WebSphere Application Server (WAS) has a variety of ways of defining servers, and their relationships to each other. These are often called WAS topologies. Let’s revisit some of the WAS topology concepts from a WebSphere ESB perspective (although many things you may know or learn about WAS topologies probably apply equally to WebSphere ESB, and vice-versa, because ESB is built on top of WAS).

There is a hierarchy of objects in an ESB topology:

So it’s Christmas morning, and you’ve unwrapped the shiny paper, and you see that Santa has left you a copy of WebSphere ESB 6.0.1. You’re keen to get going on developing your first SOA solution, but you’re a little bemused by the ‘Message Service Clients’ inside the jiffy bag, on CD2. Well, here’s what they are:

• IBM Message Service Client for C/C++ (aka C/C++ XMS) - this is available for Windows and Linux.

  More ...

I still meet a lot of people who are confused by the term ‘WebSphere’. Let’s clarify, as it has two oft-used meanings. The first, which IBM encourages, refers to the WebSphere brand of software. This comprises many products (probably over 100 once all variations are taken into account), most of which are somehow related to middleware or integration. Included in this brand is the product WebSphere Application Server (WAS), upon which several of the other products are based. The second meaning of the word is as a synonym for WAS, and is popularly used outside IBM (and sometimes inside, when IBMers are feeling lazy). If someone asks ‘do you know WebSphere?’, they are almost certainly using the word to refer to WAS specifically.

After getting a 1GB MMCmini card for my new Nokia 6630, I decided to have another go at getting OpenOBEX working with it. After applying a patch from the forums, I’ve now got ObexFS working over USB; I can mount the phone’s filesystem locally. The only problem seems to be that I can’t create directories, which makes syncing MP3s cumbersome. Argh! I’ve signed up for the mailing list so hopefully will get some help there.

There was a front-page story in my local paper the other day - NewsEXTRA, the freebie cousin of the Hampshire Chronicle - about a knife amnesty. Apparently Hampshire police have been running one and are clapping themselves on the back because they’ve recieved so many (3000 in Hampshire, almost 100 in Winchester).

There are two problems with this:

• The police are sending an inconsistent moral and practical message. Is owning knives wrong? One can assume it must be - after all, people have been handing in ‘peeling knives’ - and otherwise, the police would reject those, right? But in which case, er, how am I supposed to peel my carrots? Oh, maybe knives over a certain size are wrong? So are museums supposed to turn in their collection? The police should get their principles straight before they try to make people feel bad for owning knives per se. Disclaimer: I only own kitchen knives.

  More ...

I recently had a comment attached to one of my posts regarding ESB suggesting that it needed to be translated into English - so that’s what I’m going to attempt to do here. An ESB is a fairly new and complex concept, and the definition is far from fixed, so don’t be surprised if you see some disagreement. As with many things, though, it’s also a generalisation and aggregation of some other concepts that already exist, so be aware of that too.

I just watched this film for about the 5th time (although the first time in many years). It’s the 1990 sequel to the original 1977 classic film The Rescuers. The animation, story, and general quality of the film are quite stunning: it’s little-known, but is comparable to The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and other more prominent Disney animated movies. About the only thing that spoils it are the occasionally dodgy voice talents, in particular some of the Aussie accents. It’s a shame they didn’t do what Finding Nemo did 13 years later and bring in native speakers for all the local characters.

People are sometimes confused about the differences between WebSphere ESB (built on top of WebSphere Application Server, and using the inbuilt WebSphere Platform Messaging JMS provider) and WebSphere Message Broker (which uses WebSphere MQ as a messaging engine). IBM sometimes describes the latter as ‘Advanced ESB’, but Message Broker is not a superset of the functionality in ESB. There is a good FAQ on the IBM website which clears up some of the confusion.

In general, Message Broker is designed for working primarily with WebSphere MQ, as well as having a larger set of nodes (or mediation primitives, in WebSphere ESB-speak). WebSphere ESB has a richer set of functionality with respect to SOAP and Web Services (Message Broker treats SOAP as plain XML). ESB is also built on SCA, which allows it work more easily with products such as WebSphere Process Server.

I’m 50:50 about this film, really. I wanted to like it. It does contain plenty of classic Americana, some nice shots, and some very competent acting from Nicholson and others. The central scene of the film, where Nicholson is trying to order in a diner, is also him at his sarcastic best: work we’ve also seen in later films like As Good As It Gets.

But fundamentally, the film is actually quite boring. The premise has potential: concert pianist turned oil rigger returns to his roots. But the execution is so dry, so tedious, that it really just didn’t hold my interest. The film ends without any conclusion, and is ultimately unsatisfying.

There’s a tradition in the technology industry of a ‘user’. This, apparently, is the poor sod who’s going to ultimately use whatever you’re creating (software, steering wheels, microwaves, and so on). We’re not sure exactly who he is, but he must exist, right? Many of the more theoretical parts of software engineering use this term, for example: user-centered design, user interfaces, user error (a most horrifically arrogant expression), etc.

As a work for a commercial company, I resolved to give up using this word a few years ago, and call these entities ‘customers’ instead. I figured this would encourage me to be more customer-centric (duh). I’ve been relatively successful at giving up my addiction to ‘user’, and use of ‘customer’ reminds me that a feature / bug / product that isn’t important to one of our customers, although it might be important to a ‘user’, isn’t important to me either. After all, we’re here to make money, right?