Websphere 5.1, Servlet Engine, User Threads...

[Heath Lilley]

Hello all,
We are currently in the process of porting a legacy web application from a custom Java architecture to Struts/POJOs. We don't use any EJB's or webservices just Struts actions/forms, a basic DAO structure, and jsps. The old application, which was designed to run on WebSphere 3.5 has at the core of the app, a process that spawn n number of threads to select multiple from multiple transactional tables inside of a single Oracle database connection/session.

The issue is that now that we have moved to 5.1 I have been reading about how it is not good practice to use user created threads in WebSphere and am now not sure what to do. Currently, we get around a 50% processing time reduction for using the user threads. I have read about approaches using URL calls to have Websphere start the threads and about possibly using stored procedures to do the work minimizing the app server to database overhead. I was just curious if anyone has had any experience with this and/or might have an alternative approach or something.

Thanks.

[Zoran Djuric]

I have doubt to.

I have similar problem. I want to start my thread for socket listener from servlet engine and than use websphere datasource from it. I can do that but some warning messages appears on console:

> ConnectionMan W J2CA0075W: An active transaction should be present while processing method initializeForUOW.


Check this:
http://www.javaranch.com/newsletter/200403/AsynchronousProcessingFromServlets.html


According to a Technical note from WebSphere support "If a Servlet is spinning its own threads and accessing a database, the J2EE specification is not clear on this, so WebSphere Application Server 5.0 will allow it at this time. IBM is working with Sun to clarify this in the specification, so eventually (i.e. J2EE 1.4) spun threads from a Servlet accessing a database outside of a transaction will not be supported either". Later the same tech note states "Customers should consider changing their application to comply with the J2EE specification."


and check this
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21121449