( Updated review to give more product info., features & feature usage experience)
Product Description
Web Sphere Application Server (WSA) is an Enterprise Java server from IBM. It is mainly used for hosting enterprise Java applications. The direct users of this tool are enterprise Java (J2EE) programmers & system admins.
The end users are non-technical web surfers who just get to see web sites running on this tool (without even realising that it is being run on WSA)
Product features
I have used version 3.5.x version of this product in one of my projects.
It comes in three flavors
1) Professional - Just Java servlets/JSPs ( as good as having free Apache Tomcat engine)
2) Advanced - Professional edition features + EJB 1.1 ( partial)
3) Enterprise - Advanced edition features + CORBA support ( matters only for those with significant investment in this legacy technology)
( I have used ''Enterprise Edition'' of WSA in my project)
In addition to these it also comes with an HTTP (Web) server called ''IBM HTTP Server''. This is nothing but a ''plagiarised'' copy of free Apache web server branded as ''IBM'' ( offers no additional features).
There is no integration between HTTP server & WSA. Each needs to be setup, configured & run separately.
Installation
Requires (mandates) IBM DB2 (database app) to be installed before installing Enterprise editions.
Doesn't ask too many questions (options). After installation requires an immediate re-boot. Runs a command-line script to install WSA specific tables in DB2 ( actually a WSA database). Don't kill this black DOS window. If you do WSA won't even startup.
Looks simple but sometimes fails for no apparent reason.
Uninstallation
Uninstaller doesn't clean up WSA tables from DB2. These tables ( database to be precise) needs to be manually dropped after running the Uninstaller
Programming tool support
Provides integration with IBM VisualAge (enterprise edition).
But due to licencing issues we had to be content using F4J CE 2.0 (Forte for Java Community Edition). There was no integration available with F4J.
Application (project/product) deployment
Requires pre-processing with a proprietary tool called ''Jet Ace''. Jet Ace is built around Java swing & hence slow.
We found a non-GUI (command line) way of running this pre-processor using (Jet Ace proprietory) XML file. That gave us a 10X speed improvement.
No automated wizard was available for application (project) deployment. It was a very manual process.
Deployment would often fail for no reason forcing us to clean up & restart (try & try again, at last you will succeed)
Configuration /Set up
It comes with a PC Admin client & Web (HTML) admin client to configure the server (install apps etc.). The PC client is built using Java ( mainly Swing GUI ) & is very slow. Web client was faster but didn't support configuring EJBs.
It also supports TCL (Tool command Language) scripting to automate application installation & configuration. But little help or information was available as how to do this. Finally when we did it, it was extremely slow , much slower than PC client. If PC client took 20 mins TCL took an hour.
Criminal Wastage of Money ( my personal experience & earlier review)
My company being a ''IBM Shop'' I have had the pleasure of working with this yet another enterprise tool from the IBM.
As a designer/developer I found this to be the buggiest J2EE server in the market. It was not even fully J2EE compliant (as of 3.5.x)
Things often didn't work the way they are supposed to. It often crashed for no reason. IBM help was pathetic to say the least (took months to get any semblance of a help).
Whenever it crashed we had to re-install the app to make it work!!!
We were also forced to apply the buggy fix packs right in the middle of our project ( some bug in IBM licencing!!!). After applying the patches the server crashed badly. It took us 3 days to get it working again.
After the project was over I became the unofficial WS installation/trouble shooting consultant for other unfortunate projects using this app.
I don't know why companies invest so much money on this bloated buggy server, when they can get WebLogic (best commercial J2EE server) for the same price.