IBM WebSphere(R) Application Server for Distributed Platforms and z/OS(R) : An Administrator's Guide

Rating:
Summary: good cross OS reference
Review: "IBM WebSphere Application Server for Distributed Platforms and z/OS" from IBM Press targets WAS admins. The book covers WAS 5.0 and 5.1, highlighting the differences. It covers almost every OS: UNIX, Linux, Windows and Z/OS. A differentiating factor from other books is that the authors focus on Network Deployment throughout, starting with chapter 2.

One thing to note is that there is a lot of duplicated information. Five (out of 26) chapters have separate chapters for distributed and Z/OS. The remaining 16 chapters, sprinkle distributed and Z/OS differences within. In a way, it is two books in one. However, if you are only using one type of OS, the book is thicker and more expensive than necessary.

The authors are quite thorough in discussing most options. They also refer to the InfoCenter, papers and redbooks for more details. There are also many tips and gotchas in each chapter. The step-by-step instructions and screenshots are very helpful.

A running example shows the steps for deploying, configuring and maintaining a sample application. The app is of sufficient complexity to seem real. Tools such as MQ, ASDK and wsadmin are shown in parallel.

The authors intend for each chapter to stand alone. As a result, there is a fair amount of repetition. Aside of one dependency on a future chapter, the book reads well linearly too. This book serves a good reference and I recommend it to those maintaining both distributed and Z/OS systems.

Rating:
Summary: a unified platform
Review: For several years, IBM has built up and refined WebSphere as one of its flagship products. Here is its latest sysadmin manual. The size of which is a good indicator of the capabilities built into it.

Maybe the biggest change from earlier versions is how much of the code base for versions running under (linux, unix, MS Windows) has now been unified with that for z/OS. The immediate and ongoing beneficiary of this is IBM itself; greatly simplifying maintenance and extensions. Opaque to outsiders. But to a WebSphere sysadmin, you also benefit. Because basically most operations are true across these operating systems, it increases your marketability.

The only minor omission I could find in the text is that the chapter on Web Services could need enhancement. Or, rather, that WebSphere itself have greater Web Services ability. The latter field is changing rapidly and perhaps WebSphere deliberately wants to stay a pace behind, in order to see what new features are actually useful, before implementing them. For example, Business Process Execution Language is rising, as a more expressive language than WSDL, to describe Web Services. If BPEL persists, perhaps the next version of WebSphere might support it?