IBM Websphere: Deployment and Advanced Configuration

For individuals working in the systems administrations space for WebSphere Application Server, this book is a must have. Covering most aspects day to day administrations this book explains clearly and concisely the why's and how's of WAS best practice. It breifly describes the main concepts that a sys admin would encounter and then goes on to discuss the deployment issues around that particular subject. (See coverage section in the editorial review) One of the most useful aspects of the book is it's attention to the wsadmin scripting utility (and its integration with ANT) that is favoured by most sys admin's but is lacking in good examples even in the info center. Unfortunately all of the scripting is done using JACL (they explain this reasoning in the book) and it would have been nice to have seen some in Jython. (Note that as of v6.1 there is a utility that does a pretty good job of converting JACL scripts to Jython see http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=180 & uid=swg24012144). Although this book is based on WAS v5 the majority of it's contents is applicable to v6 also so it is certainly worth the purchase. I work with WAS from v4 - v6 and the book has been very useful to me as a WAS specialist. I should note that I am an IBM employee and as a WAS technical specialist I work with many organisations helping them to implement their WAS environments. I recommend this book to them without reservation and this is high recommendation as we tend to be more critical than most about WAS material.

"IBM Websphere: Deployment and Advanced Configuration" provides a single reference for your organization's IT staff to design and most importantly, use J2EE applications and technologies. The most useful concepts learned from this book were how to automate so many tedious processes that are bound to the development and deployment cycle. The text provides a great starting point for understanding surrounding technologies like ANT and wsadmin. Implementing these automated processes has saved time and eliminated errors. Aside from recommending best practice deployment concepts, the text provides a hefty resource on application server settings as well. This book has been such a blessing in its ability to provide not only the "how" we enable or modify a setting, but also answers the "why" we would want to do such a thing. Finally, the text does an excellent job conveying information regarding J2EE technologies and advanced server configurations to provide high availability systems, performance increases, and security hardening. This book is a must have for any enterprise running J2EE architectures and doubly so if you are using IBM Websphere.

I laughed, I cried, it's a real page turner. Seriously, if you want to know the best processes and procedures to get your J2EE application into production in a seamless repeatable manner, then this book is required reading. They guys have written the book on WebSphere application deployment, long before this book was published. This book is based on experts in the field. Read, put it on your shelf so you can refer back to it, and don't forget the excellent code samples.

Finally, we have in one reference, all of the important considerations that must be taken into account, when deploying and administering WebSphere applications. The book is based on the deep subject matter expertise of the authors, but more importantly, also on their significant engagement experience over the last 5 years with WebSphere clients. While the book is sufficiently rich in technical detail, so as to appeal to even the most experienced WebSphere administrators, the authors write with an engaging style that can provide knowledge and insight for the most novice of readers. Finally, there is much in the way of J2EE best practice that would well serve J2EE developers.

One of the biggest gaps in app development is where the app developers leave off and the system administrators take over. This leaves quite a bit of work for the 2 groups to haggle over and is really neither one's expertise. Until now I've not seen another book that bridges that gap and provides really great examples of what and (more importantly) how to have automated processes for building and deploying applications.