Collection. Ibm. Getting Started with WebSphere Novice

	What is WebSphere.
	What WebSphere can do for me and my company.
	How to use WebSphere.
	Learn more about WebSphere.

The DeveloperWorks WebSphere site is a collection of technical resources for developers, administrators, business planners, and other technicians who want to learn how to leverage the many features of the WebSphere Platform and tool suite. The site is updated weekly with the latest WebSphere-related events and product bulletins, and includes additions to a broad collection of articles, tutorials, code samples, roadmaps, and other technical materials.

What is WebSphere.

WebSphere is IBM's integrated software platform. It includes the entire middleware infrastructure needed to write, run, and monitor on-demand WEB applications and cross-platform, cross-product solutions for 24x7 industrial strength, such as servers, services, and tools. WebSphere provides reliable, flexible, and robust integration software. WebSphere Application Server is the foundation of this infrastructure, and all other products run on top of it. WebSphere Process Server, based on WebSphere application server and WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus, provides a base for modular applications for service-oriented architecture (SOA) and support application of business rules to drive applications that support business processes. The high-performance environment also uses the WebSphere Extended Deployment as part of its basic infrastructure. Other WebSphere products offer a wide range of other services, as described below. WebSphere is a modular platform based on industry-supported open standards. You can use trusted and persistent interfaces to insert existing assets into WebSphere, and you can continue to scale your environment as your needs grow. WebSphere can run on many platforms, including Intel, Linux, and z/OS.

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What WebSphere can do for me and my company.

Business processes on demand business cross-enterprise and end-to-end integration with key partners, suppliers, and customers to quickly respond to any customer needs, market opportunities or external threats. You can use WebSphere to build and monitor your infrastructure to support your on-demand business, and to build and scale applications that run on that infrastructure. Figure 1 shows the functionality that WebSphere provides to help you connect, integrate, automate, and optimize your application. Figure 1. WebSphere Features Personnel Integration (interactivity) The People integration feature allows customers, employees, and business partners to interact with your business information, applications, and business processes, anytime, anywhere. For example, by using these features, you can automate the call center functionality, and then empower selected employees, customers, and business partners to access these features from their personal computers, mobile phones, and PDAs. The following WebSphere products provide people integrated (or interactive) functionality: WebSphere Portal websphere everyplace WebSphere Voice Process integration Enterprises can use process integration capabilities to model, orchestrate, monitor, and optimize business processes to align them with strategic business objectives. For example, you can model a critical business process, then emulate it, refine it, make it easy for people to interact with it, put it into production applications, monitor it, optimize it, and adjust it quickly and intelligently as business requirements change. The following WebSphere products provide process integration capabilities: WebSphere Business Modeler websphere Business Monitor websphere Process Server WebSphere Integra tion Developer Information integration The Information integration feature allows you to create consistent and unified views of structured and unstructured information from different sources, as well as manage and synchronize product reference information. For example, you can create free-form searches across all information assets, including WEB sites, relational databases, file systems, newsgroups, portals, collaboration systems, and content management systems. The following WebSphere products provide information integration features: WebSphere product Center websphere Information Integration WebSphere Commerce Application integration Application integration capabilities provide a wide range of services to support the reliable and flexible flow of information across applications that may run in different enterprises. For example, you can simply exchange messages between applications, or if your business needs to be more complex, you can create a flexible, service-oriented architecture that supports systematic information exchange across a wide range of applications that run on different corporate servers and platforms and use different languages. Some of the WebSphere products that provide application integration capabilities include WebSphere MQ WebSphere Message Broker websphere Partner Gateway WebSphere Application Server Application Infrastructure The WebSphere application infrastructure enables you to build, deploy, integrate, and enhance new and existing applications. For example, you can let legacy systems support the WEB and extend them, and enable them to run in a Java environment. The following WebSphere products provide application infrastructure features: CICS Transaction server WebSphere Application Server WebSphere Host Access transformation Se Rvices WebSphere Developer for ZSeries Accelerator To start developing an application immediately, you can use an accelerator. These pre-built solutions can compensate for some of the experience or technical deficiencies and ensure a solid foundation for future expansion. To learn more about accelerators, see WebSphere Business integration accelerators.

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How to use WebSphere.

How you use WebSphere depends on your role in the business. IBM offers a broad range of tools and capabilities to help you build, run, manage, and optimize your WebSphere applications. The WebSphere Tools suite is based on industry open standards such as Java EE and Eclipse, and they use a common installation, management, security, and programming model. For example, programmers most often use Rational application Developer or WebSphere Developer for zSeries. If you are developing a mobile application, use WebSphere Studio Device Developer. If you are designing a business process, you are using WebSphere businesses Modeler. Administrators use administrative tools to manage infrastructure, such as the management tools provided with the core product, WebSphere application Server. Figure 2 shows the WebSphere Integrated Reference Architecture and a specific WebSphere product family that collaborate to provide a variety of services that in turn provide these capabilities. Figure 2. WebSphere Integrated Reference Architecture Here are just a few examples: WebSphere portal includes runtime servers, services, tools, and many other features that integrate your enterprise into a single, customizable user interface called a portal. WebSphere Everyplace Products help you build and run applications, including portals, and users can access the portal using their chosen mobile device. WebSphere Information Integrator provides data features such as federation, transformations, caching, replication, and event publishing, as well as enterprise search. WebSphere Business Monitor helps you track performance metrics and use role-based dashboards (Dashboard) to monitor your orchestrations.   See also IBM Software development Platform For additional tools that span the software development lifecycle.

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Learn more about WebSphere.

Whether you are a new user or an expert in WebSphere products, add the DeveloperWorks WebSphere site to your bookmarks and visit the site for more information about WebSphere platforms and tool suites. The site is updated weekly with the latest WebSphere-related events and product bulletins, and includes additions to a broad collection of technical data. Try using the following link to the left of DeveloperWorks WebSphere: The product helps you learn about current events and products, and provides easy access to recently published and previously included technical articles. The download provides a trial copy of many WebSphere products. The technical Library contains a growing collection of technical articles, examples, tutorials, and other materials developed by WebSphere experts. The training includes WebSphere classroom courses, online education content, and self-learning materials. Support provides answers to technical questions and information about technical issues. The service directs you to experts who can help you design, implement, and monitor software applications. Forums and Communities help you find and interact with other WebSphere product users.