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.

Related Posts

• WebSphere Application Server: High Availability to JMS Clients?
• WebSphere Integration Developer & WebSphere Process Server v6.1.2 released
• Web services with SOAP/JMS in IBM WebSphere Process Server
• Make SOA real with IBM WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus and IBM WebSphere DataPower SOA Appliances
• WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus – Mediation Flow Component: No Refactoring for WSDL Faults

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.

Related Posts

• Managing tasks and business processes using WebSphere Business Space
• Versioning business processes and human tasks in WebSphere Process Server
• WebSphere Business Process Management V6.1.2 Production Topologies
• What’s new in WebSphere Integration Developer V6.2
• Building clustered topologies in WebSphere Process Server V6.1

If you are looking at WebSphere Process Server Disaster Recovery, you should know that the UUID’s that uniquely identify a server in both the Messaging Engine Database and the transaction log are unique for that particular installation. Running the equivalent installation commands on the restored system will not generate a server with the same id. This implies that you need to ensure your server installation (and profile) itself is backed up should restoration be needed in the future.

Also, as far as I know, there is no way to manually edit the UUID of a server. If you don’t keep a backup of the install, disaster recovery will be more difficult than expected and you may end up losing transactions.

Related Posts

• WebSphere Process Server Failed Event Manager: “The Recovery Sub-system is disabled.”
• Asynchronous replication of WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus for disaster recovery environments
• Uninstalling or updating the WebSphere V6.1 test environment using Installation Manager
• IBM Installation Manager Tip: Don’t “Save Files For Rollback”
• Migration to WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Enterprise Bus 6.2 – Mandatory reading

If you have a 6.1.x environment and are thinking about upgrading to 6.2, then you must read:

Migration to WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Enterprise Bus 6.2 – Mandatory reading

WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus version 6.2 provide major functional improvements over previous versions, and in order to take advantage of these new features while preserving your existing applications and profile configuration you must migrate to version 6.2 of the product. WebSphere Process Server 6.2 is not a refresh pack or an upgrade version. Version 6.2 must be installed alongside the older version of the product. To facilitate your migration process, WebSphere Process Server 6.2 provides improved version-to-version migration utilities to help you migrate your existing applications and profile configuration information.

Related Posts

• Migrating to WebSphere Process Server V6.2
• Migrating WebSphere Business Integration Server Foundation to WebSphere Process Server V6.2 & Best Practices
• Upgrading WebSphere Application Servers – Update the Deployment Manager First!
• Versioning business processes and human tasks in WebSphere Process Server
• BPEL Business Process Versioning – Infocenter Link

From DeveloperWorks, Establish a policy-driven SOA using WebSphere Service Registry and Repository and WebSphere ESB

The WS-Policy specification provides a simple language for expressing policies supported by Web services. IBM WebSphere Service Registry and Repository supports loading, changing, and retrieving policy documents, and also supports using policy attachments to link a given policy with a service. This can then be used by a run time component, like an Enterprise Service Bus, to retrieve defined policies for a particular service or operation and act accordingly. This article shows how you can utilize standard WS-Policy documents stored in a registry to impact run time behavior in an ESB -- and then change that behavior on the fly with no code changes or redeployment. (IBM WebSphere Developer Technical Journal)

An example of invoking WSRR API from a WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus medation module to use WS-Policy.

Related Posts

• Using DataPower SOA Appliances to query WebSphere Service Registry and Repository
• Create classification taxonomies programmatically in IBM WebSphere Service Registry and Repository
• Hello World: WebSphere Service Registry and Repository
• WebSphere Business Services Fabric V6.1.2: Integrating with WebSphere Service Registry and Repository
• WebSphere Adapter for JDBC: Superfluous RecordNotFound Exceptions

Planning that new WebSphere Process Server v6.0 GA production deployment? I suggest you check out the End Of Service Dates published by IBM for your versions to ensure that you aren’t painting yourself into a corner before you even start. Beware clicking that last link, it’s a poorly created web page with every single IBM product and revision; the worlds longest HTML ever.

End of Marketing: IBM stops actively selling it to customers

End of Support: IBM stops answering the phone when you call to complain about it. Of course, you can always enter into an extended contract to continue support of mission critical installations.

Quick links:

WebSphere

WebSphere Integration Developer

I tried to get other quick links but it was too frustrating with all the product versions inlined together.

Related Posts

• javax.xml.bind.JAXBException: Unable to locate jaxb.properties for package {0}
• WebSphere Process Server Discussions
• IBM APAR PK49507: PROFILE RECREATION Required!
• Versioning business processes and human tasks in WebSphere Process Server
• WebSphere Application Server: Non-Deterministic Error when configuring Default Messaging Activation Specs

From DeveloperWorks, What’s new in WebSphere Process Server V6.1.2

IBM WebSphere Process Server is a powerful runtime engine that can be used as the heart of a Service Oriented Architecture. It is built on WebSphere Application Server, and includes WebSphere ESB, enabling you to run integration modules created with WebSphere Application Developer, mediation modules, and J2EE applications. This article examines the features new to WebSphere Process Server V6.1.2. Basic knowledge of WebSphere Process Server is required for this article.

Goes a step beyond the lis of features that I posted earlier with some user interface screenshots.

Related Posts

• What’s new in WebSphere Integration Developer V6.1.2
• What’s new in IBM WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus V6.1
• Datapower and Netegrity Siteminder Integration
• What’s new in WebSphere Application Server V7
• What’s new in WebSphere Integration Developer V6.2

From DeveloperWorks: Configuring IBM WebSphere Process Server V6.1 with an Oracle Database

Redpaper, published: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 This IBM® Redpaper publication explains how to configure IBM WebSphere® Process Server V6.1 to work with an Oracle® database.

There's always a thin amount of documentation on integrating IBM products with non-DB2 databases. Here is a redpaper on using Oracle for WebSphere Process Server.

Related Posts

• Oracle SOA Suite 11g – Hello Competition!
• Integrating Oracle BPEL with an HTTP (REST) Service
• Common Event Infrastructure API and usage documentation
• IBM Redbooks: WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Integration Developer
• WebSphere Process Server and RPC/Literal Web Services: Beware Messages defined by ‘type’ instead of ‘element’.

The ability to roll back a update is a nifty idea. The theory is that you installed something that broke your platform. You can now just ‘undo’ the install.

In practice, it’s a feature that next to nobody uses. It requires a deep-faith in the programmers of the rollback logic to return the system to it’s initial state. If they missed a single file or java class, it could land up affecting the entire system. The user is then left with a question “Is the environment broken or is there a bug in the platform?”. In order to resolve this question, they will uninstall and re-install the product.

Therefore, if you know that you will never bother to rollback, why are you dedicating disk space for the installation manager to rollback? Yup, that’s the default setting. Every old version of every plugin in every product you’ve ever installed is still there needlessly. For people like me who work in virtual machines, disk space is precious.

You can turn this open off by clicking File -> Preferences.

You can turn off the check box to preclude future saving. You can also click the Delete saved Files button to remove any current old versions.

Before I clicked the button, it told me I had 1.6G of files saved.

Related Posts

• IBM Software Support Lifecycle – General Availability, End Of Marketing, End of Support Dates
• SCA, BPEL, Websphere Adapter for JDBC and Transactionality
• WB552: Random DataPower Thoughts Part 3
• IBM Certification Tests
• Tip: Redeploying your modules from WID

I started my update from 6.1 to 6.1.2 and the process took two hours (not including download times).  That’s unacceptable. Most of the time was spent installing the WebSphere Process Server fixes.

The UI appeared frozen for about an hour (still responsive, just that the progress bar didn’t move). When I jumped down to the logs, I saw that it was reporting it’s status properly 10%.. 20%. I have no idea why this information isn’t reflected back into the UI.

There’s no way a complete User-centered design cycle was completed on this installer. At the end of the day, I don’t really mind that it took two hours (a warning would be nice). But I absolutely hate it when I’m left wondering if my installer is dead or hung and if I should kill it for an hour.

Related Posts

• Venting some WebSphere Integration Developer Steam
• Upgrading WebSphere Integration Developer v6.1 – Installation Manager
• Getting Started with WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus Part 3: Runtime
• Does Commerical Enterprise Software Suck?
• Avoid the WebSphere Integration Developer Debugger

Cheers to David Currie for pointing out that while the WebSphere Integration Developer user interface allows you to specify an event sequencing qualifier inside a mediation module, if you attempt to deploy the solution to an WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus Server, you’ll get exceptions.

Interestingly enough, if you deploy the same Mediation Module to WebSphere Process Server, then it will work because Process Server is a superset of WESB and has the required runtime.

I highly doubt that this was an intentional UI design decision in WID.

Related Posts

• “Top Best Practices for Implementing WPS Solutions”
• BPEL or ESB: Which should you use?
• WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus – Mediation Flow Component: No Refactoring for WSDL Faults
• What’s new in IBM WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus V6.1
• What’s new in WebSphere Process Server V6.1.2

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 prebuilt human tasks
• Enhanced flexibility for modifying the flow of in-flight process instances with the ability to skip activities, as well as to jump forward and backward between activities
• Enhanced trace to capture what is flowing through the server at runtime for later display in the WebSphere Integration Developer Integrated Test Client with the full power of the test client for problem determination and analysis of application logic
• Necessary database scripts for creating database instances on remote servers now available from the installation media directly, eliminating the need to install WebSphere Process Server to gain access to the scripts
• Adds new format support for the following additional message formats:
  • Delimited and full support for Comma Separated Values (CSV)
  • Fixed-width format
  • JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)

WebSphere Integration Developer

• Enhances visual tracing by showing more fine-grained events and a visual execution path within the implementation when testing state machines, processes, and mediation flows.
• Delivers a new capability for testing XML maps in isolation, using the local built-in XSLT engine for a rapid iterative development experience. Can also set breakpoints and debug XML maps locally using the Test client.
• Improved support for arrays in the XML map editor.
• Shows which files are pending on a publish to a server operation.
• Supports refactoring of interface parameter names.
• Helps improve traceability of human tasks and business rules. Supports the ability to compare and merge human task and business rule changes in a business process imported from WebSphere Business Modeler. Provides support for business process annotations from WebSphere Business Modeler.

WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus

• Improved error messages, logging, and First Failure Data Capture (FFDC) usage. FFDC can reduce defect resolution times and the number of times IBM Support asks a client to recreate a problem with different trace settings turned on.
• Adds support for manipulating MQCIH message headers for WebSphere MQ, which are exploited by the CICS bridge to enable interaction with CICS applications.

Related Posts

• What’s new in WebSphere Integration Developer V6.2
• Whats new in WID/WPS v6.1
• What’s new in WebSphere Integration Developer V6.1.2
• WebSphere Process Server Discussions
• Taking component testing to the next level in WebSphere Integration Developer

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.

Related Posts

• WebSphere Adapter for JDBC: SetObjectKeys NullPointer Exception
• JDBC Adapter Export with events that comprise multiple rows
• WebSphere Adapter for JDBC Export – ‘InvalidVerbException’
• SCA, BPEL, Websphere Adapter for JDBC and Transactionality
• WebSphere Adapter for JDBC: Superfluous RecordNotFound Exceptions

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, we may see that the queue refuses to process any messages at all.
In this case, we have to look at the SIB Data store and run the following query:

select count(*) from sib000 where XID is not null

if you discover existing values in XID you should update XID field to null:

update sib000 set xid = null where xid is not null

This situation would only occur if the ‘tranlog’ on a server was unrecoverable and should not be considered a ‘normal’ step of server recovery or server startup.

Related Posts

• Event Sequencing Message Locking – Resolution!
• WebSphere Application Server: -recovery flag
• Tip: WebSphere Process Server – Do not delete the ‘tranlog’ on a production server
• ProcessTemplateNotFoundException: CWWBA0008E: Process template ‘myProcess, -valid_from_date-’ is not found
• Asynchronous SCA One-Way Operations And How To Recover

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 tranlog, you remove this information from process server’s memory. At development time, your transactions are transient, you don’t really care if they complete or not, a new one can be created at any time.

On a production server, though, each transaction should be considered an extremely precious resource that can’t be deleted. Therefore, the tip that some of us use to delete the tranlog should NEVER be done on a production server. Removing it may lead to an inconsistency in your production database which may be unrecoverable.

Related Posts

• WebSphere Application Server: -recovery flag
• WAS: Resolution to Messages in the SIB locked forever
• WebSphere Process Server Endurance
• SCA, BPEL, Websphere Adapter for JDBC and Transactionality
• BPEL: Beware the use of nested loops in a short running process