IBM WebSphere Application Server 6.1 is now available for download for customers with IBM contracts (as reported by WebSphere world), the free trial version for the rest of the community will be coming soon. This release comes over a year and a half since version 6.0 came out. The release includes important features for developers and also brings WebSphere more up to date as an SOA / web services integration platform.
A lot is new in Websphere 6.1, the most notable for the Java and SOA community being the following:
- Java 5 is finally supported, see IBM migration guide
- JSF 1.1, and a new Java Server Faces Widget Library (JWL), a JSF-based Web widget library that integrates widgets from a number of sources
- 64 bit support
- The Portlet programming model (JSR 168)
- Installation as a non-root users on Linux & Unix
- WebSphere 6.1 can be managed via JMX client progams through support of JSR 160
- The JMS implementation added in WebSphere 6 can use the file system for persistence instead of a DB
- Support for SIP Servlets
- An enhanced EJB Service Data Object (SDO) Mediator, eliminating the need to define copy helper type objects.
- An administrative console that allows hot-updating of EARs, wars, ejb-jars, or connector .rars
- Debugging enhancements from the IBM Java 5 SDK
- WS-I Basic Security Profile 1.0 support
- WS-Notification support allowing ‘publish and subscribe’ messaging pattern
- WS-Addressing
- WS-Atomic Transactions and WS-BusinessActivity (allowing Web services to take part in global transactions with ACID properties that can span between JTA and J2EE and WS-AT/Web services domains).
See also the Websphere 6.1 Infocenter.
A lot is new in Websphere 6.1, the most notable for the Java and SOA community being the following:
- Java 5 is finally supported, see IBM migration guide
- JSF 1.1, and a new Java Server Faces Widget Library (JWL), a JSF-based Web widget library that integrates widgets from a number of sources
- 64 bit support
- The Portlet programming model (JSR 168)
- Installation as a non-root users on Linux & Unix
- WebSphere 6.1 can be managed via JMX client progams through support of JSR 160
- The JMS implementation added in WebSphere 6 can use the file system for persistence instead of a DB
- Support for SIP Servlets
- An enhanced EJB Service Data Object (SDO) Mediator, eliminating the need to define copy helper type objects.
- An administrative console that allows hot-updating of EARs, wars, ejb-jars, or connector .rars
- Debugging enhancements from the IBM Java 5 SDK
- WS-I Basic Security Profile 1.0 support
- WS-Notification support allowing ‘publish and subscribe’ messaging pattern
- WS-Addressing
- WS-Atomic Transactions and WS-BusinessActivity (allowing Web services to take part in global transactions with ACID properties that can span between JTA and J2EE and WS-AT/Web services domains).
See also the Websphere 6.1 Infocenter.