of WebSphere was IBM’s high-end solution for the server market. It was discontinued as of version 4.0 and currently exists only up to version 3.5. Originally, it targeted organizations having e-business applications that were very demanding from the aspect of distribution and transaction-related requirements. Such applications have high demands, and the way IBM attacked this problem was to enrich the Advanced Edition with additional capabilities by integrating it with a set of “power tools.” These tools, shown in the following list, must now be purchased separately in a package called Enterprise Extensions. ■ Component Broker ■ TXSeries ■ MQSeries ■ WebSphere Enterprise Services It is difficult to imagine a situation in which you would actually make use of all these products at the same time, because in some cases their capabilities overlap. But one cannot ignore the fact that Enterprise Extensions provides products and capabilities that will handle virtually any requirement for high levels of distribution, transaction support, messaging, and practically anything else. One of the major things IBM did in version 4.0 was to take the three editions of version 3.5 (Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise) and merge them into a single code line. In version 4.0, the features that previously could only be run on Enterprise Edition can now be run on WebSphere Advanced Edition by installing Enterprise Extensions.
Component Broker Component Broker is an object engine that supports the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) model, as well as EJB. Since the EJB specification has been expanded to place Remote Method Invocation (RMI) over the Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP), J2EE servers have a lot of CORBA support by definition. We believe that Component Broker appeals only to organizations that have an existing investment
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a huge potential in terms of clientele; however, from a technical standpoint, it places a heavy burden on the applications. This burden stems from the computational load and the resulting performance problems, but it is also due to the fact that the Web environment is much less controlled than a typical client/server environment. Consequently, the deployment platform on which the e-business applications run must be highly tolerant and highly scalable. The most naive yet most effective way of acheiving this is to set up a group of hosts that can support the applications together. In most cases, this is easier said than done, since a lot of effort is required in order to coordinate the different machines. In the Full Advanced Edition, you get this feature without any effort; so, apart from doing the proper configuration, it is really “plug and play.”
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in other programming languages, such as C++, and to those whose environment includes a mix of programming languages so that they are unable to commit to a Java environment. The reason is that most of the extra functionality provided by the Component Broker relates to supporting code and functionality in languages other than Java, and to object models other than EJB. IBM provides the C++ CORBA software development kit to facilitate a standard way of integrating C and C++ code into the J2EE environment, and of building and deploying C++ CORBA clients. Apart from being an Object Request Broker (ORB) and supporting EJB, Component Broker also provides support for a large number of services that are useful when building business applications. These services include concurrency control, lifecycle, event, notification, object identity and naming, security, transaction, session, query (via the Object-Oriented Structured Query Language (OOSQL) standard), cache, and workload management services.
TXSeries TXSeries is actually two different products—TXSeries CICS (Customer Information Control System) and TXSeries Encina. Both products are transaction monitors that are used by applications with extremely high transaction requirements, and both are completely unrelated to the world of Java and the Internet. With TXSeries, IBM has managed to provide developers with connectors that conveniently “glue” these products to WebSphere Application Server.
MQSeries MQSeries is a distributed messaging solution from IBM. The appeal of this product— and the appeal of integrating it into WebSphere—is the fact that it is used by many corporate developers. MQSeries is similar to the TXSeries products, and IBM has managed to provide excellent connectors (or adapters) for using it from within Java code. MQSeries also includes support for using MQSeries within the context of the Java Messaging Service (JMS) API.
Enterprise Services The last major component of Enterprise Extensions is WebSphere Enterprise Services, which essentially is a collection of capabilities offered by IBM that didn’t make it into the J2EE standard. The services include ■ ActiveX Bridge Allows developers to extend J2EE EJB connectivity to existing software components based on Microsoft’s Component Object Model (COM) technologies. ■ Internationalization Service Provides mechanisms for implementing J2EE applications in a manner that adapts presentation and business logic based on different client locales and time zones. Note that Java has built-in support for
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■ Extended Messaging Support Allows the J2EE server to accept inbound asynchronous messages via a JMS listener. ■ Business Rule Beans Enables the encapsulation of business rules outside of application code, in an external rules set. ■ Shared Work Areas Provides an abstraction of shared memory for J2EE applications, allowing developers to share information between objects without invoking explicit methods or passing messages. ■ Business Process Beans (Technology Preview) Provides advanced business process support via different transaction processing paradigms. This framework allows chained J2EE transactions, automatic initiation of transactions using timebased or messaged-based triggers, and concurrent invocations of J2EE components, such as EJB and connectors.
Platform Support The whole line of WebSphere servers is currently offered on most major operating systems. It is available for Microsoft’s Windows NT and Windows 2000, as well as for most flavors of UNIX, including Sun Solaris, IBM AIX, Red Hat Linux, and HP-UX. Because it is an IBM product, it is also available on IBM AS/400. You can connect to any relational database having a Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) driver by including that driver in the classpath of the Java application server. Since some elements make use of built-in WebSphere features (such as database connection pooling, automated persistence, and so on), it is not enough to plug in the driver in some cases. The primary database platform supported (besides IBM’s own DB2) is Oracle 8. In this book, our examples will use DB2 and Oracle—but they can be easily implemented on any other database with JDBC support. The major databases supported are ■ DB2 ■ Oracle ■ Informix ■ Sybase ■ SQL Server For more details on supported products, see the following Web site: http://www-4.ibm.com/software/webservers/appserv/doc/v40/prereqs/ae_v401.htm
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internationalization, but that the requirements for this functionality become more complex in the setting of J2EE applications, where a single transaction can span several locales.
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The WebSphere Family of Products This section reviews the WebSphere family of products beyond the Application Server.
WebSphere Studio Application Developer WebSphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD) is a new product within the WebSphere line. It is a merge of VisualAge for Java and WebSphere Studio. It therefore targets Java developers, Web site and script builders, and more. VisualAge for Java is IBM’s Java Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Apart from being a full-blown IDE for Java and being an advanced tool for developing, testing, and debugging Java applications, it includes inherent support for WebSphere. Namely, it allows you to develop servlets, JSPs, and EJBs, and run them from within VisualAge for Java. The execution environment provided by VisualAge for Java is a downsized version of the actual WebSphere server. Realizing the scarcity of development resources in large organizations, IBM developed two variants of VisualAge for Java that allow developers with little or no Java skills to generate code and to develop applications: ■ VisualAge Application Rules Allows you to quickly build and deploy rulebased applications. Using other IBM tools and middleware, you can build large applications relatively easily. ■ VisualAge Generator Allows rapid development and deployment of Webbased applications, which mask the complexities of transactions, communications, and databases. WebSphere Studio provides a powerful set of tools for building dynamic Web pages and applications. It provides a visual authoring environment for designing pure HTML pages and pages with JavaScript, Dynamic HTML (DHTML) and JSPs. As with other WebSphere-related products, WebSphere Studio works in harmony with the WebSphere server and VisualAge for Java. Another product that provides a visual editing environment for Web pages with dynamic content is WebSphere Homepage Builder, formerly known as TopPage.
WebSphere Business Components WebSphere Business Components is a library of components aimed at saving time for application developers. The various components have well-defined interfaces and provide rich functionality. By and large, the components provided in this package are EJBs, which increases their usability and portability, and shortens the learning curve for using them. The WebSphere Business Components product is based on a previous product named SanFrancisco.
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Project SanFrancisco started out when several large IBM customers went to IBM and asked for assistance in upgrading a set of enterprise-level, mission-critical applications to new technologies. These companies had large application suites in various business domains, and were interested in replacing their old technology bases (often COBOL running on a mainframe) with object-oriented, network-centric architectures. The implications of widespread technology migration and application rewrites were so great that these companies requested guidance and assistance from their large vendor, IBM. As the relationships with IBM around the technology migration were formulated, a few areas in which IBM could assist were defined. Technology adoption, retraining, and knowledge transfer were areas in which IBM clearly could help. Analysis and design were also targeted: skilled developers and analysts from IBM could be involved with internal development projects to bootstrap processes and make sure that designs were done correctly. As these relationships formed, however, it became clear that more was necessary. As is always the case with new technologies, they hold much promise but initially lack many infrastructure components that come with years of use and market maturity. Multitier software architectures and network-centric application infrastructure is no exception. The companies working with IBM, along with IBM itself, identified fairly early on that they would all benefit greatly if some infrastructure components were put in place that could then be reused throughout the business systems being created. And so project SanFrancisco was born. Project SanFrancisco started with wide-scale analysis of the business systems for which it would be used. It was then constructed as a set of business process components that could be reused within multiple business systems and domains. Quite early on, the fundamental structure of the project was set to make use of the notion of object-oriented frameworks—as opposed to class libraries, for example. As such, SanFrancisco provided an infrastructure—a consistent design and programming model, along with default business logic that could be changed and extended. Reusable object-oriented software components are certainly not new to the software industry, and even in terms of frameworks, the market has already seen some excellent implementations. Nevertheless, SanFrancisco implemented the largest, most complete set of frameworks of all. In addition, it was one of the first examples of frameworks that included high-level business functionality; most frameworks used today solve only low-level system issues and user interface problems. So what is the state of the project? SanFrancisco was a collaborative effort led by IBM, involving hundreds of international independent software vendors (ISVs) that were willing to base their system architectures on the SanFrancisco frameworks and to help stabilize and form the ultimate structure of the product. While SanFrancisco included many frameworks, services, and utilities, the core of the environment was made up of three software layers with increasing proximity to business applications: the Foundation layer, the Common Business Objects layer, and the Core Business Processes layer. Each of these layers relied on the previous layer (see Figure 1-1). The Foundation layer implemented the infrastructure and services available for all objects participating in the SanFrancisco environment. It supported the notion of object
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Figure 1-1.
SanFrancisco framework
persistence, transaction processing, distribution and location transparency, naming, security, ownership, and so on. It was the largest layer, and the one that provided contextfree, infrastructure-related support useful for all applications. The Common Business Objects layer implemented a set of elementary business objects common to a very large set of business domains. These objects included addresses, moneyrelated objects, customer and location, and more. The final layer, Core Business Processes, provided complete sets of business objects and processes that formed sets of mini-applications and included working functionality that was useful in the relevant domains. This layer actually was not one layer, but rather a set of vertical layers, each providing support in a certain domain. Naturally, the first verticals to be selected were those most relevant to IBM customers; however, as time went on, additional verticals were added. By understanding and using both the Core Business Processes and the Common Business Objects, one could customize the SanFrancisco frameworks either through derivation or composition (or a combination of both), making the end result extremely attractive. The simplest reuse scenario involved using business objects and processes out of the box while setting properties that were built-in parameters of the business objects. The next level of complexity allowed you to alter the way in which objects were created and to define which class would be used for instantiating a certain business concept. By supplying your own extension to the business class, you could customize behavior while remaining within the framework. Alternatively, you could fully extend a domain’s class through substitution, or through derivation and modification, of functionality.
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As shown in Figure 1-1, the Foundation layer and the Common Business Objects layer form the SanFrancisco Base. The base layers provided the services and the underlying object support required for building multitier, distributed, object-oriented applications, along with a fundamental set of objects that conformed to the SanFrancisco patterns. This not only allowed the application builder to be semi-oblivious to the difficulties involved with complex application architectures, it also helped to jump-start the development process. The Core Business Processes complemented the base with rich functionality in various domains, all while building on the base. As Figure 1-1 shows, an application builder was not limited in how the frameworks could be used. Applications could be built within one or more of the Core Business Processes, in which case SanFrancisco could provide the most bang for the buck. If the domain was not covered by one of the process frameworks, or if the functionality provided was too different from the one required, the application could make use of the Common Business Objects layer as a set of reusable business objects that functioned within the SanFrancisco environment. This use saved a lot of development time and even more testing time, but still required more work than did use of the Core Business Process layer. Finally, new business objects were sometimes created directly over the Foundation. In this case, the new business objects made use of the underlying services only, which solved the most complex issues in the system architecture. Obviously, any combination of the described alternatives was possible; an application may have used parts of the Core Business Processes or some of the Common Business Objects directly, combined with a set of objects using Foundation layer services. Once all pieces of the application used these services, the objects worked in tandem. We mentioned that as long as objects were built over the Foundation layer, they formed a coherent application structure. Building objects that are external to the foundation to work at the application level was much more difficult and was not recommended. As long as objects used the Foundation layer services and conformed to the SanFrancisco patterns, they could participate in the SanFrancisco world and thus make use of the benefits. Objects not built in this way needed to solve many difficult problems, such as persistence, transactions, and so on. Even worse, if you decided to depart from the SanFrancisco model, you had to synchronize and maintain the two models. For example, if you had a single business transaction that included objects using the base and objects that required self-management for transactions, you somehow had to synchronize all of this into one transaction—something that really should not be attempted without serious “adult” supervision. The SanFrancisco project was not successful. In fact, it was highly unsuccessful given the amount of investment funding that IBM poured into it (as well as into Taligent, which formed some of the roots of SanFrancisco). When WebSphere emerged as the dominant Java and e-business platform that it is, IBM quickly repositioned and rebuilt SanFrancisco on top of EJB as the base framework and on WebSphere as the deployment environment. WebSphere Business Components is still expanding, and it appears to be a promising line of products; it certainly implements a lot of business functionality!
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WebSphere Transcoding Publisher One of the challenges of developing applications for today’s Internet is the multitude of devices that can access the Web. In addition to the traditional PC-based and UNIX-based browsers, there are growing numbers of personal digital assistants (PDAs) and cellular phones that provide Web access. For such devices, it is either required or helpful to produce content in a manner that matches the device capabilities. In other words, content must be reformatted to fit the screen, and possibly be presented in a different markup language altogether. For example, cellular phones might require content in Wireless Markup Language (WML), part of the WAP standard, or Compact HTML (CHTML). Enter WebSphere Transcoding Publisher. This product provides you with the capability to reformat and adapt your data on the server side, according to your needs.
WebSphere Voice Server A recent venue of expansion for Internet applications is the realm of voice services, via call centers and voice portals. IBM has moved into this domain with the WebSphere Voice Server. This server builds on the WebSphere server and VoiceXML (a special variant of XML for voice-based documents), and provides the tools for building Web-based voice portals and call centers.
WebSphere Portal Server A few years back, portals were “the next big thing” in the Internet world. The glamour has now faded away, but on the other hand, any company can build its own custom portal Web site with products such as WebSphere Portal Server. It allows users to sign in and receive personalized content—and, of course, it may be built to contain any specific content required to serve the needs of customers, business partners, and employees.
WebSphere Everyplace Suite The WebSphere Everyplace Suite is IBM’s player in the mobile computing and mobile Internet arena. While some of its capabilities overlap those of the WebSphere Transcoding Publisher, this product aims to provide a complete out-of-the-box solution for building sites for mobile users accessing content from PDAs or cellular phones. WebSphere Everyplace Suite includes a client-side component called WebSphere Everyplace Embedded Edition.
WebSphere Personalization WebSphere Personalization gives you the capability to provide users with personalized content that is customized for their individual needs and preferences.
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WebSphere Edge Server Previously called WebSphere Performance Pack, WebSphere Edge Server provides a multitude of performance capabilities. These include load balancing, content-based routing (which affects quality of service), content filtering, and content caching. It is important to note that this product works with various Web servers, not necessarily just IBM’s.
WebSphere Site Analyzer WebSphere Site Analyzer provides Web site visitor activity and usage capabilities. The power of this product stems from the fact that it provides all the data required for analyzing Web site visitor behavior, and at the same time is tightly integrated with other IBM products, such as the WebSphere Application Server itself and WebSphere Commerce Suite.
Tivoli Policy Director Tivoli Policy Director is a part of the Tivoli family of products. It is aimed at managing the security policy for e-business and Web-based applications.
WebSphere Commerce Suite WebSphere Commerce Suite provides tools for building e-commerce sites quickly and relatively easily. WebSphere Commerce Suite includes a subproduct called WebSphere Payment Manager—which, as the name implies, is used to manage payments.
WebSphere Business-to-Business Integrator B2B is yet another buzzword that has lost its glamour with the bust of the dot-com bubble. WebSphere Business-to-Business Integrator allows you to bridge the gap between your own company’s enterprise computing systems and those of customers, suppliers, and business partners. The basic technology for doing all of this is XML, but this product combines some of IBM’s integration and transaction products.
WebSphere Partner Agreement Manager WebSphere Partner Agreement Manager allows an organization to automate interactions with partners (suppliers, for example), customers, and e-markets. Such automation can help improve supply chain efficiency and effectiveness.
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Obviously, the same effect can be achieved with a relatively small programming effort using WebSphere Application Server itself.
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Summary Because this book is a reference on the topic of developing Web applications using WebSphere tools and deploying them on WebSphere Application Server, it does not go into detail on most of the products in the WebSphere family that were mentioned in this chapter. In fact, many of these products deserve “complete references” of their own. As this book focuses on WebSphere Application Server only, it provides much detail on EJB, servlets, JSP, all aspects of J2EE, deployment topologies, and much more.
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