Overall Satisfaction with WebSphere Application Server
My team was responsible for developing and customizing IBM Maximo applications. The IBM WebSphere servers were used to deploy IBM Maximo EAR files. WebSphere was used deploy the Maximo software for the client. It was only used by teams implementing IBM Maximo and also as per the client's requests.
- The IBM WebSphere console provides easy steps to deploy the Maximo EAR files on the server.
- It provides a simple wizard to set up the server for a Maximo application. It guides you step by step from selecting the server type (Database, Directory and J2EE ), the setup server and node details, server administrative details, and port setting. It would automatically deploy it on the target machine.
- The IBM Websphere console would behave erratically at times. When starting or stopping the server the small red and green icons would often take time to change even though the server would have started or stopped.
- When deploying the EAR files, the logs are displayed. In case the window is closed or you click on any other link on the console there is no way you can get the console log page back. You will have to keep refreshing the deployed resources page in order to figure out if the deployment is complete or not.
- When changing the status of the servers, no intermediate status is shown. Most of the time it works fine, as stated in the first point it would behave erratically. When the status changed the page would suddenly get refreshed and the icon colour gets updated. An acknowledgement and and console log like the once shown in deployment would be helpful.
- It's a robust platform for deploying Java EE applications like IBM Maximo. It's easy to set up and maintain.
- There are plugins that add load balancing capabilities to IBM WebSphere. It is very helpful when setting up a clustered environment.
- Only a single deployment is required and it takes care of the deployment across the various node/clusters.