New features in WebSphere application Server V7

The Ibm®websphere®application Server V7 includes powerful new features and significant enhancements to help you achieve higher productivity, greater security, tighter integration, and simplified management. Learn about the key features in this new release that make this release a flexible and reliable base for your service-oriented architecture.

Introduction

IBM WebSphere Application Server delivers an agile, reliable foundation for service-oriented architecture (services oriented Architecture,soa) applications that align applications with business and IT innovations. WebSphere application Server supports the reuse and creation of applications and services that promote business agility and make predictions and adjustments to mission-critical issues that help businesses win the competition in the marketplace.

The WebSphere application Server V7 builds on the strong and stable core of earlier versions, with several new features and enhancements. In addition to supporting the latest standards and programming models, V7 also includes important improvements in system administration, installation, and security. In summary, these features further extend the coverage, Run-time management features, and application deployment options of the WebSphere application Server platform to help you reduce costs and further develop your business.

This overview will introduce you to some of the key features in this new release that make it possible to provide a more flexible and reliable foundation for your SOA environment.

Standard

The WebSphere application Server V7 includes support for the following technologies:

Java EE 5

The most noteworthy support standard for WebSphere application Server V7 is Java™platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) 5. The WebSphere application Server V7 provides full support for the Java EE 5 specification, including the WEB services and EJB 3.0 features previously provided as feature packs in V6.1.

If you are unfamiliar with Java EE 5, this latest version of the standard represents a significant development of the Java Enterprise programming model, bringing significant improvements in the experience of the application developer and, in turn, a major improvement in the productivity of application developers. Phrases that are often used to describe the Java EE 5 programming model are progressive Disclosure (progressive disclosure), which means that most of the "boilerplate" code necessary to date Java EE Development has been eliminated. Instead, the most commonly used application context is provided as the default behavior, and then by using annotations (annotation), you can override the default behavior as needed to achieve the desired implementation. In this way, the application will gradually be structured only to the desired extent.

The WebSphere application Server V7 also introduces support for Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) 6.

Dependency Injection

In the case of overriding the default behavior, the developer's productivity is further improved because it is possible to use annotations instead of writing code to quickly and easily complete default behavior overrides. Annotations are used in conjunction with programming patterns called Dependency injection or reverse control (inversion of CONTROL,IOC) in which application code simply declares variables and annotate them to represent whatever is required, and the container then "injects" the object or resource reference specified.

Figure 1 shows a simple example to help illustrate dependency injection. The code fragment on the left is taken from an EJB 2.1 application. The code fragment to the right is taken from an EJB 3.0 application that has a comment @EJB that tells the container that it is an EJB, and then the container "injects" the EJB 3.0 application with the desired wrapper (or boilerplate).

Figure 1. Dependency Injection