When attempting to start an ear after application install on WebSphere v6.1, the following exception occurred:

[28/03/08 9:50:46:673 EST] 00000028 MBeanHelper   E   Could not 
invoke an operation on object:
WebSphere:name=ApplicationManager,process=server1,
platform=dynamicproxy,
node=txuxu-was007Node01,version=6.1.0.15,
type=ApplicationManager,mbeanIdentifier=ApplicationManager,
cell=was007Node01Cell,spec=1.0 because
of an mbean exception:
com.ibm.ws.exception.RuntimeWarning:
javax.resource.ResourceException: CWSIV0900E:
The exception
 com.ibm.wsspi.sib.core.exception.SINotAuthorizedException:
CWSIP0311E: A user  is not
authorized to delete a durable
subscription SUBNAME##SUBID on
destination Default.Topic.Space. was thrown w
hile attempting to
create a listener for destination
Default.Topic.Space on
bus SomeBus using
connection com.ibm.ws.sib.processor.impl.ConnectionImpl@86eef6.

Naturally I turn to google and see that the exception is of format:

CWSIP0311E: A user {0} is not authorized to delete a durable subscription {1} on destination {2}.

Now, it’s probably very hard to see on the internet, but there are two spaces between the words ‘user’ and ‘is’ in the CWSIP0311E: message. This extra space told me that the Authentication Alias used in the EAR was set to a single blank and not ‘null’. We asked the developer to check the field in the deployment descriptor and sure enough, the field was a single space.

We remove the space, re-generated the ear and deployment to our secured server was successful.

It would have reduced our problem determination time is IBM would mandate that all variable values in an exception were surrounded by quotes.