This post is mainly for people that had the pleasurable experience of using the WebSphere v3-v4 Admin Console. The nice thick client that required a surprisingly large and painful installation on any workstation from which you wanted to administer WebSphere. This post is for people that saw it, used it, and ran away never to look at WebSphere again.
It is a common critique of WebSphere that it is slow and unwieldy. Digging in a little bit, people are really talking about the admin console. And they’re talking about the beast that was the Admin Client installation.
When I was managing a WAS 4.0 installation not too long ago, firing up the admin console was a dreaded nightmarish experience. People scheduled change migrations so they wouldn’t be the one on duty. I personally chose to memorize the “wscp” command-line administration API rather than go through the pain of administering the servers through the admin console GUI. (As it turns out, this turned into a great way to increase quality through scripted common tasks. Talk about lemons into lemonade.)
Fast forward to today. The administration console is completely web-based. Everything you used to do, and a whole lot more, is now accessible from any browser. I was able to troubleshoot a web service configuration problem from my iphone while sitting in an airplane waiting for the rest of the passengers to board.
If you want to deploy an application, you have the choice of referencing a local EAR/WAR to upload, or an archive that’s already sitting on the server. Depending on your selection, the “browse…” button will open the correct navigation dialog. Developing and deploying from the Mac (with the help of IntelliJ) is no longer “crazy talk”.
Managing a server from the old console was just downright angering at times. There were times when I would click a button and wait twenty minutes for a response, only to find out that one of the parameters or permissions was incorrect. The new admin console now spits out clear messages at each step of every task. Additionally, most input parameters are either drop-downs–no chance of a typo–or the value is validated as part of the “pre-process” step, prior to attempting to commit the change to the server(s).
The commit of changes is also improved. Rather than slogging through a number of database commits, the submitted change is stored as XML. The XML file is verified for consistency and then the changes are applied in bulk to the destination servers.
Server adminstration is never going to be (for me) a “joyful” experience, but it is now as expected. The experience is quick and intuitive. The interface exposes pretty much all of the Application Server nooks and crannies.
Command-line black magic is no longer required, although you could easily get hooked on the overhauled scripting interface. I’ll go over that in another post. Then you can decide for yourself.
In the meantime, if you haven’t Seen WebSphere Lately, then you owe it to yourself and your employer’s shareholders to take another look.
About HyperProductive:
HyperProductive is a Cleveland based Custom Software Development Company and Advanced IBM® Business Partner. We hold multiple Certifications with respect to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Business Intelligence (BI).
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