Just incase you were thinking of writing some IBM Certifications, there will be a new promotion in July called Take It Again which allows you to rewrite a failed certification test free.

I have to re-write my WebSphere Integration Developer, WebSphere Process Server and DataPower certifications and am waiting for this promo to start before I book my tests.

You can import and export your WebSphere Application Server or WebSphere Process Server profiles into .CAR archive files.

Importing and exporting version 6 WebSphere Application Server profiles provides the specific wsadmin (or RAD/WID) steps to perform.

The infocenter has a great article about how to use “Industry Standard Schemas” with WebSphere Process Server.

This is required reading.

You will need to know about the Sequence object when dealing with

• xsd:any
• xsd:anyType
• xsd:anySimpleType
• xsd:anyAttribute

This used to be completely undocumented and now, the documentation is actually really good. Enjoy your undefined datatype.

I still stick with the rule that undefined types are the scourge of good integration.

The Visual Configuration Explorer

When configuration problems occur in a complex software environment, you can spend a lot of time hunting for subtle changes that might have introduced errors. The new Visual Configuration Explorer tool, which runs as a plug-in to the IBM Support Assistant, simplifies configuration troubleshooting by letting you visualize, explore, and analyze the configurations of various software stacks offline.

You can also use this plugin to compare two configurations and look for changes. Very good if your server ‘magically’ breaks one day or you are trying to track down a change from a while ago.

AlbeesOnline has posted a great article showing how difficult integration projects can be when you need to work with teams spread across an organization. A relatively straightforward project turns into a Frankenstein of text files and workarounds. It also shows the reason why projects have meetings that involve 20-30 people five times a week, you miss a department and they’ll pop up out of nowhere and tell you what you are doing is impossible.

I have to admit that I die a little inside when I hear of projects that have to switch from clean-elegant solutions to crazily complicated ones to work around corporate policies. The customer gets the final solution and wonders why the heck they bothered with an integration platform in the first place. It’s depressing.

Your business has decided to use CEI to emit business relevant events, you got approval for your project, you are ready to code.. and then find out that there’s a thin amount of documentation on how to actually work with the APIs.

Below are some links that can help you figure out whats going on:

Use the Event Catalog in the IBM Common Event Infrastructure

IBM Redbooks presents: Migrating WebSphere Business Integration Server Foundation to WebSphere Process Server V6.2 & Best Practices

Draft Redbook, last updated: Wed, 18 Mar 2009

- Migration concepts, planning and best practices
- New Workspace migration wizard
- Migration scenarios utilizing Business Space interface

In this IBM Redbooks publication, we discuss the concepts, planning, and migration paths, that you must understand before any attempt to migrate the source artifacts created using IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition 5.1 product, to the IBM WebSphere Integration Developer 6.2.

I pray for you.

From DeveloperWorks, Fifteen common Websphere Partner Gateway problems and how to solve them

Websphere Partner Gateway enables companies to connect large groups of trading partners to their businesses and extend internal integration outside the enterprise. This article discusses 15 common problems that can occur during Partner Gateway operations and their solutions.

While I don't use WebSphere Partner Gateway, I really like this article for the way that it presents a single location to solve a bunch of common problems.

From Devleoperworks, Top 10 FAQs on core group bridges

Here are the most commonly asked questions about the IBM WebSphere Application Server’s core group bridge service, introduced in Version 6.0, which is used to enable high availability communication between core groups.

The top 10 questions AFTER "What is heck is a core group bridge?"

From DeveloperWorks, Securing JMS connections to WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus V6.1

Security is an integral part of SOA, and since WebSphere ESB is at the heart of many SOA solutions, the security of a WebSphere ESB server and its transports is vital to the enterprise systems that use it. Messaging, such as the JMS implementation provided by WebSphere ESB, is particularly important for business applications because of its reliability, performance, and asynchronous nature. This article shows you how to implement security with an example using WebSphere ESB V6.1 and a J2EE client container application communicating via JMS messaging.

Securing the messaging engine is a task that most customers need to do but documentation of all the steps was hard to come by. This article puts them to light to make the entire process easier.

If you would like to specify a constant value for an XPath Duration (used in a wait activity or an escalation) you can follow the format specified by the w3 consortium for durations.

The lexical representation for duration is the [ISO 8601] extended format PnYn MnDTnH nMnS, where nY represents the number of years, nM the number of months, nD the number of days, ‘T’ is the date/time separator, nH the number of hours, nM the number of minutes and nS the number of seconds. The number of seconds can include decimal digits to arbitrary precision.

Weirdly enough, the duration needs to start with a ‘P’.

Also, if you are in the WebSphere Integration Developer editors, ensure that your constant is contained within single quotes.

'PT2M'

as opposed to

PT2M

The latter will cause the runtime to look for a child element named PT2M.

From IBM Redbooks: WebSphere Application Server V7: Concepts, Planning and Design

Redbook, published: Fri, 20 Feb 2009

- Discusses end-to-end planning for WebSphere implementations
- Defines WebSphere concepts and best practices
- Addresses distributed and z/OS platforms

This IBM® Redbooks® publication discusses the concepts, planning, and design of WebSphere® Application Server V7.0 environments.

This redbook weighs in at a whopping 522 pages of WebSphere Application Server 7.0 goodness. A must read (or atleast skim :) )

Uninstalling or updating the WebSphere V6.1 test environment using Installation Manager; Update Failed.

If you try to update your WebSphere Process Server Unit Test Server from 6.1 to 6.1.2, you may run into an error. This can occur because updates have been applied to the server outside of Installation manager. Basically, WID’s Installation Manager and WPS’s Update Manager are out of sync with each other. This document explains how to fix the problem.

It is also noted that this synchronization issue is fixed in 6.1.2.1.

As usual, ensure you read the appropriate update documentation before attempting any upgrades.

Yes I know, I’ve been an extremely delinquent blogger in 2009. I resolve to change that this month.

From DeveloperWorks, Managing tasks and business processes using WebSphere Business Space:

Learn how to create WebSphere BPM V6.1.2 Business Space dashboards using the run-time artifacts from the WebSphere BPM V6.1.1 Clips and Tacks tutorial. You'll create a business space to manage the tasks and business forms input, run some processes that use forms, and finally create a business space you can use to monitor the process and tasks.

A good resource if you'd like to know more about what a 'Business Space' is.