This is the course that I am attending this week. This will be nice as I’ll have a hardcopy of the course contents. Also, being able to go through the content slowly over a week with hands-on usage of the datapower box will be a huge bonus. When I was trying to learn the machine without  the help of the exercises, I was overwhelmed by the number of options available and unsure when to use what. So far, I see nine attendees in the room. Lower than the other two times I’ve been here (WebsSphere Application Server v6.1 admin had a maximum room of 20 and WebSphere Process Server was the same).

Additionally, for attending this course I have two certificates for free certification test (WebSphere 284 firmware v3.6.0 and WebSphere 289 v3.6.1) .

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Sometimes the stars just align perfectly. I’m trying to get my DataPower Certification and IBM’s business partner relations team is offering a free course on DataPower next week in Markham. It pays to be in a city with an IBM Office. I’ll be in attendance there and hopefully sitting in the room for 5 days will put me over the edge.

Naturally, I’ll try and blog it.

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I have a theory as to why I don’t see my mapped data objects in my result business object. I’ll give a write up once I figure out what’s going on. I was ready to point fingers all over the product stack, but it looks like (as always) the finger will end up on me, aka user error.

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Mapping logic between two business objects or the secret plans for the next Intel Processor?

Simply follow path ‘A’ from the Business Object on the left to the destination ‘B’ on the right. Pack a lunch, you may be there a while.

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It’s a Canadian holiday on Monday, so I’ll be back blogging on Tuesday. Cheers.

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From DeveloperWorks, The Support Authority: Leverage the advantages of IBM Software Premium Support Services

IBM provides a variety of self-help tools and other support resources to
help you maintain and troubleshoot systems that are based on WebSphere products. In
addition to these, IBM also provides three levels of Premium Support that can be
customized and added on to your Passport Advantage support agreement. This article
describes the advantages of IBM Software Premium Support and how these additional
services would impact your day-to-day operations. (IBM WebSphere Developer Technical Journal)

I can’t help but notice the similarities between my old SWAT Team job and this new Premium support concept. In the SWAT role, I was a developer from the development organization sent around to early adopters of WebSphere Integration Developer in order to help them get into production as smoothly as possible. This involved providing a single contact point back into the IBM hierarchy, managing their Problem Reports and guiding best practices.

This problem with SWAT was that it was the right role, but provided by the wrong organization. Development should be focused on developing products, not pro-bono consulting work. Now we see the “Premium Support” package arrives which uses ISSW consultants to basically do the same job that SWAT did but within the proper services organization. I’m sure it will as big a success as SWAT was.

But my issue with “Premium Support” is that the service they provide are all things that the pre-existing support channel should be doing. When a customer spends a few million dollars for software/support, is it really too much to ask to have a single point of contact inside the company? Someone who will champion your issues within the organization and provide regular feedback of their status.

My second concern with the Premium Support package is that it lands up providing even more incentive for IBM to cut testing cycles on product releases. Testing a product costs money. Billing a consultant generates money. It’s easy to see which one is preferable. If you can generate a large revenue stream from support contracts and numerous engagements for Premium Support at high billable rates, they can only be sustained by releasing poor products. A rock solid product running without issues doesn’t have Premium Support revenue streams: It’s not needed.

I’m also concerned what impact that this team will have with the long-term building of an external SOAcommunity. If customers can solve the issues on their own, why would they buy this services offering? Premium Support revenue will grow based on stifling the information that is released beyond the firewall.

The Premium Support product is an interesting concept that I’m sure some companies will get on-board with immediately, I’m just concerned about the long-term issues a team like this may cause.

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I will arrive from Las Vegas in the early monday morning red-eye, so don’t expect any updates from me today.

I am still working on writing up my notes from a very good WTSC2008 session about how to be an “excellent IT Architect” amongst some other goodies from Las Vegas.

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I wrote three certification tests:

1. Test 253, IBM WebSphere Application Server, Network Deployment
2. Test 142, XML 1.1 and Related Technologies
3. Test 664, SOA Fundamentals

Test 253, IBM WebSphere Application Server, Network Deployment

As I had mentioned before, I attended a WAS 6.1 Administration business partner course run out of the IBM Toronto Lab. I have a printed copy of the course and have spent the last month reading it off and on. I decided to attempt to write the certification. I thought that the test was pretty fair and I don’t remember anything note worthy about weird/unfair questions. The course was a very good match for the test.

Passing Score: 53%
Your Score: Pass - 61.11% (33 earned out of 54 possible)

Test 142, XML 1.1 and Related Technologies

Given that I’ve been working with XML for a long time, I figured I should be able to pass this one pretty easily. The test is focused on DTD & XSD definitions of XML. There are also questions along the lines of “Why is this XML bad” or “When to choose SAX over DOM for parsing”. There were some low-level technology questions too. Things like “How do you create an XML Reader” or “What jar do you need to put on the classpath to use XSLTC in Java 5?” (??). There were also some hardcore XSLT iterative data manipulation calls where you had to describe the output or error. I’d say you’ll have a better time with this certification if you are currently using SAX/DOM API to parse trees. I haven’t done that in a very long time.

Passing Score: 61%
Your Score: Pass – 61.22% (30 earned out of 49 possible)

Yes, I passed by %0.22.

Test 664, SOA Fundamentals

I wasn’t in the mood to write another difficult test (say WPS Admin). I noticed that 664 is a required test to obtain IBM Certified WebSphere Administrator status (I’m not sure about the exact term, but it’s the combination of 664 + 235 + WPS 094). This test was pretty easy if you have been working in the SOA space in any capacity. The key terms to remember is that SOA is all about business value and rapid responses to change. That theme was hammered in about 50% of the test. If you use common sense and understand things like Web Services and WSDL you should be fine.

Passing Score: 66%
Your Score: Pass - 77.78% (42 earned out of 54 possible)

So far so good. I will likely write Process Server certification today.

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I was recently asked about where to find resources on WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Integration Developer in order to pass certification tests 093 and 094. I responded to basically search developerworks for articles along with IBM RedBooks.

I didn’t really like responding without concrete links, so I did a little browsing of the site and found the following books. I’d recommend reading the latest books on the software, as a lot has changed since the 2005-product release days.

1. Technical Overview of WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Integration Developer, REDP-4041-00
   Redpapers, published 6 December 2005, Rating: (based on 14 reviews)
2. Getting Started with WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus V6, SG24-7212-00
   Redbooks, published 14 June 2006, last updated 14 June 2006, Rating: (based on 9 reviews)
3. Patterns: SOA Foundation – Business Process Management Scenario, SG24-7234-00
   Redbooks, published 8 August 2006, last updated 11 August 2006, Rating: (based on 10 reviews)
4. Human-Centric Business Process Management with WebSphere Process Server V6, SG24-7477-00
   Redbooks, published 15 October 2007, last updated 17 October 2007, Rating: (based on 6 reviews)
5. Getting Started with WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus Part 1: Development, SG24-7608-00
   Draft Redbooks, last update 18 April 2008
6. Patterns: Building Serial and Parallel Processes for IBM WebSphere Process Server V6, SG24-7205-00
   Redbooks, published 23 April 2006, last updated 25 April 2006, Rating: (based on 3 reviews)
7. A Simple Example: Using the WebSphere Adapter for Flat File, REDP-4235-00
   Redpapers, published 28 December 2006, Rating: (based on 3 reviews)
8. Business Process Management: Modeling through Monitoring Using WebSphere V6.0.2 Products, SG24-7148-01
   Redbooks, published 21 August 2007, Rating: (based on 8 reviews)
9. WebSphere Business Integration V6 Performance Tuning, REDP-4195-00
   Redpapers, published 26 September 2006, Rating: (based on 1 review)
10. Migrating WebSphere Business Integration Server Foundation to WebSphere Process Server & Best Practices, SG24-7416-00
    Draft Redbooks, last update 9 December 2007, Rating: (based on 2 reviews)
11. Getting Started with WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus Part 2: Scenario, SG24-7642-00
    Draft Redbooks, last update 18 April 2008
12. Patterns: SOA Foundation Service Connectivity Scenario, SG24-7228-00
    Redbooks, published 17 August 2006
13. WebSphere Adapter Development, SG24-6387-00
    Redbooks, published 20 June 2006, Rating: (based on 9 reviews)
14. Redbooks – Production Topologies for WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere ESB V6 2007-04-20

It’s a bit much to ask someone to read all of them, but the ones that actual focus on the product themselves instead of scenarios or patterns are probably the most useful in order to pass a test.

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Well I must say I was taken aback when I saw that that my SOA Jam ESB question was responded to by Steve Mills:

Steve Mills is a senior vice president and group executive, IBM Software Group. In this capacity he is responsible for directing the development, marketing, sales and support of IBM’s software portfolio. Mr. Mills is a member of IBM’s Operating Team, Performance Team, Values & Integration Team and the Asian Task Force.

It’s not everyday that you get someone at Steve’s level to respond to something you say. Of course, I’ll be right back in there with my rebuttal but this definitely made my day.

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If you are attending Impact 2008, don’t forget that you are allowed to write three IBM certification tests for free this week!

I’m a big fan of free, so I always max out my conference allotment. If you need some suggestions for tests, check out my previous entries about my impressions having written SOA Solution Designer, WebSphere Integration Developer and WebSphere Process Server.

I firmly believe that anybody attending this conference can pass the 664 and 667 tests on SOA. 664 titled SOA Fundamentals is something that most people will pass implicitly if they half-listened to any of the speakers this week. 667 titled Architectural Design of SOA Solutions is the 2007 revisement to 665 which I passed with no studying, again if you’ve actually implemented anything to do with SOA you should pass.

Happy Certing!

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The marketing says that it’s WebSphere’s 10th birthday on Tuesday. To celebrate, IBM is asking for revised lyrics to the well-known Birthday song. Never being one to pass up on a free chance at bizarre creativity, I’ve shilled-out and submitted:

WebSphere *IS* big blue
What Can it not Do?
We praise you, Dear WebSphere
Ten more years for you!

Thats the clean submitted one, I give you the tongue-in-cheek one:

WebSphere makes me blue
Ten years of stack spew
Fix my PMR, Please WebSphere?
"It will be in version 9.2"

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From the IBM Innov8 game. Premonition of the future? (Both sides??)

Damn, she stole my gimmick should I ever be back on the job market. I’m not sure if a panhandler should be dressed better than the people she’s begging from though. The collared shirt probably has to go.

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Sometimes you have to chuckle at the titles of PMRs. I came across this one today:

“Information not included in the user guide for IBM WebSphere Adapter for FTP V6.0.2”

Where they admit they forgot very minor details like the fact you have to create all the directories manually or the ftp location where inbound events will actually get picked up from.

More interesting, it looks like you can expect an outage once every four years:

The default parser provided by Commons Net API v1.4.1 fails to handle files with Feb 29 as the creation date.

and of course, you know when WebSphere Integration Developer tells you that it aborted something? Oh, you should just ignore that:

4. When using the enterprise service discovery wizard, the following informational message is displayed in the log: ‘Aborting DataBinding Generation type specified is not a DataBinding Generator: com.ibm.j2ca.ftp.FTPFileDataBinding’.
You can ignore this message and continue working.

If it’s an ignorable warning, why is it generated in the first place?

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Go figure,

I was googling for “WebSphere Process Server” and came across an AlphaWorks project:
SCA Component for Ruby with IBM WebSphere Process Server. Unlike the article that ‘integrated’ the two via Web Services, this project will give you the ability to run Ruby from inside a component.

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