WebSphere Product Objectives


WebSphere Application Server has evolved to where it is today because of a few basic product objectives and goals:

  • Provide a platform for enterprise computing

  • Provide a platform for innovation

  • Enable application developers to focus on building applications, not infrastructure

  • Establish and maintain standards leadership

  • Provide a flexible set of product configuration options

The first WebSphere product objective is to provide the platform from which we can really observe and realize the fusion of the web computing world with that of the core enterprise computing world. Properly combining these competencies can provide significant competitive advantage in the marketplace. This is a foundational role, if ever there were one, in the world of middleware and software in general. This objective helps to establish WebSphere as the platform for enterprise computing.

While being a stable and reliable platform from which a company can run the business is important and primary, WebSphere also serves as a platform for innovation. WebSphere is a modern software engineering platform. WebSphere got here by introducing new technologies in ways that were usable, consumable, and palatable to large and small organizations trying to solve business problems. For example, WebSphere has recently begun introducing web services to a heavily J2EE-based environment. The presentation of this implementation has been done in a way that web services are easily adopted and leveraged. There is no leap of faith or step increase in skill requirements to adopt and leverage the new things in a given version of WebSphere.

Innovation is also demonstrated by the Enterprise Edition of the WebSphere Application Server. This package contains a couple of key categories of function. First, there are those functions that extend the programming model available in J2EE and web services. These new interfaces are intended to enable developers to easily solve the more complex problems that are bubbling to the top of lists across the world. These new interfaces are previews of the interfaces that will emerge in future versions of J2EE. Activity Service (JSR-95), WorkArea (JSR-149), and Internationalization Service (JSR-150) are Enterprise Edition programming extensions that really do provide tomorrow's standards today.

This innovation comes in a production-ready platform, so not only are the new capabilities available, but they are ready for production use. A second set of capabilities in the Extended Deployment offering, introduced in WebSphere 5.0, also represent innovation. This set, often referred to as "qualities of service", is provided to deliver WebSphere applications into complex and dynamic environments. These innovations and features do not affect the application programming interfaces, but focus on ensuring that large-scale deployments of applications can be successful in a variety of complex environments.

The third objective of WebSphere that lives in the hearts and minds of the engineering team revolves around the goals of middleware. The objective of WebSphere and perhaps the ongoing quest is to let application developers get back to building applications instead of middleware. The types of applications being built today are increasingly more functional, and thus more complex. It is the job of middleware to keep providing services and capabilities that let the developers build applications, rather than generic middleware that applications are constructed on.

As an example, there has been a perceived need for additional synergy between the synchronous invocation model and the asynchronous model of computing. It is increasingly the case that applications need a combination of both of these programming styles in a single solution. WebSphere Application Server adds some new capabilities in this area in version 5.0 to further encapsulate the differences in the models as they are presented in the application server, while still making these architectural patterns available in the application server. There is also an evolving component model in the form of EJBs that again provides additional abstractions to the application builder and implies the need for more run time capabilities.

Establishing a platform certainly includes focus on the objectives already described. However, establishing a platform also means establishing and maintaining leadership in standards. This is the fourth product objective for WebSphere Application Server. The J2EE standard, the evolving web services standards, the CORBA standards, and many others are of ongoing interest to WebSphere as a product and to WebSphere as a platform. Not only will WebSphere continue to introduce standards and contribute to the ongoing standards definition activity, but the goal is now to be able to deliver early implementations of these standards, and most importantly be persistent in delivering compliant, robust, scalable, and reliable implementations of those standards.

J2EE 1.3 is a perfect example of the kind of leadership that is important from a WebSphere perspective. The contribution of the IBM team during the formation of the J2EE 1.3 components is significant. WebSphere architects were in on the ground floor of J2EE 1.3 highlights, such as EJB 2.0 CMP support and EJB 2.0 message-driven beans support. Through the timely introduction of WebSphere Technology for Developers version 5.0, WebSphere demonstrated early implementations of the standards by becoming the first major run time vendor to be certified. Through the introduction of WebSphere Application Server version 5.0 offerings, the J2EE 1.3 loop is being "closed" by delivering run time implementations of the standard across a variety of platforms that can enable large-scale production usage of these standards.

A final product objective focuses on the product packaging and organization of capabilities into the various WebSphere Application Server editions. While the various configurations of WebSphere have different purposes and function, consistency and structure allows customers to easily upgrade from one edition to another.

This theme is often referred to by the engineering team as the "pay as you go" principle of WebSphere. This principle states that any additional development and management complexity, targeted at complex and large-scale environments, must not be observable until the capability is required. This means that WebSphere does not overwhelm developers starting out with simple applications on simple topologies. This also, however, does mean that WebSphere is customized and specifically architectured for a large variety of complex environments.




Professional IBM WebSphere 5. 0 Applicationa Server
Professional IBM WebSphere 5. 0 Applicationa Server
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2001
Pages: 135

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