How essential is it to have WSAD to do develop for Websphere

[Yan Lee]

Hi all,
I am new to Webssphere and I have the following question.
How essential is it to have WSAD to do J2EE development for Websphere?
If I do not have WSAD, how else can I create the IBM specific bindings files?

I tried creating an sample app with 1 ejb and creating the bindings was a nightmare.

Thanks for the help.

[Scott Selikoff]

I think it very much depends on the number of developers you have.

First off, you can program for WAS without WSAD, in many ways I strongly recommend it. At the very least you'll avoid a lot of headaches and configuration/install errors that come with WSAD, as well as it forces you to create build scripts early on (something very very very useful to have in the long run)

Where you're going to hit headaches, as I think you all ready know, is in those WebSphere specific bindings files, although I know groups programming purely with Eclipse that have gotten around it. I think it just matters how good your build/install scripts are. If you install items as an EAR into the server, WebSphere will ask that you fill in the missing pieces during the install. You need to learn Jacl though to write good install scripts.

So, if you have a small number of developers this is easy, but larger numbers requires more developer education and is where WSAD would win out.
[ November 04, 2005: Message edited by: Scott Selikoff ]

[Yan Lee]

Hi Scott,
Thanks for your response. Do you mean create the bindings files manually without using any tools?

Can you give me some guidlines for creating the bindings files without using WSAD (if you know of any).

Any
[1] links
[2] books
[3] reference to tools


would be great.


Thanks.

[Scott Selikoff]

I think you can create many of them via Jacl scripting, ergo WebSphere will insert them depending on your insertion parameters. But I haven't developed without WSAD, so I can't say for sure. There's a ton of scripting info about WAS using jacl and other languages, I'd consult that first as a primer.

[Scott Selikoff]

By the way, for links, I like IBM's public help menus found at:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v5r1/index.jsp

or some variation (depending on your version of WAS).

I think the best advice I can offer is create a *VERY* simple EAR (with no IBM binding files) that contains a simple stateless session EJB which references a database. The EJB doesn't have to connect to a database, just declare the connection. Then using WSADMIN try writing a JACL script that installs the component to the server.

The best learning for a lot of this is doing your own examples. Once you're comfortable with the structure and fluent in the scripting language, you can move on to more complex situations.

[Yan Lee]

Hi Scott,
Thanks for the pointers. I am going to go through the link and try figure out how it can be done.

Thanks again.

[Jorge Ribeiro]

Hi,

With WAS 6.0, if you have a simple application, you can create a simple EAR file and deploy it using the Administrative Console. It will generate all the necessary binding files. Should your application be a bit more complex then the console will not be enough. You can always use the AST to assembly your EAR. But I find it very confusing. It's ok to build a hello world once in a while but not for production environments.
I'm not familiar with WSAD or with RAD but I was told that it is quite heavy (both in terms of required resources and in terms of $$$).
You have OptimalJ (http://www.compuware.com/products/optimalj/). It generates the binding files automatically (WAS 5.x and 6) and it allows you to deploy an application in WAS within the IDE.

Regards
Paulo