Is WebSphere MQ for you ?

We are in the process of increasing our use of JMS messasging and at this point we can process about 1000 records an hour using out of the box configurations from IBM for the Maximo product. Our ramp up led me to doing a little research on JMS scaling in WebSphere and I came across this article comparing the SIB to MQ.

WebSphere Proxy Servers

Cool older education assistant video on the use of proxy servers from IBM. Some interesting points were

• They replace web servers
• Are the direction for performance
• Can be configured across cells
• Require a unique profile

 http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ieduasst/v1r1m0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.iea.was_v6/was/6.0/SystemManagement/WASv6_WebServer/player.html

dd_in_ear_load_EXC_ Exception when deploying Maximo ear file in WebSphere

I was trying to configure App security in Maximo so I updated the:

·         applications\maximo\maximouiweb\webmodule\WEB-INF\web.xml

·         applications\maximo\mboweb\webmodule\WEB-INF\web.xml

and when I tried to redeploy the ear file I got the following error after I browsed to the ear file.

The exception dd_in_ear_load_EXC_ ocurred. Check log for details.

The issue was that I had uncommented both FORM and BASIC login in the applications\maximo\maximouiweb\webmodule\WEB-INF\web.xml.  If you get this error go back and check the applications\maximo\maximouiweb\webmodule\WEB-INF\web.xml and make sure you only have one <login-config> uncommented.

IBM HTTP Server Documentation

I was watching the IBM WebSphere Application Server V6 Web Server Definition and Plug-in Education Assistant video and ran across this link that provides the download info and support documentation for the last 5 versions of IBM HTTP Server.

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/webservers/httpservers/library/v70.html

Getting Started with MQTT

This is the first in what I hope turns out to be a series of posts about one geek's journey into MQTT and let me tell you it was big doings tonight !!

I was successfully able to publish and subscribe a MQTT message for the first time ! It was not as tough as I thought it would be but only because of the IBM redbook Building Smarter Planet Solutions with MQTT and IBM WebSphere MQ Telemetry The first step was to launch a terminal client from my Ubuntu box that has mosquitto installed.

I then typed in the command to publish  "mosquitto_pub -t samples/topic01 -l"
 (well I copied the exact description of the command from the redbook which is mosquittopub and I got an error No command 'mosquittosub' found, did you mean: mosquitto_pub. I am very new to Linux and do not know why the redbook said one thing and another work, so I will have to add this to the research list down the road.  )

I then opened a second Terminal and entered the command for a subscription
mosquitto_sub -t samples/topic01

I then entered a message in the publish screen and pressed enter.

and low and behold it appeared on the second screen ! Page 46 of the redbook says that "The examples assumes that the client and the server are on the same machine" I will be interested to see what makes this assumption work but will have to save that for another night. 

WebSphere Messaging Engine, Locking and Troubleshooting

I have run into a few issues with WebSphere Messaging Engines this year and this had leaded me to a few different resources on the subject. The best place by far is Ty Shrake’s  webcast replay of “WebSphere Application Server - Service Integration Bus Messaging Engine Data Store Connectivity Problems and Solutions” http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27020333 Ty does a really great job of describing messaging engines, datastore,  locks and how to troubleshoot them.

IBM’s info center has a good resource that describes locking of data stores. http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.websphere.nd.doc%2Finfo%2Fae%2Fae%2Fcjm0450_.html

Understanding Maximo LDAPSYNC

Great technote from IBM on how the LDAPSYNC process syncs with Microsoft Active Directory Global Catalog. When I first started looking into this I was a little confused by the XML in the LDAPSYNC cron task. I was not sure what to add and where to add it but this cleared up much of my confusion.  Interesting points I found were

• LDAPSYNC connects to the Microsoft Global Catalog on port 3268
• LDAPSYNC can be configured to access the LDAP server directly, however; this does not follow Microsoft recommendations
• Maximo administrators can map additional information from the LDAP server to Maximo using the SYNC task.

http://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21358601