One of the restrictions when dealing with a short running process is that it must always run within a single transaction. The implication is that the process must complete within the default transaction timeout window. On an application server, this is 120s. We had an issue where our Process Server was creating a large number […]
WebSphere Process Server v6.1 API
There are various API’s that are provided as a part of WebSphere Process Server. EJB API There is the standard EJB lookup method for the four JNDI’s (Human Task, BusinessFlow, Relationship etc). EJB provides slightly more functionality than the Web service or JMS interface. The generic EJB API supports Remote Artifact loading so you don’t […]
WebSphere Integration Developer & WebSphere Process Server v6.1.2 released
V6.1.2 has been released for WebSphere Integration Developer and WebSphere Process Server. You can read the list of features. I’m going to highlight the ones that interest me: WebSphere Process Server New out-of-the-box, ready-to-run, Web 2.0 BPM client for business users with configurable work lists and detailed work item views, including support for collaboration using […]
My Contributions To The IBM External Community – The 24/7 Answer Man
I think some of my readers need a refresher course on exactly what I’m doing here and everything that I’ve contributed to the external IBM community (aka, the community that IBM does next to nothing to help thrive). I constantly post and answer questions of all levels in the two external newsgroups for WebSphere Integration […]
Reader Introductions – Who are you? What you up to? What would you like to know?
I’ve been running danZrobok.com now for about four months now and I’m curious as to who my readers are. Feel free to comment to this post as an introduction. I’m always in the market for topics to talk about in the blog or features of the IBM Suite of products that you’d like to know […]
Online Real Estate Search in Canada: Example of Integration Bottlenecking And Innvocation Stifling
From the Canadian Real Estate Blog, MoveSmartly, They have a post titled “The Future of the Online Real Estate Search in Canada“. In the USA, people interested in real estate have a ton of different websites they can use to search for houses. Pop the term into google sometime. In Canada, things are completely different. […]
Gartner Says Worldwide Application Infrastructure and Middleware Market Revenue Increased 13 Percent in 2007
The following is Gartners view of the Application Infrastructure and Middleware market broken down by the big boys: Company 2007 Revenue 2007 Market Share (%) 2006 Revenue 2006 Share (%) 2006-2007 Growth (%) IBM 4,090.3 28.9 3,554.5 28.3 15.1 BEA Systems 1,323.9 9.3 1,224.7 9.8 8.1 Oracle 1,202.7 8.5 1,004.9 8.0 19.7 Sterling Commerce […]
My Next Opportunity: Oracle Fusion
As my gig here in Toronto doing WebSphere Process Server implementations comes to a close, I’m going to be moving on to a new opportunity using Oracle Fusion and Oracle BPEL. This should be very interesting as I will be able to directly compare and contrast the two integration engines from the perspective of someone […]
WebSphere Adapter for JDBC Export and SQL Server 2000: Table Locking while Polling
A technote was published for customers who use the WebSphere Adapter for JDBC for inbound processing of an SQL Server 2000 database. Apparently, the adapter will lock the entire event table (bad!). The ‘fix’ aka workaround is to use a view to the event table and then set a custom property inside the adapter.
Passed Certification Test 284: IBM WebSphere DataPower SOA Appliances Firmware V3.6.0
I re-wrote IBM DataPower Certification test 284 over the weekend and passed with a 75% when requiring a 60%. Taking the course made my life a lot easier. I still spent two hours writing and reviewing the answers but I was a lot more confident about passing when I ended the test. I did notice […]
WAS: Resolution to Messages in the SIB locked forever
In a cluster where the messaging engine has failed over between nodes, a situation could arise where the transaction log (‘tranlog’) has become corrupt or is unrecoverable. In this situations, you may see messages on SIB Queues that are in the LOCKED state but are unprocessed. If you factor in a sequential delivering of messages, […]
WebSphere Application Server: -recovery flag
If you have a server that crashed without a clean shutdown, you may have transactions that are in progress and need to be recovered. In development, you would likely jusy delete the tranlog. On a production machine, you will likely need the following useful command line option when starting your server: startServer <server> -recovery This […]
Tip: WebSphere Process Server – Do not delete the ‘tranlog’ on a production server
In development mode, one of the steps to ‘clean up’ from a wonky process server instance is to delete the wstemp, temp directories along with the ‘tranlog’. The ‘tranlog’ is an internal file that WebSphere Application Server uses to manage in-flight transactions and attempt to recover them should the server crash. When you delete the […]
WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Process Server Fix Lists
A handy resource for seeing what exactly is contained in a new release of software are the APAR fix lists published by IBM. They contain a list of every APAR that is resolved and you can click to get more information. You can find them for: WebSphere Application Server 6.0.2 WebSphere Application Server 6.1 WebSphere […]
WebSphere Process Server: Messages sitting on queues unprocessed
We’re battling another runtime problem. We’re on 6.0.2.3 and WAS 6.0.2.23 and have a situation where our modules that enable Event Sequencing seem to deadlock when trying to pick messages up off the queue. The transactions then time-out in a sea of exceptions. We have a messaging engine cluster (set to 1 of N) and […]
DataPower Course WB552 Overall Impressions
I have to admit that I was very impressed with DataPower Course WB552. The content of the course covered everything that on would need to know about how to use the box along with security. It also provided a lot of opportunity to go off the beaten path and try modifications on your own. I […]
WB552: Random DataPower Thoughts Part 11a
A web application firewall can provide a service over both http and https without requiring the use of a multi-protocol gateway.
WB552: Random DataPower Thoughts Part 12
Message set (traffic Pattern) Count monitors increment based on condition. Duration monitors occur when a configured amount of time passes during processing of messages for the condition. Message Count Monitors would be used to limit requests to a certain rate (100/second) Message duration monitors are clock-based. Measure things like average server response. Traffic Definitions are […]
WB552: Random DataPower Thoughts 11
Tivoli Directory Integration can integrate with multiple LDAP. LDAP Search Attribute is the attribute in the LDAP that you want to look up. Load Balancing Algorithms: First-Alive: Secondary servers are only called when the primary server is down. So the first alive entry is always used. Hash: Hashes the IP address of the client to […]
WB552: Random DataPower Thoughts Part 10
AAA: Authentication, Authorization and Auditing Authentication can occur without the use of external servers: AAA file, LTPA and a Validation credential object, SAML token (?). Can use the external Systems: LDAP, SAML, Tivoli, RADIUS When hitting a webpage, a browser artifact on a third party server can be pointed to embedded in the URL of […]
WB552: Random DataPower Thoughts Part 9
XML Virus scanning uses a filter action sheet: store://Virus-ScanAttachment.xsl. This transform needs to be modified to include the URL of your ICAP server Dictionary Attacks Protection uses count monitoring. SQL injection Protection uses the store://SQL-Injection-Filter.xsl transformation.
DataPower: Can A Match Action Accept Multiple URLs?
I have a match action which should accept /encrypt and /encrypt_fl . Could I have both of these specified in a single match action? When I tried it, I got a datapower error with the box unable to match. Not sure if this is user-error or what, but I thought I’d give a heads up […]
WB552: Random DataPower Thoughts Part 8
SSL: Message Confidentiality, Message Integrity and Non-Repudiation Server always authenticates to the client. Client optionally authenticates to the server. During an SSL handshake: Negotiate the level of SSL, decide on cipher suite, authenticate the server, build a secret key to be used for the session. SSL hello contains list of Cipher Suites. Server responds with […]
WB552: Random DataPower Thoughts Part 7
SSL Connections need Validation or Identification credentials based on which side of the conversation (client or server) the datapower box is. Nonrepudiation: How do you knowwho the party on the other end is? Signature: Encrypt a message with a private key, decrypt with the public key. This allows the receiver to verify the sender. Only […]
WB552: Random DataPower Thoughts Part 6
Always check the default system log when an error is first encountered. Audit log only occurs on the default domain. Captured IP packets are stored in pcap format. Need a tool to explore the data such as ethereal. The packet capture file is in the temporary directory. Probes and debug level logging will create a […]
WB552: Random DataPower Thoughts Part 5
Pass-thru: Traffic is passed without execution of the service policy. XML: Check for well-formed XML SOAP: Checked for SOAP Message validity. Non-XML: Treated as a binary and the service policy is executed. Service Level Monitors need a WSDL file to be defined. The validate action only accepts a single XSD definition or WSDL file. The […]
UPDATE: WebSphere Adapter for JDBC: Superfluous RecordNotFound Exceptions
A while ago, I posted about the WebSphere Adapter for JDBC always writing an exception to the System.out when a record could not be found. At the time, we were being told that it was not something that would be fixed in the 6.x timeframe. Suddenly, there has been a change of heart from IBM […]
WB552: Random DataPower Thoughts Part 4
XML Firewall is a superset of the XSL Proxy. Web Service proxy understands more of the requirements to be a web service than the XML Firewall which only treats data as XML documents. Web Service Proxy and Multi-Protocol Gateway are supersets of the XML Firewall. Neither suppors the loopback proxy. Web Application Firewall: Customized XML […]
WB552: Random DataPower Thoughts Part 3
“Root Certificates” are implicitly trusted. The lookup chain of certificates ends at a root cert. These are stored in the pubcert directory. sharedCert is where certificates that we share with other clients are located. When creating a domain, you should always include default as a visible domain. This allows access to the store:// file system […]
WB552: Local DataPower XI50 (Blue) Initial Configuration Issues
We’re stuck in the middle of a time-out as they configure the local datapower box for usage by the class. There was some mix-up and this wasn’t done before the class. All the material I’ve ever read says that setting up a new machine is pretty easy, but they’re been working on this for about […]