Professional IBM WebSphere 5. 0 Applicationa Server

Overview

In order to deploy, secure, and administer a WebSphere production environment, it is helpful to first have an idea of the different ways WebSphere can be configured to solve your business needs.

While WebSphere runs straight out of the box as a single server, it can be configured and extended into a variety of different multi-server topologies, ranging in span and reach from small to large networks, and ranging in scale and scope to include clustered configurations and EIS integration.

In this chapter, we will take a closer look at the major elements that compose a WebSphere Application Server configuration, plus the objectives and benefits of several common WebSphere topologies. To do this we will walk through several different topics areas:

• WebSphere product packages In this topic area, we will identify the different WebSphere product packages and what they are for.

• Key topography terms Here, we will introduce vocabulary to help us understand the elements that are installed by the different WebSphere packages. We will also use these terms in the topography overviews, which appear at the end of this chapter.

• Application server anatomy In this section, we will take a detour from discussing the application server as a black box, and take a look at its major components. While this information does not pertain strictly to a discussion of topology, we believe an understanding of the application server's major components rounds out your understanding of the application server itself, and may in some ways color your view of how servers inter-relate generally, in multi-server topographies.

• Topography overviews Here, we will survey several topographical models in which WebSphere is commonly configured. We will also talk about which of these topographies would make sense for our sample application, Plants-By-WebSphere.