Kyle Brown

Claude Moore wrote:Thanks so much for your kindly answers.

On question 1) I thought that WorkLight Server may not require WebSphere, and times ago I was told during an IBM's presentation of WorkLight that Worklight may be installed in WAS as if it were a Java EE application, but I've no experience in that
(and I may have misunderstood something in that presentation), so I asked you about it.

On question 2) Liberty profile as far as I know - and please correct me if I'm wrong - is "limited" to support web related Technologies (no EJB for example, which I'm a fan of); it would be nice to have a preview of a full Java EE stack.
Anyway, we're discussing about web development so that Liberty would be perfect to experiment techniques you describe in your book.

Thank you again

So I'll let Roland address (1) in detail, but in fact, we don't even cover the installation of Worklight server in the book, which is focused on development - instead we focus on using the Worklight Studio.

On (2) in fact, the new Liberty (which we're based on) does allow the EJB-Lite profile, and we use local EJB's in our examples!

Kyle

Don't even get me started on the insanity of IBM AHE!

Kyle

So if the last WAS version you used was 6.1, then YES, a lot has changed since then. That was back in 2006! We cover the technology stack in the book, but it basically amounts to WAS Liberty (for REST and JEE), IBM Worklight (as a mobile gateway) and then helping you understand how to choose JavaScript frameworks (for instance, from Dojo, jQuery, etc). and design systems using all of these pieces. We also cover briefly integration into other systems and parts like doing security with DataPower and using client management systems like IBM Fiberlink's MaaS360.

Kyle

Depends on what you're a beginner at! For complete Java beginners - I'd probably recommend you start with a book on basic Java first such as Head First Java. Even a book on basic JEE techniques (particularly persistence, like our earlier book Persistence in the Enterprise) would be helpful as background before you start. But if you're wanting to learn how to build RESTful services for mobile applications, and how to code JavaScript applications using JQuery and Dojo in WebSphere (especially using IBM Worklight) then yes, this is the book for you!

Kyle

In short, yes, it would. It would help you move to a more mobile-centric architecture and approach.

Kyle

It's already available at Books 24X7. Search by the ISBN: 9780133067033 You'll find it there.

Thanks!

Kyle

It is available online! If you take a look at the book, you'll see that this book's source code and the installation instructions for the tools used are all hosted on DeveloperWorks (because the book is part of the DeveloperWorks series). See here: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/dwbooks/modernwebdev/index.html

Kyle

Hi - thanks for the question! So the answer is no, we don't cover all the features of WebSphere in the book. We focus on the development of what we term "Modern" Web applications - meaning those that have RESTful back ends and front ends built using Hybrid Web technologies (JavaScript, JSON, etc.) As to differences between WAS and other app servers - I'm not going to go over that one - there is plenty of material on the internet to tell you that, and lots of helpful material on the IBM WebSphere web site. http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/appserv-was

Thanks!

Kyle

Yes, we only cover the Liberty profile in this book, since we believe that for the type of applications we are building that this is all that is required. If you need to build applications using frameworks and features like SIP, then yes, you would still need to use T-WAS but we don't discuss that in the book.

So the thing to remember is that Spring is not an application server. I'm not going to go over why WebSphere is better than other application Servers - you would want to refer to the IBM Marketing material and competitive product office material for that. Spring is simply a framework that works within application servers. So if you want to use Spring, go ahead. What we describe is how to do RESTful development in a completely integrated environment using the JEE standards. If that interests you then great, but if not, then I'm not going to try to convince you to give up what you're doing.

Just FYI - It's NOT NICE to troll an author...

Kyle

So let's separate this into two parts - part (1) What other books are in the newly revamped developerworks series? Our goal there (my goal as series editor) is to focus on the biggest, hottest topics. At this point, we have a couple in the pipeline. There's a more detailed book on mobile development and testing that is a little more concerned with tools and SDLC that is coming out soon (this year!) We're also looking at books in other hot topics related to this such as Cloud - we're hoping to have one (or more) out on IBM's cloud offerings come out soon. We're also in talks with authors about subjects like Big Data for later. Part (2) - what is the direct sequel to this book - there I'm working with an author team on planning for a "backend" book that would cover things like building applications based on messaging, and on building complex services. That would essentially be what was the second half of my old WebSphere book. That's still in planning.

Kyle

Hey Rafael - well, we do include a table almost like that in the book with regard to the JEE standards supported, but we don't cover all the frameworks that are supported but not part of the standard - there are just too many for that. Effectively, what this book is about is throwing away the old way of doing things and bringing your applications into the 21st century - moving away from Web 1.0 programming with Servlets and JSP's (we have one example that covers that in Chapter 2 just to show how the new Liberty Profile works) and move towards Mobile development with Web 2.0 architectures, REST development with JAX-RS and JavaScript development with Dojo, JQuery and other JavaScript frameworks.

Kyle

Hey Everyone! Glad to be back if even just for the week!

Don't build what you can buy or get free. There are plenty of open-source cache implementations around (for instance JCS) and also plenty of commercial products like IBM's WebSphere eXtreme Scale and Oracle's Coherence that will probably work fine for you as a caching layer.

Kyle

I doubt you are going to get help here. This is not even a WebSphere problem, it's a problem with the Chordiant framework. Contact Chordiant for technical support.

Kyle