theoretical tech stuff

I have been doing consulting work with IBM Rational Automation Framework (old WICA) for a few years now, but never posted anything on it. This is a very basic WAS restart project. The reason for using the Build Forge (BF) web interface and terminology vs. the RAF Client (Eclipse based) is that when building such projects you need to think about your end users. In this case, WAS system administrators, that have no RAF experience. The BF web interface is the appropriate tool for external customers, easy to access and use without having to install the RAF Client. The RAF Client has its strengths and limitations and in my opinion it should be used only by the experienced RAF developer or user. 1. Create RAF Project 1.1 Login into BF/RAF web interface 1.2 Go to Console tab and click on Projects. 1.3 Enter a Name for your project and click Save:     1.4 Go to Console tab and click on Projects.  1.5 Click on newly created FEP_SERVER_RESTART_DEMO   1.6 Create ...

This is a very good IBM article on how to get started with your own custom theme for WebSphere Portal 8:  Deploying and developing IBM WebSphere Portal 8 themes: A step-by-step guide A couple of notes: While the article is mentioning RAD as a preffered tool, I was successfully able to use Eclipse IDE (with the WAS 8 server connector plugin provided by IBM).  I was working on Linux and I used the command line to mount the WebDAV shares ( WebDav Client on Linux ). You can also use Nautilus to connect to the WebDAV shares. 

This question comes up a lot... Is there any way to create portlets for IBM WebSphere Portal if I do not have RAD available?  Rational Application Developer is the IDE of choice for IBM WebSphere Portal developers. There are a lot of advantages of using RAD for portal development (see link above for tech specs). There is a 30 days trial available for download if you would like to try it and great news for all the Apple fans:), it now works on Mac OS. However, IBM is showing you how to create a portlet form the command line:  Creating a simple portlet . Compiling would require a few Portal libraries. So if you have a portal install available and would like to give it a try, follow the following steps. This is a cheat sheet to the already existing IBM documentation above: Note: I am assuming that you are on Linux machine and there is a Portal v8 installed. Hard core portal developers that do not need all the bell and whistles of RAD can use the light weight...

This is a sample code snippet inserted in the Default.jsp: <c:if test="${ifLoggedIn}"><li class="lotusFirst">     <%       com.ibm.portal.puma.User portalUser= (com.ibm.portal.puma.User)request.getAttribute(com.ibm.portal.RequestConstants.REQUEST_USER_OBJECT);      String user = portalUser.get("displayName").toString();             %>  <span class="lotusUser">Hello&nbsp;<%=user%></span></li> </c:if>

WebSphere Portal Install Failure Due To Insufficient Space In /tmp Assuming that you have enough disk space on a different partition outside the /tmp one, do this for a temporary fix: 1. Create new tmp directory on your partition with more than enough disk space (i.e. /data in my case) mkdir /data/tmp 2. Bind the two: mount --bind /data/tmp /tmp 3. Set proper permissions: chmod 477 /data/tmp 4. Voila! 5. OPTIONAL: For permanent change add to you /etc/fstab: /data/tmp  /tmp  none  defaults,bind  0  0

Temporary fix: ulimit -n 65536 Permanent fix: 1. Edit /etc/security/limits.conf 2. Add the folowing lines:   *    soft    nofile    65536   *    hard    nofile    65536 3. Reboot NOTE: It seems that 65536 might be a better value. In some cases 10240 still gives 'Too many open files' error.

Read :: Realizing an IBM WebSphere Portal farm topology on the Amazon Cloud This sounds really good! While the concept is not new, it is new for the WebSphere Portal. However, there are some logical questions deriving from the article: 1. What is the Amazon Cloud/IBM licensing model for such setup? Initially, Amazon and IBM partnership required a full license for each instance of Portal. Now there is an option to pay per usage and the prices are ranging from $7.26 to $27.93 per hour, depending on the type of instance chosen. :: Here are the available Amazon Cloud's IBM instances type and their pricing information 2. Ok, my company might use Amazon Cloud for our production Websphere needs, but what about the development part? Amazon and IBM has a :: Development AMIs for ISVs program, where no license fees will be collected for development activities on available IBM software instance types. 3. Is WebSphere Portal moving away from the clustering concept? Likely not, ho...