IBM WAS Enhancements Deliver Internet-Scale Clustering For Applications

IBM recently announced enhancements to its WebSphere Application Server (IBM WAS) version 8.5.5 that deliver more functionality and services to the Liberty and full profiles. The enhancements are geared toward both development and production environments and are said to provide “significant enhancements in terms of developer experience and high-end resiliency.”
The features can largely be installed optionally from the WebSphere Liberty Repository and used in conjunction with features previously available and active.
Developers now have new programming models and tools. The result: A better developer climate that should result in a more rapid pace of application deployments. Administrators and businesses can leverage new Intelligent Management and security features to lower the administrative overhead of managing, scaling, and securing servers.
WAS in general is gearing itself more and more toward cloud and mobile development and deployment, hence the rollout of these new features.
Specific enhancements to WebSphere Liberty include:

  • Java EE 7-compliant programming model support for WebSockets 1.0 (JSR 356) and Servlet 3.1 (JSR 340) to enrich applications with responsive dynamic content
  • Additional Java EE 7 components in support of APIs for processing JSON (JavaScript] Object Notation) data (JSR 353) and Concurrency utilities (JSR 236)
  • Auto-scaling capabilities to dynamically adjust the number of Java virtual machines (JVMs) that are based on workload and auto-routing to intelligently manage your workload
  • Improved operational efficiency of large-scale, clustered deployments of tens of thousands of Java virtual machines (JVMs) in a Liberty Collective
  • Configurable, global Web Service handlers for extending and customizing payloads to Web Service applications
  • REST connector for non-Java clients to extend client access to Java Management Extensions (JMX) administration infrastructure through a RESTful API.
  • Simplified configuration processing for feature developers to enable customization of WebSphere Application Server Liberty profile capabilities
  • Enhancement to the distributed security model using OpenID and OpenID Connect to simplify the task of authenticating users across multiple trust domains
  • Enhancement to WebSphere Liberty Administrative Center for usability and management of large collectives of application servers
  • Enhancement to WebSphere Application Server Migration Toolkit – Liberty Tech
  • Preview includes new binary scanning capability to quickly evaluate applications for rapid deployment on WebSphere Liberty.

TxMQ is an IBM Premier Business Partner and we specialize in WebSphere. For additional information about IBM WAS and all WebSphere-related matters, contact president Chuck Fried: 716-636-0070 x222, [email protected].
TxMQ recently introduced its MQ Capacity Planner – a new solution developed for performance-metrics analysis of enterprise-wide WebSphere MQ (now IBM MQ) infrastructure. TxMQ’s innovative technology enables MQ administrators to measure usage and capacity of an entire MQ infrastructure with one comprehensive tool. Visit our MQ Capacity Planner product page.