A New WebSphere Student Study Notes

I have been working with a new student of WebSphere technology and here are the study notes of a meeting that we had this morning.

Methodology:

• First try to understand the technical architecture of WebSphere Application Server and the design intentions 
• The student uses three technical reference
•  IBM WebSphere training manual - the Student Notes - for WAS 8.5  - he thinks the IBM WebSphere training manual is compact and helpful
• WebSphere Red Books - the administration guide for V7 and the admin guide for V8 -  
• WebSphere Application Server Administration Using Jython
• I like the student's approach of working through the training manual systematically and using the red books as reference
• The student uses google, of course

The student has problems creating profiles after installing V7 and V8.5. The solution is to use a different Linux based computer. 


The student has built a Ubuntu based machine, has gone through installation and installation verification, and starts to build basic knowledge and skills such as WAS topology but I feel this link would help with better understanding of Cell, Notes, Clusters, etc.

We had a good discussion on the use of deployment manager, standalone servers, administrative agent, and job manager.

We talked about scripting, the use of alias to shorten length commands in improve efficiency and reducing errors. 

We also had a good discussion on the need for a good environment to do QA after configuration change and initial server build and noted the wide difference in QA practice across the industry.

We talked about being clear and concise in answering interview questions even for complex topic such as JVM heap management.

I advised the student to focus on below areas of skills: 

• MDB and messaging
• Web security, for example, SSL
• Application deployment  

We will meet next week to go over the new Linux environment and  using Eclipse IDE to build ears for practising application deployment.