What local web and webdev feature for WAS 7.0 E1 V9.0 TR 8.98.4.10?

Hey JDEList,

I could really use your input. I need to get upgraded to WAS 7.0 before support for WAS 6.1 ends at the end of September. I was going through MTRs and gathering documents and realized that I can't find that there is a webdev feature or support for WAS 7.0 Express on the webdev client for testing with the local web. I am baffled how Oracle can support WAS 7.0 for HTML server for 8.98.3+ without this or a workaround. Can you test using the WAS 6.1 Express and webdev feature? I have a case open with Oracle, but haven't gotten a clear answer yet. I searched and found several posts on the webdev client and issues, but not this one.

Anyone out there care to share any solutions for local web for webdev for WAS 7.0 on 8.98.3+, V9.0?

My other option is to upgrade to TR 8.98.4.12 to get support for WAS 8.5 and WAS 8.5 express in the next month. We will probably upgrade to TR 9.1.x.x next year and I will move to WAS 8.5 64-bit then.

Anybody out there on V9.0 TR 8.98.4.11+ and WAS 8.5 on Windows and if so, would you recommend upgrading to this version of WAS now versus WAS 7.0?

Allow me to suggest a solution:

Use OC4J for the local webdev instead of WebSphere Express. It has a smaller install footprint and works just fine in a "WebSphere environment". I have done this with most of my WebSphere sites over the last few years. In the distant past I think there may have been a difference in serialized object format depending on which JAS platform you were using but that is not the case now. Further the WebDev client will serialize into its own local spec database and not touch the serialized objects in the Central Object DB. You could argue that unit testing against OC4J and then deploying in PY in WebSphere could result in WebSphere-specific issues being found after unit testing. It is a valid argument but the chances of that kind of issue are slight.

In the case of Weblogic as the target JAS server OC4J is the recommended local JAS platform. I think this validates the mixed approach for WebSphere as well.

I think in the future we are going to do local testing and install OC4J like Justin mentioned. When we upgraded to Websphere version 7 we ran ended up using Websphere 6.1 Express with Fixpack 41.

shurtle,
We are WAS 7.0, TR 8.98.4.11, E1 9.0 and, as Justin suggests, we went with OC4J after attempting to make WAS Express work on our clients.

Our stumbling block with WAS Express was that, when installed on our development clients, the ER debugger would hang. I was determined to keep my environment as consistent as possible by using WAS Express but even Oracle indicated in Doc ID 1301062.1 and Bug Number 16417591 that this was one of several outstanding issues and the work around was to use OC4J instead of WAS Express. I reluctantly implemented OC4J, but in reality it really shouldn't make much of a difference as Justin stated. And so far, it hasn't.

Thanks so much for the input everyone!! I think I will try using OC4J as you all recommend. FYI, I finally got an answer from JDE and they recommended using WAS 6.1 Express and just copying the JDK from WAS 7 to the webdev feature. I am asking them about using OC4J. After my own experiences with WAS 6.1 express, reading about others problems and reading about WAS 8.5 Express having to be installed under same user as JDE developer, I may just keep OC4J after we upgrade to WAS 8.5 and TR 9.1.x! Someday I would like to move to Weblogic, but that won't happen until we can do it without Oracle charging us or they force us to change.

Regards,
Sandy

Sandy,

The last upgrade I did that required WAS 8.5, we also used OC4J for the local WebDev. It's just easier and as others have said, less of a footprint.

WAS Express can be an issue for customers who are running Business Services Server (BSSV) and require IBM RAD to be installed on the dev workstations. It conflicts with WAS Express, so in those cases, we'd generally recommend separate machines or VM's for the BSSV DEV clients, or use OC4J and RAD together on a single dev client machine.

Just make sure you keep the data source as local; if someone comments that section out of their local jdbj.ini, it will go to the shared serialized object tables in Central Objects - or wherever you have them mapped via OCM. Then you can run into issues with serialization.

WAS 8.5 is supported now using IBM JDK 7 64-bit, whereas you'd be using a completely different JDK with OC4J (likely Oracle JDK 1.6 32-bit.)

Thanks, Charles. We are not currently running BSSV, so I don't have that worry.