WebSphere Application Server V8

WebSphere Application Server drives business agility by providing millions of developers and IT Architects with an innovative, performance-based foundation to build, reuse, run, integrate and manage Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) applications and services. From business critical and key enterprise-wide applications to the smallest departmental level applications, WebSphere Application Server offers the highest levels of reliability, availability, security and scalability.

WebSphere Application Server can help businesses offer richer user experiences through the rapid delivery of innovative applications. Developers can jumpstart their development efforts and leverage existing skills by selecting from the comprehensive set of open standards-based programming models supported, allowing developers to better align project needs with programming model capabilities and developer skills. WebSphere Application Server also speeds application delivery through encouraging reuse and extending the life of existing application assets.

• Java EE 6 programming model: Compliance with the latest Java EE specification which delivers ease of use and productivity enhancements and improves iterative development cycles for testing applications over previous version of the specification.

• Support for Java Platform, Standard Edition 6.0, including the latest performance, security, and reliability enhancements delivered by the IBM Java SDK 6.0 (J9 2.6) to accelerate Java application innovation.

• Eclipse environment support: WebSphere Application Server – Tools Edition includes Rational Application Developer and WebSphere Application Server Developer Tools for Eclipse along with WebSphere Application Server (V7.0 or V8.0). WebSphere Application Server Developer Tools for Eclipse provides lightweight server tools that allow a user to deploy applications from their Eclipse development environments directly to the WebSphere Application server.

• OSGi Applications programming model: Rapidly build, deploy, manage, and maintain modular applications using Java EE and OSGi technologies through versioned, isolated, and reusable OSGi bundles.

• Web 2.0 Mobile and programming model: Deliver richer user experiences and extend the reach of enterprise applications to desktop web and mobile web applications to improve customer satisfaction.

• Java Batch programming model: Reuse existing skills to quickly and cost effectively develop, deploy and manage batch applications.

• XML programming model: Enable application developers to simply and rapidly process XML data and documents using World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) open-standards-based XML technologies.

• Service Component Architecture (SCA) programming model: Increase reuse and accelerate innovative application delivery and management in a SOA.

• Communications Enabled Applications (CEA) programming model: Simply and rapidly deliver rich and interactive user experiences by adding communications capabilities, like click to call and cobrowsing, to web applications.

• Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) programming model: Develop, deliver, and manage powerful large-scale mission-critical converged communications services and applications.

• Dynamic Scripting programming model: Speed the development and delivery of situational applications using dynamic scripting languages. Available as a separate optionally installable Feature Pack for Dynamic Scripting which supports WebSphere Application Server V8.0, V7.0, and V6.1.

• Rapidly develop RESTful web applications through support for RESTful views of EJB applications and support for Contexts and Dependency Injection for Java (CDI) with JAX-RS.

• Accelerate development speed through the separately available IBM Rational Application Developer for WebSphere Software, with integrated programming model support for building and testing applications for WebSphere Application Server.

• Enhance reuse and extend application asset life when integrating SAP Software, Siebel Business Applications, Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, and PeopleSoft Enterprise packaged applications with a WebSphere Application Server application. A development and unit testing license to WebSphere Adapters V7.5 is provided with WebSphere Application Server to speed application integration and development.

WebSphere Application Server helps businesses reduce costs through industry leading performance, operational efficiency, and reliability. Companies can take advantage of WebSphere Application Server's high performance to consolidate workloads and administrative overhead to reduce total cost of ownership without sacrificing system reliability.
WebSphere Application Server's proven transactional support helps companies maintain transaction integrity and overall reliability to minimize the likelihood of lost business opportunities due to failed transactions or system down time.

• Realize greater TCO with performance enhancements to Java EE applications, OSGi applications, SOA applications, product startup times, application server creation times and installation times for typical business critical large applications.

• Simplify local and centralized install and maintenance with automated prerequisite and interdependency checking for both distributed and z/OS environments using IBM Installation Manager.

• Reduce disk footprint requirements through enhanced component install granularity to optionally select whether to install WebSphere Application Server components, such as thin clients, EJB deploy and language packs

• Reduce developer time and effort during the edit-compile-debug development lifecycle with monitored directory-based install, update and uninstall of Java EE applications.

• Enhanced operational efficiency and business agility through ability to administratively extend OSGi Applications-based running applications with new functionality without changing the application artifact, to enable independent application extension and evolution as business needs change. Additionally, update a running OSGi Applications-based application by only impacting those bundles affected by the change, enabling rapid update of deployed OSGi Applications.

• Save time on problem determination and uncover potential performance bottlenecks by using the new High Performance Extensible Logging (HPEL) binary log and trace framework.

• Increase administrator productivity through automated cloning of nodes based on existing node configuration, job manager updates to manage profiles, and improved ease of locating and editing configurations

• Achieve enhanced high availability for messaging applications through improved integration with IBM WebSphere MQ and enhanced transactional integrity through tighter IBM DB2 integration.

• Reduce the cost of deploying and managing geographically dispersed applications through Flexible Management features in WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment to centrally administer applications across WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Application Server - Express and WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment environments.

• Simply administrative tasks related to multi-component applications through WebSphere Business Level Applications

• Improve time to value and reduce risk of down time through migration support for WebSphere Application Server V6.0, V6.1 and V7.0 configuration information using command-line tools and the GUI-based Configuration Migration Tool. Additionally, accelerate application migration from alternative application servers and from WebSphere Application Server V5.1, V6.0, V6.1, or V7.0 to WebSphere Application Server V8.0 using the separately available, no charge, WebSphere Application Server Migration Toolkit.

WebSphere Application Server offers world-class security and control to help businesses confidently reduce costs and increase business agility. WebSphere Application Server's rich support for security specifications and granular security controls help administrators productively secure application environments their businesses depend on.

• Lower risks through end-to-end security hardening enhancements including security updates defined in the Java EE 6 specifications, additional security features enabled by default and improved security configuration reporting.

• Improve ease of use and control through automation that allows administrators to copy a security domain, along with users and groups, at the global level

• Enhance security and auditability for applications requiring distributed and z/OS system access through the ability to use z/OS System Authorization Facility (SAF) security to associate a SAF user ID with a distributed identity.

• Improve security and ease of use through the simplified exchange of user identity and attributes in Web Services using Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) Token through WS-Security SAML Token Profile 1.1.

• Achieve faster time-to-value when delivering single sign on web services- based applications though ability to generate SAML tokens, request SAML tokens from an external Security Token Service (STS) and propagate SAML tokens in SOAP messages using the Web Services Security application programming interfaces (WSS API).

• Improve component reuse and agility through ability to configure a web service application to interoperate with multiple endpoint services, each with potentially different configuration requirements, through specifying multiple policy sets and bindings specific to each endpoint service.

• Improve security and interoperability through ability to generate and consume tokens using WS-Trust Issue and WS-Trust Validate requests for JAX-WS Web services that use Web Services Security. As a result of these requests, the login module issues, validates, or exchanges tokens with a WS-Trust Security Token Service providers, such as IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager.

• Minimize cross-site scripting vulnerabilities using new HTTPOnly browser attribute for single sign-on applications to prevent client-side applications from accessing cookies.

• Achieve greater ease of use through administration, and security enhancements for Java API for XML Web Services (JAX-WS) based applications.