IE7 and Firefox 2.0

October 11th, 2006

The Register reports that IE7 is due to be released later this month. The pressure is on for Firefox, with Release Candidate 2 of Version 2 released last week.

WebSphere ESB 6.0.2

October 11th, 2006

As Adrian notes, WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus Version 6.0.2 has now been announced for release around the end of the year. As I hinted in an earlier entry , this will include a new mediation primitive to provide integration with WebSphere Service Registry and Repository to enable the dynamic selection of endpoints at runtime. There should also be less need to use WebSphere Integration Developer to make pre-deployment modifications with the ability to alter endpoints and mediation primitive properties administratively.

One particularly welcome piece of functionality is the extension of the JMS bindings to support WebSphere MQ in addition to the default messaging provider. This, along with the WebSphere MQ bindings, means it is possible to connect directly to WebSphere MQ without first going through the service integration bus. This is important given the current complexity of configuring a highly available WebSphere MQ link on the bus. It also fits with a message that I have been trying to give to WebSphere Applications Server customers: only go through the service integration bus to reach WebSphere MQ if it adds value to your solution.

WS-Notification

October 11th, 2006

Continuing my series of posts on new functionality in WebSphere Application Version 6.1, today I’m looking Web Services Notification (WS-Notification). For those with a messaging background, WS-Notification basically provides publish/subscribe capabilities for Web services i.e. a one-to-many relationship between client and service.

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Oxford City Race

October 11th, 2006

Christine’s coaching blog entry on navigating at speed, provides the perfect excuse to plug the Oxford City Race. This event, previously postponed a number of times, is due to take place on the 4 November, making for an excellent weekend of competition with the SOC November Classic the following day. The courses are set to take in much of Oxford city centre and permission has been specially negotiated to pass through a number of colleges and other academic areas. We used parts of the map for an OUOC/JOK event last year and, despite knowing Oxford well, there were enough complex route choices to force an error or two. Best of all, there is an excellent online entry system (if I don’t say so myself!).

Message ordering

October 10th, 2006

One subject that keeps cropping up with customers is the subject of message order. Now I’ll say up front, having a requirement to maintain the order of messages in an application is a bad thing. If messages can’t be processed in parallel due to ordering constraints then the resulting application is unlikely to scale and high availability will be difficult to achieve. This, however, doesn’t seem to stop people wanting it, so here’s a few things you should know about message order and the service integration bus.

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Tightened bus security

October 9th, 2006

Another area of the service integration bus which has seen some significant changes in WebSphere Application Server Version 6.1 is that of security. For starters, the option for bus security has always been checked by default but it is only enforced when global security is enabled. To reduce the confusion, this option is now greyed out in the administration console if global security is not enabled.

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Explore IBM Hursley

October 9th, 2006

As reported over on eightbar, there is a nice little flash map allowing you to explore the IBM Hursley site. When there, I can be found lurking in D Block.

Hursley Post Office opening hors

October 9th, 2006

Hursley Post Office has joined the 21st century with a new website. They don’t seem quite sure when they are open but, importantly, they do know when they are closed for lunch (usually when I try to go!).