From DeveloperWorks, Versioning business processes and human tasks in WebSphere Process Server

This article shows you how to build versions of business processes and human tasks that are based on best practices in IBM WebSphere Integration Developer V6.1 and WebSphere Process Server V6.1.

Versioning of a Business Process is the most important feature of the BPEL Container, and likely the feature you know the least about. The choices you make in how to invoke parent-child processes define the way they behave when the BPEL templates are updated. If you wire them together in the assembly editor, then the two specific versions of the template are bound together forever. Parent process A v1.0 will always use Child Process B v1.0. If child B 2.0 is deployed, A will continue to use 1.0. Not exactly the behavior you would expect. This article defines the way that the BPEL engine resolves versions and it should be required reading.

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• BPEL Business Process Versioning - Infocenter Link
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From DeveloperWorks, Seamless access to SAP services using IBM WebSphere integration tools

This article shows you how to design, develop, configure, deploy, and test an end-to-end purchase order scenario using WebSphere Process Server, WebSphere Adapters, and SAP. You also learn how to create applications that Web enable SAP services and help in the analysis, design, and implementation of similar integration applications.

A nice scenario developed by IBM to show off how to use the WebSphere Adapter for SAP, WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Integration Developer.

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• Whats new in WID/WPS v6.1

Geez, I don’t know how I missed this one.  ILOG is a business rules engine that can already integrate with WebSphere Process Server so this acquisition makes sense. It’s better than the one bundled with the product and used by more companies.

Anyway, I’ll defer to the bloggers of the world who have more industry insight than I to explain this acquisitions relevance:

•  James Taylor at SmartEnoughSystems
• Tony Baer at OnStrategies Perspectives

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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.

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From DeveloperWorks, What’s new in WebSphere Integration Developer V6.1.2

IBM WebSphere Integration Developer is a powerful tool used by integration developers in the assemble phase of the SOA lifecycle. You can create, test, and debug artifacts for WebSphere Process Server, including WS-BPEL processes and state machines, human tasks, business rules, SCA assembly diagrams, and more. This article examines the features new to WebSphere Integration Developer V6.1.2. Basic knowledge of WebSphere Integration Developer is required for this article.

...and the corresponding tooling What's new.

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• Versioning business processes and human tasks in WebSphere Process Server
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I did not realize that the default log size of the test server installation of WebSphere Process Server inside of WebSphere Integration Developer was so small. It’s a single one megabyte file. This means that I don’t have all the spring exceptions that I thought I did.

I suggest anyone who wants to be able to have a log file thats worth anything go and increase these defaults. I use five 20MB files.

You can change it from the admin console via Logging and Tracing > server1 > JVM Logs.

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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.

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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.

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In v6.1 you now use the installation manager to update WID to the various fixpacks.

I had a very old install of v6.1 GM in a VM that I started up and couldn’t seem to update. I was getting the message “No updates found.”. Then I realized that the VM’s network card was set to ‘Host Only’, a private network.

Then I attempted to update but got an error dialog complaining about something to do with the installation manager. I closed the install manager and restarted. Sure enough, there was an update for it. I installed the update and now have installed v6.1.2.

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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.

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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 of locks to rows on the SQL Server table. Eventually, SQL Server escalation would kick in and the entire table would lock. This would preclude other users of the database from being able to read/insert data.

Upon inspection of the offending process, we found that a short running process contained three nested loops which performed multiple invocations against the SQL server database. On the original test data, there weren’t enough nested objects created to determine if a large object could complete within 120s.

In addition, by default in WebSphere Application Server there are 10 activation specs that can process messages from a queue in parallel. This means that you need to ensure thete are enough database connections to service the requests.

Our solution to the problem was to break the transaction down into smaller parts and transmit the parts via JMS queues to new modules. A one-way invocation does not require the source bpel to block for a response, so it is able to now complete within the transaction timeout boundary.

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• WebSphere Process Server v6.1 API

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.

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From DeveloperWorks, Taking component testing to the next level in WebSphere Integration Developer

Test case support, a new feature of WebSphere Integration Developer V6.1, lets you create a test suite, a collection of test cases. The test client allows you to test each component in isolation or as part of the whole module, or system of modules. You can run the suites of test cases at any time to show you whether your latest changes cause tests to fail.

Written by my ex-colleagues on the Integration Test Client Team so naturally it must be one of the best articles on developerWorks.

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From DeveloperWorks, WebSphere Business Integration V6.1 Performance Tuning

Draft Redpaper, last updated: Mon, 9 Jun 2008 - Learn valuable tips for tuning - Get the latest best practices - Try the example settings This IBM® Redpaper was produced by the IBM WebSphere® Process Server, WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus, WebSphere Adapters, and WebSphere Business Monitor performance teams in Austin Texas, Böblingen Germany, and Hursley England.

This book attacks performance on three levels, Architecture, Developerment and Performance Tuning. All key issues that need to be considered to create systems that can meet Service Level Agreements (SLA). I'm happy to see this kind of information get published so close to the public release of a version.

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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 and we have been given a patch that will remove this exception from the log.

Go figure. I guess the moral of the story is that you need to keep pressing IBM to fix problems even when they just involve the removal of a System.out.println(…).

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