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Simplified Administration for IBM WebSphere Application Server
A platform-independent and WebSphere version-independent tool that provides an administrator-friendly scripting language for WebSphere Application Server.
Date Posted: December 14, 2004
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What is Simplified Administration for WebSphere Administration Server (SA4WAS)?
SA4WAS is a platform-independent and WebSphere version-independent tool that provides an administrator-friendly scripting language for WebSphere® Application Server. It simplifies the writing of Tool Command Language (TCL) configuration scripts in WebSphere Versions 4, 5, and 5.1 by providing a syntax that is simple but powerful. Typical SA4WAS scripts are considerably smaller than corresponding scripts written in WebSphere control program (WSCP) and WebSphere administration (WSAdmin) tools.
SA4WAS helps solve two problems: script simplification and script migration.
- Simplification: WSadmin configuration scripts can be large and difficult to write. By contrast, SA4WAS scripts are smaller and simpler to write.
- Migration: Ordinarily, scripts written in WebSphere 4's WSCP language cannot be migrated to Version 5's WSadmin; they must be rewritten. However, scripts written in SA4WAS are migratable or require only small changes.
SA4WAS comprises a JAR file containing the SA4WAS code, installation scripts for UNIX® and Windows®; an Administrator's Guide, including installation instructions, full command syntax and examples; and a Maintainer's Guide to help developers extend it further. SA4WAS covers configuration of application servers, clusters, enterprise applications, JDBC drivers, data sources, generic message providers and their queues and connections, resource adapters and their queues and connections, virtual hosts, and mail providers.
How does it work?
SA4WAS presents a flattened view of the attribute hierarchy, thereby avoiding the necessity of navigating through object hierarchies to find the desired object for modification. For example, to update the maximum heap size of an application server in WSAdmin, one must know that this attribute is in the JavaVirtualMachine object of the application server's ProcessDefinition, whereas in WSCP it is in the JVMConfig object of the application server. In SA4WAS, the script writer need only know that the attribute is called maxheap and SA4WAS takes care of the navigation.
SA4WAS runs inside the JACL (TCL) implementations of both WSCP and WSAdmin; thus it presents the same language regardless of which WebSphere version is being used. SA4WAS attributes are defined in configuration files, one file per main object (such as application servers and JDBC providers), where each attribute definition contains the navigation path for reaching the target object.
Some examples of SA4WAS commands will demonstrate its easy use compared with WSAdmin and WSCP:
| scope node mynod |
;# set the scope for subsequent cmds |
| appserv show myserver +urlrw +minheap |
;# show two attributes of "myserver" |
| appserv modify myserver +minheap 64 +maxheap 128 |
;# set the min and max heap sizes |
| dsource modify mydsrc -jdbcdrv myjdbc +maxconnections 50 |
;# set the max connections for a data source |
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| | About the technology author(s):
Andrew Simms is a consulting IT specialist with IBM Software Group Services for WebSphere (ISSW), based in the UK. After 25 years in application design and development and middleware product design, Mr. Simms joined IBM in 1999 as a technical consultant for customers in the DCE, Encina, and WebSphere Application Server products. He works largely on the production side rather than development side of the industry. SA4WAS arose out of an assignment to find a way of writing configuration scripts that would be highly portable across WebSphere platforms and would ease the burden on the script writer.
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