Sunday, 4 February 2007

WebSphere Portal Express v6 - First Thoughts

Well, the installation went well - I used a 2 GB VMware image, running on my home Athlon64 server ( running OpenSuSE 10.2 ).

No major problems with the installation, although I did find it strange that the DB2 installation prompted me to reboot the PC whilst, at the same time, the Portal installation had just completed and was prompting me to access the portal via the First Steps menu.

Other than that, I did see an issue where the server startup would appear to fail ( more details to come ) due to a problem with the OS setting ServicesPipeTimeout. However, the server actually worked OK - it was merely an issue with the fact that it runs as a Windows service ( NOTE; the installation doesn't give you the choice of service/no service - however, it is a manual, rather than automatically started, service.

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/824344 re the ServicesPipeTimeout hack. I'll post the error messages later .......

First impressions of WP6X (!) - looks very nice, the initial site offers intranet and internet pages, and a slightly different dynamic launch menu.

Also noted that WP6X is based on WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment ( WAS ND ) rather than WebSphere Process Server, which kinda makes sense. Also noticed that the Portal version is actually 6.0.0.1.

Only other comment at this time - the automatic DB2 installation is very nice, and almost invisible ( apart from the need for a reboot ).

More to come .....

Comments:
I am a newcomer to the IBM Portal world. From what I read so far, the default database being installed is Cloudscape and you do not have a choice to select anything else during the installation process (I would like to use an existing DB2 database). I also read that a Cloudscape to DB2 migration is necessary in order to have the Portal with DB2. (My platform SLES 9 Linux on z/VM, WAS 6.0.2.9 , Portal 6.0).
Is this true?
Regards,
 
Gabi, sorry for missing your comment.

WebSphere Portal Express automatically migrates you to DB2 UDB, so you don't need to do anything here.

If you use Portal Server/Enable/Extend, then you get Cloudscape out of the box, and can then choose to migrate to DB2 UDB or another database.

The WebSphere Portal Information Centre at: -

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/zones/portal/proddoc.html

will tell you more.

Regards

Dave
 
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