2nd and 3rd day of the WAS V6.1 STEW

At this point, I’ve gone through a few more labs and gone into a little more depth as to what has changed in our beloved application server (which I’ve met for the first time at v2.0… wow! How time flies…)

I thought I’d share with you some of the details which may not be obvious from the marketing propaganda we have out there…

• We can run portlets using JSR-168, but you’ll still need portal if you need all the bells and whistles associated with portals: security, personalization, aggregation, tooling, etc.
• Security is now enabled out of the box. You have to un-check it at time of installation, if you don’t want/need it.
• Non-root installation is now possible. But be aware that if you do it, only that user can install/update from that point on.
• We now offer a choice between CDs or DVD for medias. Yeah… no more 80+ CD packages!
• We now use IBM’s Integrated Solutions Console (ISC), which provides a personalized admin console, and allows for the logging of activities for either security reasons or to paste into Jython scripts.
• The Installation factory is a new feature allowing you to update any WAS server with a single ‘cd image’, and knowing all required fixpacks, refresh packs and/or upgrades will be applied properly.

Well, that’s it for now. We’ll probably have a download available on IBM DeveloperWorks soon, so you can try out these new features for yourself.