Gary Craig

Test 255 is the latest version. It was published late last Spring. I have not yet seen the plans for when Test 285-287 will be sunset.

As for study guides, Peter Jakab and myself are in the process (slow) of creating the corresponding Certification Guide for Test 255. We are trying to learn from the past comments from this forum to improve the usability of this next certification guide.

RAC is part of the WebSphere Studio distribution. Go back to your WSAD 5 media and you will find a set of RAC install images (one for each supported platform).

Just so you know, this "support" statement is a reflection of System Test coverage -- not whether it works. We have many deployments of WebSphere Portal on XP Professional. Absolutely no issues!
It just wasn't a platform that was part of the system test plan!

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2) There's a concern that we'd have to redeploy /restart the server to change the security rules. I'm kind of comfortable with this - it seems reasonable e.g. for a new user to have to wait until the server restarts before they're allowed access. Is there a way round this if the management don't think this restriction is OK?
3) It would be nice to be able to develop an app, give it to a user & have them configure which users fall into which role. If the user to role mapping is bound up in the configuration file for the app they'd have to go through either ourselves or a technical support team. I can see this actually has benefits - the users are pevented from assigning roles to features which don't make intergral sense, but it could be seen as too prohibitive. I can only think that we also develop a tool to allow them to edit the application.xml in a restricted manner. Any other ideas?
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The only time a server would need to be restarted is if you are changing the server's security settings. Not something you are likely to do.
You would have to restart an application if you change role mappings (or any other changes to web.xml/application.xml)
You have to configure a application J2EE role bindings a first time. Here roles are going to be associated with groups in your LDAP or special groups defined by WebSphere. Thus, by changing group membership in LDAP you will affect all future authorization checks.
I do have some concern about your indication that there are few controls over who/how updates are made to your LDAP (Active Directory). If that is the case -- coming up with a sane security implementation may be fruitless!
[ January 22, 2004: Message edited by: Gary Craig ]

Please indicate how you are trying to access local reference in each method. My assumption is you are doing a lookup(java:comp/env/...) in each case. Are you "building" an Initial context in each case or are you reusing a common Context?
It is the Context that either has a reference bound (at runtime) or not.

ClassCastExceptions are usually the result of class loader issues. In what different jar/war files do you define Employer class?
Generally, you will only want to define POJO classes in a dependent jar file (or in some limited cases, an ejb-jar file). Including it in multiple places, e.g., both the war file and ejb-jar file will lead to this type of problem -- two classloaders in the same JVM each with a version of the class.

Write-once deploy anywhere -- up to a point!
Enterprise applications demand high QoS, including scalability, transaction throughput, maintainability, ...
Part of this depends on effective use of best practice patterns within your application design (a heavy focus within this book) while part is also exploiting the underlying application server runtime (mostly through deployment configuration).
My take on the "WebSphere" focus of the book is "to truely understand the impact of your application design, and be productive in solving your business problem -- it helps to have a particular point of reference". Here the reference is first, using IBM Application development tools (WebSphere Studio); second is operational considerations associated with deploying to the market leading WebSphere Application Server.
Cheers.

A bit of a correction.
1. WebSphere Express is a "web container" only application server.
2. A Test Environment, refers to a runtime that is installed as part of WebSphere Studio (contrasting to a Server which refers to an installed runtime at some other location (perhaps remote). A Server is intended to be controlled (started and stopped) via the Studio server controls.
3. The final class of servers are designed to "attach" to a server that is controlled independently of WebSphere Studio.
Your choice has to do mostly with who owns the test platform you need to work with. And as pointed out, you may define many several "servers" and choose the one you will work with at any given point in time.

Lu,
To start with, build your servlets in a "Web project" in WebSphere studio. The Web content folder then represents the root of an expanded war file. What you are wanting to export is the WEB-INF/classes folder contents (which will just have the .class files).
Using the option to only publish/export what has changed, let's you easily export an updated servlet by publishing the "classes" folder.
Alternatively, consider exporting the .war file to your test server.
(one of Kyle's co-authors....)

Lu,

If you are asking about the root context for a web application (web group); this is set on the admin console for the particular web application. It is call the root URI or web path.


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Gary Craig,
Author of Enterprise Java (tm) Programming with IBM Websphere

Create a class which will act as the Primary key for the Entity bean. It should have a constructor which initializes all of the composite elements of the key. This needs to be serializable and override hashCode() and equals() appropriately so that isIdentical() will work correctly.
From there the rest is easy.
If this is CMP, then just mark the base fields as being key fields.
VisualAge for Java (and WSAD) make doing this very easy.

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Gary Craig,
Author of Enterprise Java (tm) Programming with IBM Websphere

Could you provide more details?
Here are some comments based on your note however:
1) AAT is not used to install an application. Installation is done either from the Admin Console (Web console for AEs, Application console for AE); or using SEAppInstall.bat for AEs (command line). This will be similar to what you do with JBoss.
2) AAT is needed if you need to modify the .ear file.
3) What did you use to build the .ear file in the first place? Is it fully compliant with the FCS of J2EE V1.2? You may want to use AAT to construct "new" WAR and EAR files.
Good luck.
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Gary Craig,
Author of Enterprise Java (tm) Programming with IBM Websphere

Yes there is a separate test for WebSphere Studio. It is focused more on web page development. I can't attach to the www.torolab.ibm.com/ad/certify site to check the number right now.
Our book wasn't published the last time the reading list was updated for Test 498. (BTW, it is on the recommended study list for Test 488 (the WAS V4.0 AEs server exam due to be published in 3-4 weeks).
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Gary Craig,
Author of Enterprise Java (tm) Programming with IBM Websphere

To help trace this, go to your <WAS install root>/bin directory and run startServerBasic
This launches the server directly from the command line and you can see all of the trace messages. Usually there will be an indication that the "WebGroup" couldn't be started, and why!
Good luck.
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Gary Craig,
Author of Enterprise Java (tm) Programming with IBM Websphere