Large files and WebSphere technologies

My friend and colleague Ben Thompson has been writing again – his latest developerWorks article Handling large files with WebSphere Transformation Extender has just been published. It describes a useful technique where a WTX map can be used to split a large file into multiple MQ messages each containing a single transaction, using the group header fields to keep the transactions together. Worth a read if you are interesting in processing these kinds of files.

Technorati tags: WebSphere, WTX, WebSphere Transformation Extender, MQ, WebSphere MQ, WMQ, files, developerWorks, Ben Thompson

Doing stuff with the WMQ command line

I just posted the first in a small series of entries about what you can do with the WebSphere MQ command program (runmqsc) over on the Hursley on WebSphere MQ blog.

Technorati tags: WebSphere MQ, runmqsc, middleware, messaging, IBM

Automating WebSphere Message Broker deployment

Back to a topic related to my day job (!).

During the past few years I’ve come across a number of instances where customers have wanted to script the build and deployment of WebSphere Message Broker solutions. I’ve actually spoken about this a few times at conferences (an example presentation is available on my Writings page). The most common approach that customers have adopted has been to use Ant to tie in with the rest of their application build processes.

In an earlier developerWorks article, I included an example plugin node that could invoke an Ant task. There should be a build.xml file included with the sample code for this article that could help you to get started. I’ve also helped customers to write their own automated build and deployment processes.

Now, a new developerWorks article from Zhongming Chen, Ida Leung and Dave Spriet covers the use of Ant to drive the mqsicreatebar command for scripting the creation of broker archives. It’s a great article and well worth a look.

This isn’t the end of the story. Often, the overall process will also include checking out of source control, apply version tags, and deploying the BAR file. However, this article introduces the topic and should be a good starting point. You could also use the Configuration Manager Proxy API to control other broker tasks, as Matt Lucas describes in another developerWorks article.

Incidentally, if you want to know more about Ant, I personally really like the book Java Development with Ant by Erik Hatcher and Steve Loughran.

Technorati tags: developerworks, WebSphere Message Broker, Ant, Java, broker, IBM

Hostnames and MQ Explorer

I haven’t blogged about my day job for a while, but an interesting technical issue came up today.

A customer was trying to add a new queue manager to MQ Explorer. However, they could not enter the hostname into the relevant field in the GUI.

It turned out that the hostname had_an_underscore character in it. The entry field in MQ Explorer prevents the user from entering this character.

This restriction makes sense. As per several RFCs (RFC952, RFC1035, RFC1178) and the Wikipedia entry on hostnames, underscores_are_not_valid characters in hostnames.

… hostname labels can only be made up of the ASCII letters ‘a’ through ‘z’ (case-insensitive), the digits ‘0′ through ‘9′, and the hyphen. Labels can not start nor end with a hyphen. Special characters other than the hyphen (and the dot between labels) are not allowed, although they are sometimes used anyway. Underscore characters are commonly used by Windows systems but according to RFC 952 they are not allowed…

So, now you know.

A solution could be to reference the IP address of the queue manager in question, or possibly to alias the hostname in the hosts file so that it does not contain underscores. Note that I have not tested the latter solution, but it should work.

Technorati tags: MQ, IBM, WebSphere MQ, WMQ, MQ Explorer, GUI, hostname, RFC, IP address

WSTC 2007 – broker and Java

I missed part of Peter Crocker’s session on Advanced Java Topics in WMB v6 yesterday, but when I did manage to get in there, I learned a few useful snippets. Essentially this was an update of his talk from last year, and riffed off of his developerWorks article on the use of Java in Message Broker.

A few of the notes I made:

• although the product ships a sample JavaCompute node that calls a Google API, Google themselves have now withdrawn the API, so the sample doesn’t work
• it is important to be careful with the use of XPath… for example, try to avoid using the // selector as it is usually not the most performant way to select a message element. There should be some articles around on XPath, I need to look up some useful references.
• The latest fixpack enables Java code in a JavaCompute node to propagate to a label in the flow.

Useful stuff to be aware of!

Technorati tags: WebSphere Message Broker, Java, wstc, wstc2007, Peter Crocker

WSTC, day two: doing the Dojo

Using the boring title before Dave Currie can use it…

When I come out to a WebSphere conference I’m always looking to do something a little different. As Dave mentioned in his post yesterday, there’s a lot of talk and coverage about Web 2.0, AJAX, JSON and so forth. So, for the most part, today I’ve been looking at technologies such as Dojo. Very neat stuff. I had somehow missed the announcement of IBM’s commitment to Dojo last summer, but it is nice to know that we are involved.

The concept is that Javascript is pretty hard to code, even with tools like Firebug (which I showed to a colleague today, who promptly wrote it down and decided that he needed it). Dojo and the other frameworks like Zimbra and Rico are aiming to ease the pain by providing a DHTML toolkit written in Javascript. It’s pretty cool – I liked the publish/subscribe paradigm that enabled widgets to talk to one another.

As well as all of the AJAX web development stuff, I’ve also spent time on Message Broker and how things are developing there. My own presentation on file handling in Broker is tomorrow. For the last session today, I also popped into a discussion about what was new in Rational Application Developer version 7 – I hadn’t been aware of some of the performance, web application development and other enhancements, so that was a useful session.

Technorati Tags: conference, Dojo, IBM, AJAX, Web 2.0, WebSphere, WebSphere Message Broker, wstc, wstc2007

Travel plans

I’ve been quiet and I’ve been on the road (although like many people, I’m twittering wildly).

• Last week I was in Sheffield.
• This week I am staying in Edinburgh, working with a customer in Scotland. My first time stopping in the city, and it is lovely – I only wish I had a camera with me.
• On Friday night I’ll be at Minibar in London. Hope to meet some of my blog and Twitter contacts there.
• From Saturday I will be in dazzling Las Vegas, attending and speaking at the WebSphere Services Technical Conference[1], an internal IBM event. I’ll be speaking on File Handling Choices in WebSphere Message Broker v6 on Wednesday afternoon, and generally enjoying the huge opportunities to learn from my peers for the rest of the week. I had a great time at the event last year, and this will be a good chance to get together with colleagues again, so I’m looking forward to it. I’ll try to blog the event, and suggest a tag of wstc2007 for other attendees who might want to follow suit.
• On my return, I’ll be back here in Edinburgh for most of May.

Thanks to Roo, I’m now also starting to play with Dopplr. It’s a remarkably simple idea – mark the dates when you’ll be in a particular place and work out when contacts might be in that same location. In true Web 2.0 style it has the usual feeds, tagging, Google Maps mashup, etc.. Looks very useful. The information is limited to you and the group of trusted other travellers, and it is invite-only (and I’m currently out of invites), but I think this “trusted circle” idea is probably a sound one. Looking forward to seeing how the service develops.

[1] aka “webspherepalooza”… that is, if you are Kelly…

Technorati tags: travel, Dopplr, Web 2.0, social software, Twitter, work, Edinburgh, Las Vegas, WebSphere Services Technical Conference, wstc2007, minibar

New Redbooks: SOA, WMB, WESB, DataPower, WSRR

Chris has already reported this over at SOA Tips’n'Tricks: a new Redbook in the Patterns for e-business series is SOA Design using WebSphere Message Broker and WebSphere ESB (I notice that WebSphere DataPower also gets a chapter or two). I’m fortunate enough to work in the same team as one of the authors, Kim Clark – one of the worldwide experts on SOA design and implementation. The book is currently in draft, but I’ll be checking it out anyway.

If you are familiar with WebSphere Application Server then you will no doubt know that the Handbooks are some of the key books to read. There’s now also a WebSphere Service Registry and Repository Handbook, and I’m sure this is going to be just as valuable as the other handbooks we publish.

Technorati Tags: books, DataPower, ESB, IBM, Kim Clark, redbooks, SOA, WebSphere, WebSphere DataPower, WebSphere ESB, WebSphere Message Broker, WebSphere Service Registry and Repository, WESB, WMB, WSRR

End of a (shortish) era

Just finished working on what was, for me, a relatively long client engagement – 9 months in London. It was a very interesting piece of work building an ESB using WebSphere Message Broker, WebSphere MQ, WebSphere Process Server, and adapters, all running on Sun Solaris. I had the opportunity to work with a cool team, including individuals from other vendors, and I learned a lot – and equally, I hope that others were able to learn from me, since that is what I was there for! Good luck to the team.

Pastures new from tomorrow – it looks to be a busy month, with Blue Fusion coming up too. I’ll be taking some time out in March as well.

I’ll also miss my daily Starbucks – the staff were very friendly – hope to drop back in and say hello to them in the future.

Technorati tags: WebSphere Message Broker, WebSphere Process Server, Solaris, WebSphere MQ, work, Starbucks, Blue Fusion, IBM, SOA, ESB

Hursley blogs on WMQ

Very glad to see that Dale has got the new blog up-and-running. A Hursley View on WMQ aims to provide an additional communications channel from the development team in the labs (IBM Hursley near Winchester in the UK, in the case of WebSphere MQ). Look out for tips, news on tools, and posts about “how it works”.

It is important to note that the blog doesn’t replace the existing newsgroups or unofficial third-party discussion sites, and it also doesn’t replace the formal product support process. However, I think it is going to be interesting to watch – there are already some interesting posts up which cover details that I was not aware of.

I’ve added it to my blogroll and feedreader already. If you’re a techie like me and work with WebSphere MQ, you should do the same.

Technorati tags: IBM, Hursley, WebSphere MQ, WMQ, messaging, developers, Dale Lane, middleware

More on WMB Toolkit 6.0.2

I’ve just added the first of a short series of posts on the new WebSphere Message Broker Toolkit to the SOA Tips’n'Tricks blog.

WMB Toolkit 6.0.2

Several people have already mentioned the pre-Christmas release of WebSphere Process Server, WebSphere ESB and WebSphere Integration Developer 6.0.2.

There was another 6.0.2 release at the same time, too – the latest version of the WebSphere Message Broker toolkit (NB the runtime is currently at 6.0.0.3, which was released a while back). I installed it via the Rational Product Updater.

I hope to add some thoughts on why you should care about the 6.0.2 toolkit release to the SOA Tips’n'Tricks blog over the coming weeks, so make sure that you’re subscribed to the feed – and check out my recent post about Java 5 in WMB v6

Technorati tags: WMB, WebSphere, WebSphere Message Broker, toolkit, update, ESB, SOA