WebSphere Today

Let’s say you want to use the Endpoint Lookup primitive in WebSphere ESB to lookup an endpoint stored in WebSphere Services Registry and Repository (WSRR), but matching against the governance state of the endpoint. For example, you might want to only lookup endpoints which are in the ‘Managed’ state - i.e. they are deployed and […]

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In many respects, WebSphere ESB mediation modules act as an ‘ultimate endpoint’, which means WS-Addressing (WS-A) headers are normally stripped off on entry to the mediation flow, and so you cannot access them directly in the SOAPHeader section of the SMO. This technote describes the problem and the potential solution: writing a JAX-RPC handler to […]

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If you’re trying to use Derby Network Server out-of-the-box with WebSphere Process Server or ESB, for example to create new deployment environments using patterns (as I was), you might be interested to know that the default username / password pair for Derby is derbyuser / derbyuser.

Obviously, it goes without saying that you should only use […]

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I’ve recently been helping a customer put together an automated build and deployment for their Process Server artifacts, which include Integration Modules with BPEL processes. We used this excellent DeveloperWorks article as a basis, but we’ve extended it to also include automatic deployment - including uninstalling and reinstalling each module once it’s built. Anyone who’s […]

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Quite tardy, perhaps, but I thought I’d mention that I gave a presentation on ‘Connecting to WebSphere ESB and Process Server’ earlier in the year to the WebSphere User Group (UK) in London. You can download the slides here - it’s based on the Redbook I was previously involved in. I’m giving another presentation in […]

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More than once, customers have asked me:
‘I want to control the transactionality in my Mediation Module so that I can implement a service’s operation with three calls to a JDBC adapter - and I want them all to be tied together - either the whole operation succeeds or fails. How can I do that?’.
Well, as […]

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Customers sometimes ask me how they can enable transactionality in their WESB and WPS Modules and Mediation Modules. I normally point them at this article (and this article also has a lot of good material).
There’s a lot of content in both of those, but here are the really salient points:

In SCA, you don’t need code […]

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In WebSphere ESB, you can do schema validation of messages by setting the validation checkbox on various mediation primitives. Alternatively, you can use code (perhaps in a custom mediation, for example) similar to the following:
BOInstanceValidator boValidator = (BOInstanceValidator) new ServiceManager().locateService(”com/ibm/websphere/bo/BOInstanceValidator”);
boolean isItValid = boValidator.validate(myDataObject, anEmptyList);
(both of these methods use the same underlying mechanism).
However, there are some […]

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Those of you who are interested in performance or benchmarking might be interested to know that the TPC is currently considering an SOA Benchmark proposed by IBM. For more details, see Andrew Spyker’s blog post here.

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I don’t normally repeat links to newly-released content on here, but it’s worth noting that Part 1 of the Redbook Getting Started with WebSphere ESB and WebSphere Process Server has been released. It’s only a draft - but since I work a lot with folk who are just getting started with these products, this book […]

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WebSphere ESB uses an embedded database for the Message Logger mediation. WebSphere Process Server uses even more - for example, as the backing store for long-running processes. The test environment versions of these products that are embedded inside WebSphere Integration Developer use the Derby Embedded database to run these - it is supplied with WebSphere. […]

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I’m not quite sure where this is written officially, but many of the customers I work with are unaware that there’s an important difference in the package names used by various WebSphere Java classes, so to clear up the confusion:
com.ibm.ws.* classes are not supported. This means that they are for WebSphere’s use only. In general, […]

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Let’s look at how to pick up messages from an external JMS messaging provider (in this example, we’ll use JBoss), using the new Generic JMS Binding support in WebSphere ESB 6.1.
Firstly, create a JMS connection factory and queue (destination) in JBoss, or your external messaging provider.
Then, you need to set up the generic JMS provider […]

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Version 6.1 of WebSphere ESB has introduced the BO Mapper primitive, which brings the total number of primitives designed to manipulate or modify messages to three. People sometimes ask about the differences, so here they are:

The Message Element Setter primitive is the simplest. It can be used to set an element in a message, copy […]

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There’s some confusion around about what the new Set Message Type primitive in WebSphere ESB v6.1 does. I’m writing this tip as I myself was recently a victim of this confusion, even though I should have known better! Contrary to what the name might imply, it does not set the type of part of a […]

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Sorry for the shortage of posts on this blog recently; I’ve been busy getting up to speed with my new role in IBM as a WebSphere ESB consultant. Please be reassured that there are more posts coming soon.

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Previously, I wrote about how to dump Service Message Objects to the SystemOut log using a custom mediation. This solution involved using a small amount of Java code.
In later revisions of WebSphere Integration Developer 6.0.2, and in version 6.1, it is now possible to do this with a visual snippet, which makes it even easier. […]

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WebSphere ESB 6.1 is now available for download for Passport Advantage customers.

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Just a small plug for my IBM colleagues - I’ve started an IBM internal-only WebSphere ESB blog here. I’ll still be contributing to this blog too - it’s a complement, not a replacement.

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A quick note to point out a new Redbook:
Using WebSphere Message Broker as an ESB with WebSphere Process Server
I took a quick flick through the book this afternoon, and it looks like there are some very nice chapters which detail various scenarios (using WMB to aggregate responses from various backends; using WMB to bridge out […]

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I’m pleased to report that IBM has officially announced WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus 6.1, the product my colleagues in the development team are currently working on. 6.1 versions of its sister product WebSphere Process Server, the associated tool WebSphere Integration Developer, WebSphere Message Broker, and the WebSphere Service Registry and Repository have also been announced. […]

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The XSLT mediation in WebSphere ESB allows you to map data from one message type to another. Normally you do this by creating an .xmx file - an internal format - via a graphical mapping tool in WebSphere Integration Developer, which is then built into an .xslt automatically. Sometimes, though, you might want to modify […]

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Confused about function selector terminology? Read on…
The messaging transport binding types in WebSphere ESB (and Process Server) - JMS, MQ/JMS, and MQ - allow one to specify a function selector on an export. This function selector is a Java class that determines which function (a.k.a. native method) is used to process the message throughout the […]

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If you are looking for a book to give you a good introduction to the WebSphere Business Integration family of products, specifically WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Integration Developer (but with information on WebSphere Business Modeler, WebSphere Business Monitor, WebSphere ESB and WebSphere Service Registry and Repository) then you may well want to check out […]

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Earlier in the year I helped to author an IBM Redbook, Connecting Enterprise Applications to WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus. I’m pleased to announce that it’s now available in public draft. In particular, the book focuses on CICS, MQ, JDBC, and HTTP integration. Kudos to Peter, the project leader, for all his hard work in getting […]

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