How to Select the Best Mobile Payment Application

Mobile point-of-sale (POS) solutions enable merchants to accept credit card payments where it is most convenient for their customers. Mobile payments allow merchants to accept and process credit card payments in the aisle, outside the store or anyplace customers prefer to pay. Small business owners or large enterprise merchants with a mobile sales team or non-traditional storefronts can expand their business and increase revenue by accepting mobile credit card payments using their existing smart phone.

Mobile POS systems are setting a new standard in convenience and are easy to implement and support. Merchants equipped with an iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile or Google Android device can submit, authorize and settle transactions quickly and securely.

ENTERPRISE PORTAL

Mobile POS systems offer several advantages:

Decrease Processing Cost- Merchant can lower their processing cost by using a single merchant account to accept retail and mobile payments. Customer Satisfaction- Improve the customer experience by offering multiple payment options. Flexibility- Mobile transactions allow merchants to take your storefront anywhere you go. Stability and Reliability- Mobile POS software rivals those of the largest e-commerce, trading, and portal Web sites. Mobile POS applications can handle millions of transactions every month.

Lower Entry Cost

Considering that most people would rather lose their wallet than misplace their cell phone, it comes as no surprise that the mobile platform is quickly becoming a new payment option for small business owners. For many, our cell phone never leaves our side. It maintains its place at the dinner table, is easily accessible on your belt clip or in your pocket, and often, somehow it even manages to end up sharing your pillow at night. Today, cost conscience merchants can accept credit card payments without purchase traditional point-of-sale equipment or paying for expensive system customizations.

Market Expansion

Mobile POS solutions are priced for the small business owner and independent sales representative. Merchants can purchase a quality smart phone payment application from -.95. Questions to ask your mobile payment provider:

· Is the mobile application PCI compliant?

· Does the application support both small and large payments?

· Does the system require a payment gateway service? If so, recognize payment gateways require an additional recurring monthly fee.

· Does the application support swipe and non swipe transactions? Swipe transactions provide lower processing fees.

· What card readers are supported?

· Does the card reader support data encryption?

· Does your system provide online statements for viewing customer transactions?

· What mobile phones are supported?

· Does the system ensure no customer payment information is stored on the cell phone?

· What are all the fees associated with accepting payment?

· How quickly are customer payments funded to the merchant's bank account?

· What is the license agreement? Specifically can the merchant load the mobile payment application on multiple devices?

We'll undoubtedly see many mobile application providers come out of the woodwork as the industry matures. However, merchants should look for a mobile payment provider with multiple years of experience in the payment processing industry.

Top Mobile Payment Applications

1. MobileAuthorize (Google Android, BlackBerry, iPhone/iTouch, Windows Mobile)

2. iPayPOS (iPhone)

3. RoadMerchant (BlackBerry)

4. MobileMerchant (iPhone, Windows Mobile)

How to Select the Best Mobile Payment Application

Ricky Bracken is President & CEO of SaleManager. SaleManager provides enterprise class payment solutions to small and mid-size businesses.

ENTERPRISE PORTAL

Lotus Notes to Microsoft Application Migrations

In the recent years, due to the increasing popularity and user demand of Microsoft messaging and collaboration environments like Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Active Directory; companies are looking into migrating their messaging and application infrastructure from other platforms, like Lotus Notes to the Microsoft Messaging and Collaboration environment.

SharePoint and .Net provide key integration benefits with Exchange, Active Directory, Outlook, and Microsoft Office "out of the box" allowing the development of better collaborative business applications while being standardized on a Web based architecture and having a relational databases as the data store for reporting, scalability and disaster recovery. SharePoint and.Net applications can also integrate both structured content from enterprise applications and unstructured content from intranets, file folders, etc. due to the many utilities provided with the development environments. Also, given the large Microsoft developer community; extensive online support and the ease of rapid application development in the .Net environment it is easier for Lotus Notes based development groups to translate their skills into a Microsoft based environment.

ENTERPRISE PORTAL

Since Microsoft SharePoint and .Net are web based environments they provide many benefits in being able to centralize administration and management while reducing client based administration. Also, given that they have robust integration frameworks and methodologies, organizations can extend their ERP, MRP, Supply Chain and CRM platforms by providing easy access and integrations from those platforms into the SharePoint Portal and.Net environment.

Given that the goal of any migration is to reduce disruption to the business and the users of the systems, it is critical to come up with standards and best practices to make the adoption of the new platform easy in the end user community and reduce support requests after the migration. The following are some of the standards and best practice areas -

1. User Experience -
- To facilitate the transition of business users from the Notes platform to the Microsoft platform, it is necessary to keep the essence of the user experience and the navigation scheme to be similar to the one the designed in Notes.
- Any changes in the UI elements [for example differences in the behavior of multi-select boxes between Notes and SharePoint/.Net environments] should be done in a standardized format.
- A guide for UI changes should be developed to highlight the differences in the navigation in the converted applications.

2. Database Design -
- Given that the databases in Lotus Notes are non-relational while SQL Server is a relational database certain standardization is required during the conversion -

- Standardization of Unique identifiers for entities within the database and mapping scheme from the Lotus Notes ID scheme to the entity ID scheme in the relational database.
- Parsing attachments from rich text fields to be stored in separate relational tables with BLOBs.
- Transforming multi-values from a single string to a set of entries in a relational table
- Analyzing and converting relationships from hierarchical to relational

3. Development -
- Forms - Forms and sub-forms in Lotus Notes can be translated into ASP.Net forms, SharePoint lists, or InfoPath forms dependent on the complexity of the forms/database. The more complex forms should either be targeted for ASP.Net or InfoPath while the simpler forms can be targeted for the SharePoint environment.
- Validations - Complex logic based validations can be achieved using VBScripts in.Net forms or InfoPath forms while simple validations can be achieved in SharePoint without any code.
- Lookup data - Single level lookups are easily possible in SharePoint while multi-level dependent lookups can be accomplished in either InfoPath or ASP.Net
- Application Security - A common framework for application security should be developed so that both authorization of roles based security can be handled within all of the converted.Net applications.

Converting Lotus Notes applications to the Microsoft environment can be a very systematic and manageable project. The project needs upfront planning and dedication of the right resources, tools, frameworks, and processes. The converted applications provide for greater standardization, accessibility through a web browser, greater scalability, along with the ability to do comprehensive reporting using standard commercial tools like SQL Reporting Services, Crystal reports among others. Additionally, the applications provide for integrations with Microsoft office, Microsoft Outlook & Exchange along with the integrations with the company Active Directory infrastructure leading to better sharing of information, collaboration and utilization of the resources within the organization.

Lotus Notes to Microsoft Application Migrations

OptimusBT a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner is a global leader in providing Business solutions that are primarily sharepoint based and utilize existing client infrastructure. For over 5 years, OptimusBT has paved the road when implementing complex, global solutions in the areas of Sales, Finance, Procurement, Manufacturing, Human Resources, and others across industry segments around the world. For Further Information on our Lotus Notes Capabilities, or to discuss your Lotus Notes Migration requirements visit the website http://www.optimusbt.com

ENTERPRISE PORTAL

eEnterprise - Old Great Plains Software ERP Application Reactivation

If you remember the XXI century story about Microsoft purchase of Great Plains Software - this is where eEnterprise, that was the last GPS ERP name invention ceased to exist in its MRP name consistency. Great Plains eEnterprise was renamed into Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains Professional, later on in September 2005, Great Plains was renamed into Microsoft Dynamics GP. But anyway, if you or your company had hard time back in earlier 2000, then you might be on Great Plains eEnterprise or Great Plains Dynamics for Microsoft SQL Server versions 6.0 or 7.0. Let's review eEnterprise upgrade and walk away paths:

1. DB Platform. eEnterprise was available on Microsoft SQL Server only, so more likely you are on Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 or even MS SQL Server 2000. So, considering the fact that high-end version of Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 or 9.0 is available on MS SQL Server 2005 and 2000 only - from DB perspective there are no challenges

ENTERPRISE PORTAL

2. GP Licenses and MBS Great Plains annual enhancement program status. Well, considering the fact that you are supposedly still on GPS eEnterprise ERP version, chances are high that you lapsed in Microsoft Business Solutions GP annual enhancement program. If our assumption is correct, then you will have to contact you Microsoft VAR to understand your annual enhancement reactivation options. If you have no idea on what we are talking about - call us

3. eEnterprise upgrade scenarios. If you are on Great Plains Software eEnterprise, more likely you have more than 10 Great Plains system manager users and so, you are valuable customer (meaning that you are large or mid-size business from the ERP perspective). If you didn't downsize in 2001-2004, then your upgrade path is to Microsoft Dynamics GP Professional

4. Microsoft Dynamics C/S+. This is the predecessor of eEnterprise, C/S+ versions were 5.5, 5.0, 4.0 and 3.2. Those days Microsoft SQL platform was in the formation stage, so your version might be MS SQL Server 6.0 or alternative DB platforms: Btrieve or Ctree/Faircom. Your migration path is likely to be to Microsoft Dynamics GP Professional as well. If you are on non Microsoft SQL Server DB platform - you will need to migrate to MS SQL Server. The migration tool is available fro Microsoft Business Solutions, however it is not trivial and we recommend you to deploy GP technical consulting firm to do migration and version upgrade job.

5. Great Plains Dexterity customizations for eEnterprise. Dex programming was very popular in late 1990th, and this is not a surprise if you have Dex altered Dynamics business logic. Please review you Dynamics.set file to figure out if you have Dexterity custom logic and if so, try to find Dynamics.dic with your Sanscript scripts in not stripped out

6. eEnterprise custom reporting. The most likely you have GP ReportWriter modified reports: SOP Long Invoice or Blank Form, POP Purchase Order. RW is in fact Dexterity module and reports migration and upgrade require Dex architecture expertise and software development experience.

7. Dinosaur versions of Great Plains. GPA for DOS, MS Windows or Macintosh were discontinued to support in earlier XXI Century. If you are still on one of those, you got to consider walk away migration option: to Microsoft Dynamics GP would be the natural way, however you may theoretically migrate to Oracle, Sage, PeopleSoft, JDEdwards, Scala, or other ERP application

8. GP Licenses. You are probably familiar with ERP industry rules - besides initial MRP application purchase you have to be current and pay annual fee for ERP enhancement program. You are lapsed in enhancement program, you should expect re-enrollment fee. The GP re-enrollment fee depends on the number of lapsing years, and in some cases it is more beneficial to do new GP software licenses purchase, please contact your Microsoft Dynamics GP Great Plains reseller for details.

9. Dex Customization upgrade. If you have custom Dex logic in your eEnterprise installation version, you should not assume that modified logic update will be automatic. Typically Dexterity developers and programmers need to be involved to estimate upgrade efforts

10. Crystal Reports and Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services SRS vs. Great Plains ReportWriter. RW is Microsoft Dexterity module, so you should not expect miracle from Report Writer interface. RW has access to GP Dex reports, stored in Reports.dic file, plus these mentioned reports have Dexterity parameters entry screens in regular GP logic. CR is Dex-independent tool and you should try to base Crystal Reports on SQL Stored Procedures and Views logic. The same should be said about SRS

11. Dexterity sanscript advise. Dex historically deploys cursor base logic in its Sanscript scripting language. This logic might not be optimal for MS SQL Server 2005 and 2000 platforms. Please consider calling MS SQL Server stored procedures from Dex sanscripts directly

12. eConnect programming. Again, eConnect was not available in 1999, eConnect was introduced for eCommerce developers in earlier 2000. eConnect is the set of encrypted stored procedures, assuming that you have already upgraded to GP 7.5, 8.0, 9.0 or 10.0

13. eEnterprise and Great Plains Software Dexterity traces. You should know that Dynamics.dic for eEnterprise is similar to the one for Dynamics for MS SQL Server. Dexterity places the following rules on MS SQL Server DB design: DEX_ROW_ID - this column is use in Dex internal logic, Dex.ini - here you place the instructions to Dexterity to log certain events

14. If Upgrade stalls. Typically this is due to inconsistent Company DB records. First consider check links rescue, however it doesn't work in 100% of the cases. If you don't have a luck with check links, then you will have to do manual data repair SQL scripting

15. Most Typical Pitfalls. GP Upgrade process is not easy and this is not because Microsoft Business Solutions has inefficient upgrade path, in the opposite - GP upgrade fails, due to the data inconsistency in your GP tables, typically in Purchase Order Processing: POP10110, POP30110 and IV10200

16. Manufacturing, Project Accounting, Fixed Assets special considerations. These mentioned modules were integrated with Great Plains Dynamics in late 1990th. PA was the result of MatchData purchase, Philippines base Dexterity development partner, GP Manufacturing was Icontrol Purchase, Fixed Assets module is the successor of Forestar FA application for GPS Dynamics.

17. Intellisol Advanced Purchase Order Processing and Project Accounting upgrade to GP PO Processing. To have you informed, Intellisol International, Australian based company tried to relocate to Fargo, ND in 1998. Then GPS negotiated with MatchData and Icontrol to purchase and incorporate their respective modules over Intellisol PA and Advanced POP. Intellisol APOP upgrade path is still available to GP 7.5, please contact us for further details

18. Mekorma Modules, This Los Angeles based software vendor was famous in GP secured check printing. Please contact Mekorma if your new intended for upgrade version of Mekorma GP is available

19. Local and State Tax calculation and filing partners, such as Avalara. Alba Spectrum initially helped Alalara to develop Avatax GP 7.0 and 7.5, later on Avalara decided to outsource Avatax development to India Great Plains Dexterity developers, where Alba Spectrum provided Avalara with Dex source code

20. French Canadian and European Dynamics GP ERP market. While French Canadian GP version 10.0 as well as Latin American Spanish version, German GP 10.0 version is scheduled to be phased out - in Germany and many of European countries Microsoft Axapta and Navision will be supported instead

If you like us to help you with GP upgrade, integration, software licenses, reporting, please give us a call

eEnterprise - Old Great Plains Software ERP Application Reactivation

Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum Group, http://www.albaspectrum.com - help@albaspectrum.com 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, serving customers USA/Canada nationwide: Illinois, California, New York, Quebec, Ontario, Colorado, Utah, Wisconsin, Florida, Texas. Local service is available in Houston & Dallas: Richmond, Sugar Land, Katy, Rosenberg, Missouri City, Pearland, Friendswood, Meadows, Mission Bend, Jersey Village, Fort Worth; serving GP customers in Chicago, IL: Naperville, Aurora, Joliet, Wheaton, Bolingbrook, Romeoville, Lyons, Niles, Downers Grove, Lisle, West Chicago, Barrington, Schaumburg, Elk Grove Village, Lombard, Morris, Ottawa, Marseilles, Seneca, Oswego, Plainfield, Darien, Winchester, Hinsdale.

ENTERPRISE PORTAL

When To Use Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms

With a number of emerging and competing standards for all the various mobile devices, it's tempting to look for a quick fix for your enterprise mobile needs. Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms (MEAPs) try to leverage established back-ends making them available to both iOS and Android (and theoretically, BlackBerry and WP7). This is a lofty goal and at some level MEAPs can be successful, but there are some important considerations while evaluating a MEAP-based solution.

Clearly define what you hope to accomplish with your mobile endeavor. If your goals require even a moderate amount of interaction between the device and the user, then a MEAP-based solution will probably fall short of user expectations. MEAPs have to function across multiple platforms with minor customization, and because of this "lowest common denominator" design requirement, the experience typically seems flat or cumbersome. A MEAP can't take advantage of architecture or conventions not common to all devices and it's those differences that attract people to iOS or Android or BlackBerry devices. Whether it's the full lexicon of gestures or some of the hardware advantages, none of these are available for a MEAP to use.

ENTERPRISE PORTAL

Be care when investing in specialized development. MEAPs are often proprietary, and customizing and maintaining them can be a specialized skill. Organizations will either have to rely on the vendor for help or invest in teaching these skills to personnel. Adding a new technology to your stack (even one that is supposed save you some work) comes with long-term ramifications. If what you're trying to accomplish is core to your business, a MEAP-based solution might be too much of a risk.

HTML 5 is coming. Because HTML5 is a standard that every mobile device will eventually have to support, it could be considered a MEAP. It's an evolving standard and doesn't take advantage of mobile device native features, but it's not proprietary and HTML5 skills will be easier to find in the future. The question with HTML5 is "when?" When will the standard solidify enough for the open source community to build the tools and features to make HTML5 development more than a curiosity?

When should you use a mobile enterprise application platform? MEAPs can be a good fit when you're trying to produce a simple mobile content portal for end users. The focus should be a quick, cost-effective way to leverage documentation and media from a mobile device. Avoid customization and keep user interaction minimal. Utilize the strength of the chosen MEAP, but don't be overly ambitious. Realize that when you're ready to move into a more serious enterprise mobile solution, you'll probably have to start from scratch to get it right.

When To Use Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms

For more information about mobile application development, visit Magenic Technologies who have been providing innovative custom software development to meet unique business challenges for some of the most recognized companies and organizations in the nation.

ENTERPRISE PORTAL

Application Performance Monitoring - Identify Issues and Prevent Down Time

Most organizations use some kind of network monitoring software to monitor network assets. A standard network monitoring system will track devices for uptime, bandwidth usage and monitor system performance. While this type of monitoring solution is beneficial for when issues occur on the network, it doesn't help when there is an issue with an application. Most large organizations have a wide variety of applications to support. Some of these applications include enterprise wide applications that every user has installed on their computer. When a critical application like this is not performing efficiently or cannot be accessed you can assure the helpdesk phones will be ringing. Having the right tools to monitor for application performance issues can be a life saver and prevent a flood of calls.

Why the need for Application Monitoring

ENTERPRISE PORTAL

Firstly, you need to be aware that application monitoring is not the same as monitoring the network. The simple way to explain the difference is that network monitoring tells you when users can't access an application. Application monitoring alerts you when an application is not working properly, even if users are capable to access it. For example, say all of the sudden your users cannot access Sharepoint. Your network monitoring software shows no problems on the network so you start troubleshooting the Sharepoint server. After taking the time to sift through the event logs and other various log files, you finally come across a service that had stopped on the server. The Network monitoring system could not tell us that, it just eliminated any issues on the network.

An application monitoring program would have alerted an administrator that something had failed on the server. Being able to swiftly identify issues with organizations applications will make the life of a systems administrator much easier. It also ensures that the applications are performing as expected.

Good application monitoring will give you an immediate visual overview of your applications, trend reporting, performance analysis and identify growth areas. All of this information is important when it comes to planning, meeting SLA's and finding problems before they bring about major outages.

How Application Monitoring Works

The easiest and most effect way to monitoring applications is by using a centralized monitoring server. Most enterprise monitoring systems will come with a centralized management console. This software is setup on a server that will collect data from the applications. This could be a Windows or a Linux server. The technique used to gather this data is done in one of two ways, either agent-push or a polling method.

The agent-push process is a locally installed agent on the server that sends its data to the centralized monitoring server. This method can often provide additional features but it does require more manual labor up front. These agents alone are an application and can fail or not work properly. This is why the polling method is the preferred choice.

The polling method uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) or simple network management protocol (SNMP) to poll data from the monitored apps. SNMP and WMI is simple to setup and you don't have to worry about keeping it updated.

Options for Monitoring Application Performance

When it comes to finding an application monitoring performance solution, you will discover there is a broad amount of options to choose from. It really is dependent on your needs. You can decide between standalone applications for monitoring single systems or Enterprise monitoring systems that can monitor all the applications in your organization. There are also open source and commercial application monitoring solutions. Its best to try out a mixture of products to determine what best fits your needs.

Here are a few features to look for:

• Monitoring performance: Monitor for CPU usage, memory usage, response time, disk I/O
• Alerting options: Send notifications through email, SNS, syslog, dashboards and more
• Web Console: It's nice to be able to access your monitoring system from any computer in the organization.
• Assign Rolls: Have the ability to give other users access to the monitoring system without being an admin.
• Reporting features: Having a powerful reporting solution helps to identify trends and potential issues.

Application Performance Monitoring - Identify Issues and Prevent Down Time

You can find more about Application Monitoring Performance & Tools as well as more information on network monitoring at Network Monitoring Software

ENTERPRISE PORTAL

WebSphere Application Server Features

WebSphere Application Server is a platform on which Java-based business applications run. WebSphere Application Server Is an implementation of the Java 2 Enterprise Edition(J2ee) Specification.

WebSphere Application Server provides services (database connectivity, threading, workload management, and so forth) that can be used by the business applications. The main element is the application server, a java process that encapsulates many services, including the containers, where business logic executes. If you are familiar with J2EE, you will recognize the Web Container and the EJB container. The Web container executes Servlets and JavaServer Pages(JSPs), both of which are java classes that generate markup to be viewed by a Web browser. Traffic into and out of the Web Container travels through the embedded HTTP Server. While Servlets and JSPs can act independently, they most commonly make calls to Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) to executes business logic or access data. EJBs, which run in the EJB container, are easily reusable java classes. They most commonly communicate with a relational database or other external source of application data, either returning that data to the Web container or making changes to the data on behalf of the servlet or JSP.

ENTERPRISE PORTAL

The JMS messaging engine is built into the application server. This is a pure-java messaging engine. JMS destinations, known as queues and topics provide asynchronous messaging services to the code running inside the containers, JMS will be covered in more depth later in this course.

As you will see in more detail later on, the web services engine enables application components to be exposed as web services, which can be accessed using Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).

Several other services run within the application server, including the dynamic cache, data replication, security, and others. These will be covered later in this course.

There are also some important components outside of the application server process.
WebSphere Application Server also provides a plug-in for HTTP servers that determines what HTTP traffic is intended to be handled by WebSphere, and routes the requests to the appropriate server. The plug-in is also a critical player in workload management of HTTP requests, as it can distribute the load to multiple application server, as well as steer traffic away from unavailable servers. It too roads its configuration from a special XML file.

One of the servervices provided within the application server is the admin service. This service allows for the ability to configure the application server. This files necessary for configuration are stored outside of the actual application server in a set of XML configuration files. There is an application that runs within the Web application-the admin console.

WebSphere Architecture Administration

There are two main tools used to administer WebSphere Application Server:1) The Administrative console, and 2) wsadmin command line tool.

The Server's Configuration is stored in a set of XML files, often referred to as the configuration repository. These files define the server itself, as well as resources and services that it provides. One of the services provided within the application server is the admin service. This service allows for the ability to configure the application server. The files necessary for configuration are stored outside of the actual application server in a set of XML configuration files. There is an application that runs within the Web container that provides user the ability to administer the application server via a Web application- the admin console. Here you see the communication from the browser all the way back to the XML configuration files. Wsadmin can be used to administer the application server in two ways. 1) Via SOAP by communicating with the embedded HTTP server. 2) By using RMI (the default) to communicate directly with the admin service.

One of the services provided within the application server is the admin service. This service allows for the ability to configure the application server. The files necessary for configuration are stored outside of the actual application server in a set of XML configuration files. There is an application that runs within the Web container that provides users the ability to administer the application server via a Web application-the admin console.

WebSphere profiles overview

Profiles are the way that you are allowed to run more than one application server on a single installation of WebSphere product files.

Profiles are sets of files that represent a WebSphere Application Server configuration. WebSphere Application Server files are split into two categories. 1) Product files Set of shared read-only static files or product binaries shared by any instances of the WebSphere Application Server product. 2) Configuration files (profiles) Set of user-customizable data files. Files include: WebSphere configuration, installed applications, resource adapters, properties, log files, and so forth. Each profile uses the same product files, Simpler than multiple WebSphere installations, Less disk space, Simplifies application of product updates.

Under the WebSphere installation directory there are subdirectories for each profile. In the example above there are two application servers running that are each configure by the files that exist within their own profile directory.

Network deployment runtime flow

The main theme with network deployment is distributed applications. While the "flow" of an application remains the same, there are significant additions to runtime of an application. Note the "Load balancer" this allows for multiple HTTP servers, users point there browsers to the load balancer and their request will be work load managed to an HTTP Server. Once the request hits one of these HTTP Servers, the HTTP Server plug-in will load balance the request between the application servers that it is configured to serve. Once the request enters the application server, the flow is identical to how it was in Express and Base. The Java clients requests to EJBs can also be work load managed so that the requests do not all hit one application server.

Network Deployment Administration Flow.

Each managed process, node agent, deployment manager starts with it's own set of configuration files. Deployment manager contains the MASTER configuration and application files. Any changes made at node agent or server level are local and will be overridden by the MASTER configuration at the next synchronization. The administrative console and wsadmin are still the two ways that the environment is administered. However, take note that these tools now talk to the deployment manager and NOT to the application servers directly. The communication of these commands flows from the tools to the deployment manager to the node agents, to the application servers. This allows administration of multiple nodes (each possibly containing multiple application servers) from a single focal point (the deployment manager).

There is ONE main repository for the configuration files within a cell, and those are associated with the deployment manager. All updates to the configuration files should go through the deployment manager. You will see in a moment how this process works. You should be very careful in connecting to an application server directly with wsadmin or the administrative console as any changes that are made to the configuration files are only temporary, they will be overwritten with the configuration files from the MASTER files.

Web Server custom plugin-cfg.xml

Web server definitions are created to allow the mapping of J2EE enterprise applications to specific Web servers. Can be done through the administrative console. Alternatively use the script generated during the installation of the plug-in which can automate the mapping of all the applications to the Web server configure .bat in bin. Mapping the applications to specific Web Servers will cause the custom plugin-cfg.xml files for only those Web servers to include the information for those applications. Web servers target specific applications running in a cell. Automatically generated by the deployment manager. Just as modules for an enterprises application need to be mapped to one or more application servers, they also need to be mapped to one or more Web servers.

J2EE Packaging

A J2EE application is packaged in an Enterprise Archive, a file with a.EAR extension. The application has a deployment descriptor, shown here as DD, allowing configuration to a specific container's environment when deployed. The application can include one or more modules. J2EE components are grouped in modules, and each module has its own deployment descriptor. EJB modules group related EJBs in a single module, and are packaged in Java Archive (JAR) files. Note that there is only deployment descriptor for all of the EJBs in the module. Web modules group servlet class files, JSPs, HTML files and images. They are packaged in Web Application Archive (WAR) files. Application client modules are packaged in Java Archive (JAR) files. Resource Adapters may be packaged to the application server or within an application .EAR file.

Assembling an enterprise application

When working with a workspace handed over by development, no assembly is required (already done automatically by tool). If your developers use IBM tools you may receive an existing, working workspace folder for final configuration and deployment. In this case the individual WAR and JAR files are not required as they already exist as part of the workspace. When working with workspaces all you need to do when starting AST, is point to the root directory of the workspace. If you receive the individual WAR and JAR files, which are the modules for the application, you will need to point AST to an empty workspace which will hold the Enterprise application's workspace. You only do this the first time, thereafter you just point AST to this newly created workspace directory. In this last scenario, assembly is just the action of importing the files containing the modules and associating them with the Enterprise Application. The end result is an EAR file, which contains all the modules and their deployment descriptors. The EAR file can then be installed (or deployed) to an application server.

Creating a data source

Installed applications that must interact with relational databases use JDBC providers for data access. Together, the JDBC provider and data source objects are functionally equivalent to the J2EE Connector architecture (JCA) connection factory (which provides access to non-relational databases). Installed applications use a data source to access the data from the database. A data source is associated with a JDBC provider that supplies the specific JDBC driver implementation class. The data source represents the J2EE Connector Architecture (JCA) connection factory for the relational adapter. Application components use the data source to access connection instances to a specific database; a connection pool is associated with each data source. You can create multiple data sources with different settings, and associate them with the same JDBC provider. (One reason to do this is to provide access to different databases.) JDBC providers that are supported by WebSphere Application Server are required to implement one or both of the following data source interfaces, which are defined by Sun Microsystems. The interfaces enable the application to run in a single-phase or two-phase transaction protocol.

WebSphere Application Server logs

Java virtual machine (JVM) Logs

The JVM logs are created by redirecting the System.out and System.err streams of the JVM to independent log files. WebSphere Application Server writes formatted messages to the System.out stream. In addition, applications and other code can write to these streams using the print() and printIn() methods defined by the streams. In the case of a WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment configuration, JVM logs are also created for the deployment manager and each node agent because they also represent JVMs.

Process Logs

WebSphere Application Server processes contain two output streams that are accessible to native code running in the process. These streams are the stdout and stderr streams. Native code, including Java virtual machines (JVM), might write data to these process streams. In addition, JVM provided System.out and System.err streams can be configured to write their data to these streams also. As with JVM logs, there is a set of process logs for each application server, since each JVM is an operating system process, and in the case of a WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment configuration, a set of process logs for the deployment manager and each node agent.

IBM Service Logs

The IBM Service log contains both the WebSphere Application Server messages that are written to the System.out stream and some special messages that contain extended service information that is normally not of interest, but can be important when analyzing problems. There is one service log for all WebSphere Application Server JVMs on a node, including all application servers. The IBM Service log is maintained in a binary format and requires a special tool to view. This viewer, the AST Log and Trace Analyzer, provides additional diagnostic capabilities. In addition, the binary format provides capabilities that are utilized by IBM support organizations. The HTTP server plug-in log will be covered later in this presentation.

Wsadmin Introduction

Wsadmin provides scripting capabilities and command-line administration. Common operational and configuration tasks can be performed from scripts and the command line instead of through the administrative console. The WebSphere Application Server wsadmin tool provides the ability to execute scripts. You can use the wsadmin tool to manage a WebSphere Application Server V6.1 installation. This tool uses the Bean Scripting Framework (BSF), which supports a variety of scripting languages to configure and control your WebSphere Application Server installation. The wsadmin launcher makes administrative objects available through language specific interfaces. Scripts use these objects for application management, configuration, operational control, and for communication with MBeans running in WebSphere server process. Wsadmin acts as an interface to Java objects for access by scripts. Wsadmin uses the same interface (through JMX) as the administrative console to make configuration changes and control servers

There a many levels that are involed in security an environment. WebSphere only provides part of the total security that needs to be applied. Things like file system security still need to be taken into account to protect things like your configuration files and keyrings. Operating System Security - The security infrastructure of the underlying operating system provides certain security service to the WebSphere Security Application. This includes the file system security support to secure sensitive files in WebSphere product installation. The WebSphere system administrator can configure the product to obtain authentication information directly from the operating system user registry, for example the NT Security Access Manager.

WebSphere Application Server Features

Bommasani HariPrasad

ENTERPRISE PORTAL