Preface
As a J2EE (Enterprise Edition) administrator, you require a secure, scalable, and resilient infrastructure to support and manage your J2EE applications and service-oriented architecture services.
The WebSphere suite of products from IBM provides many different industry solutions and WebSphere Application Server is the core of the WebSphere product range from IBM.
WebSphere is optimized to ease administration and improve runtime performance. It runs your applications and services in a reliable, secure, and high-performance environment to ensure that your core business opportunities are not lost due to application or infrastructure downtime.
Whether you are experienced or new to WebSphere, this book will provide you with a cross-section of WebSphere Application Server features and how to configure these features for optimal use. This book will provide you with the knowledge to build and manage performance-based J2EE applications and service-oriented architecture (SOA) services, offering the highest level of reliability, security, and scalability.
Taking you through by examples, you will be shown the different methods for installing WebSphere Application Server and will be shown how to configure and prepare WebSphere resources for your application deployments. The facets of data-aware and message-aware applications are explained and demonstrated, giving the reader real-world examples of manual and automated deployments.
WebSphere security is covered in detail showing the various methods of implementing federated user and group repositories. Key administration features and tools are introduced, which will help WebSphere administrators manage and tune their WebSphere implementation and applications. You will also be shown how to administer your WebSphere server standalone or use the new administrative agent, which provides the ability to administer multiple installations of WebSphere Application Server using one single administration console.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Installing WebSphere Application Server covers how to plan and prepare your WebSphere installation and shows how to manually install WebSphere using the graphical installer and how to use a response file for automated silent installation. The fundamentals of application server profiles are described and the administrative console is introduced.
Chapter 2, Deploying your Applications explains the make-up of Enterprise Archive (EAR) files, how to manually deploy applications, and how Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) is used in the configuration of resources. Connecting to databases is explained via the configuration of Java database connectivity (JDBC) drivers and data sources used in the deployment of a data-aware application.
Chapter 3, Security demonstrates the implementation of global security and how to federate lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) and file-based registries for managing WebSphere security. Roles are explained where users and groups can be assigned different administrative capabilities.
Chapter 4, Administrative Scripting introduces ws_ant, a utility for using apache Ant build scripts to deploy and configure applications. Advanced administrative scripting is demonstrated by using the wsadmin tool with Jython scripts, covering how WebSphere deployment and configuration can be automated using the extensive WebSphere Jython scripting objects.
Chapter 5, WebSphere Configuration explains the WebSphere installation structure and key XML files, which make up the underlying WebSphere configuration repository. WebSphere logging is covered showing the types of log and log settings that are vital for administration. Application Server JVM settings and class loading are explained.
Chapter 6, WebSphere Messaging explains basic Java message service (JMS) messaging concepts and demonstrates both JMS messaging using the default messaging provider and WebSphere Message Queuing (MQ) along with explanations of message types. Use of Queue Connection Factories, Queues, and Queue Destinations are demonstrated via a sample application.
Chapter 7, Monitoring and Tuning shows how to use Tivoli Performance Monitor, request metrics, and JVM tuning settings to help you improve WebSphere performance and monitor the running state of your deployed applications.
Chapter 8, Administrative Features covers how to enable the administrative agent for administering multiple application servers with a central administrative console. IBM HTTP Server and the WebSphere plug-in are explained.
Chapter 9, Administration Tools demonstrates some of the shell-script-based utilities vital to the WebSphere administrator for debugging and problem resolution.
Chapter 10, Product Maintenance shows how to maintain your WebSphere Application Server by keeping it up-to-date with the latest fix packs and feature packs.
What you need for this book
You can now download the latest version, RHEL 5.3, known as Tikanga, as a trial from www.redhat.com. If you cannot obtain Red Hat, you can also use CentOS 5.3 which is a community-supported, freely-available operating system based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and is freely available for download from http://www.centos.org. If you find any variances from the exercises in this book, you can search http://www.webspheretools.com for tips on how to install and configure Red Hat or Centos. All of the software applications required are either trial or open source software applications, which are freely available on the Internet, and the download URLs are provided along with instructions of how to install and configure the software required for each exercise.
Below is a list of the software applications used in this book:
WebSphere Application Server 7 Trial
WebSphere MQ 7 Trial
Open LDAP
Oracle XE (Oracle Database 10g Express Edition)
Xming
PuTTY
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "Since the manageHR.xml file has a project declaration which specifies the default target being build-all, as shown below, the build-all target will be called if no target name is specified on the command line."
A block of code is set as follows:
[<project name="Manage HR Lister Application Deployment" default="build-all" basedir=".">]
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
print "Hello World"
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Note
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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