Partitioning Facility Editor for WebSphere Extended Deployment
An Eclipse plug-in that enables users to create partitions.xml files that can be used to define a WASXD application's partitions and partition expressions.
Date Posted: February 18, 2005
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What is Partitioning Facility Editor for WebSphere Extended Deployment?
The Partitioning Facility Editor for WebSphere® Extended Deployment (PFE for WebSphere XD) is an Eclipse plug-in that enables users to create partitions.xml files that can be used to define a WASXD application's partitions and partition expressions.
WASXD is shipped with a function called WPF (WebSphere Partitioning Facility) that divides back-end data requests for increased performance and data consistency. Client requests are partitioned along strategic data boundaries, enabling the application to make assumptions about how data is accessed. For example, an application may be more aggressive in caching data elements if it is safe to assume that any particular data element is cached only in one application server. In this way, data consistency mechanisms can be relaxed to eliminate most serialization overhead. For HTTP, requests are routed to the appropriate back-end application server via a subcomponent of WASXD called the On-Demand Router (ODR).
The partitions.xml file describes how an application's data is divided so that the ODR may route HTTP requests to the appropriate back end. This file includes a list of defined partitions as well as partition expressions that express, with the use of regular expressions, how partition names are extracted from incoming HTTP requests.
How does it work? The editor includes functionality that allows users to generate regular expressions that extract the portion of the HTTP request used to build the partition name. That is, given an HTTP URI and query string, a user can invoke the plug-in in order to generate the appropriate regular expression by simply selecting the portion of the HTTP requests that describes the partition name. Given these expressions and a list of valid partitions, the plug-in generates the corresponding partitions.xml file to be packaged with the J2EE application.
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| | About the technology author(s):
Lou Degenaro has been a software engineer at IBM since 1981, shifting to IBM Research in 1988. His interests are in the areas of systems, distributed computing, and middleware. He has been an integral part of many successful projects, including WebSphere Partitioning Facility For Extended Deployment, Business Rule Beans, Accessible Business Rules (the foundation for WebSphere Personalization), Life Underwriting Workstation, MPIF/6000, Load Leveler, DFSMS/VM, and Distributed Dirmaint for VM. Mr. Degenaro holds several U.S. patents and has co-authored several papers for prestigious conferences (see the Advanced Enterprise Middleware Web site). He received the Master of Computer Engineering degree from Syracuse University in 1985 and the Bachelor of Computer Science degree from SUNY Oswego in 1979.
Judah Diament joined IBM Research in 2000 after spending time as a software engineer in the telecommunications and banking industries. His interests include intelligent tools for both developers and "laymen," as well as middleware architecture. Mr. Diament received his Masters of Computer Science degree from New York University in September 2000.
Adolfo Rodriguez is a member of IBM's WebSphere Technology Institute and an Assistant Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Duke University where he teaches networking courses. At IBM, he works on novel technologies that drive emerging applications, architecture, and systems. Dr. Rodriguez's recent contributions include projects in the areas of the WebSphere Partitioning Facility, XML processing, and application-oriented networking. His interests primarily consist of networking and distributed systems, application middleware, overlays, and J2EE architecture. He has written 12 books and numerous research articles. Dr. Rodriguez holds four degrees from Duke University: a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics, a Master of Science in Computer Science, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science (Systems).
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