Integrating WebSphere Portal 8 With IBM Connections Using Connections Portlets - Part 3

This article is the third and last part of the article which explains details of integrating websphere portal with connections using web app integrator portlet and connections portlets. In the first two parts we saw details of integrating portal with connections using web app integrator portlet.This part explains details of integrating WebSphere Portal with connections using IBM connections portlet.

IBM CONNECTIONS PORTLETS
The IBM Connections Portlets for WebSphere Portal delivers the IBM Connections rich set of social software services for use within a WebSphere Portal environment. WebSphere Portal users can integrate the Activities, Blogs, Bookmarks, Communities, Forums, Profiles, and Wiki applications of Connections along with a Tag Cloud portlet for quick filtering in composite applications. The approach here is to display the Connections in a portlet in portal page.

These portlets are part of the collection of portlets that are available on the Solutions Catalog on IBM Greenhouse and can be downloaded from the following location. Here I used portal version 8 and IBM Connections 3.0.1.

https://greenhouse.lotus.com

After unzipping the downloaded IC3011_Portlets_20121211.zip, you can see that there are two folders available, IC3011_Portlets and IC3011_Portlets_refresh.IC3011_Portlets_refresh is used to integrate with portal 8.This has a PAA file SNPortlets.PAA which has all the connection portlets bundled into it. Once we install this PAA file we can access connections in portal environment.

CONFIGURING AND INSTALLING CONNECTIONS PORTLETS
To install, deploy and configure the connections portlets we need the following steps.


1.  Import a certificate to support SSL
Log into the WebSphere® Application Server Integrated Solutions Console.

Navigate to Security -> SSL certificate and key management -> Key stores and certificates.

Add the certificates to the appropriate trust store as configured in SSL Configurations. To view the SSL configuration and determine the appropriate trust store, navigate to: Security -> SSL certificate and key management -> SSL configurations -> NodeDefaultSSLSettings -> ['Trust Store Name']

For example, in a standalone deployment you navigate to NodeDefaultTrustStore -> Signer certificates for adding certificates. If NodeDefaultSSL Settings points to 'CellDefaultTrustStore', you add a certificate to 'CellDefaultTrustStore'.
Click Retrieve from port. Enter the host and SSL port used by your Connections server.
Click Retrieve signer information and Save.

2.  Run the Following Config Tasks
ConfigEngine install-paa -DPAALocation=C:\WebSphere\wp_profile\paa\SNPortlets.paa -DWasPassword= [was-admin-pwd] -DPortalAdminPwd=[portal-admin-pwd]

ConfigEngine deploy-paa -DappName=SNPortlets -DWasPassword=[was-admin-pwd]  -DPortalAdminPwd=[portal-admin-pwd]

ConfigEngine configure-SNPortlets -DWasPassword=password -DPortalAdminPwd=password

You can configure more parameters by logging into  admin console and add values in WPConnectionsIntegration Service as in step 4.

3.  Changes in Themes
Add the following two modules to your theme profile by editing the corresponding json file. These json files are in your profiles folder of theme. If you are using default theme profile, edit profiles\profile_deferred.json. If you are using a custom profile, add the modules to that profile.

wp_liveobject_framework, dijit_form_17

4.  Configuring WAS admin Console 
Log into the WebSphere Application Server Integrated Solutions Console. Navigate to Resources -> Resource Environment -> Resource Environment Providers.
Set the following five parameters in the custom property, WPConnectionsIntegrationService (create the property if it’s not already there)

blogsHomepageHandle, conversion, tagSearchType, emailSetting and globalBaseURL, the base URL to the Connections server
Configure Authentication

For this article, I used basic authentication instead of SSO as its simple and the setup is common for all environments. SSO setup varies in each environment depending on your access gateway.

Set the authenticationMethod property to basicAuth in the file, lcaccelerator.properties, located at (<wp_profile_root>\installedApps\<cell name>\PA_WPF.ear\snor.pf.portlets.war\WEB-INF\lcaccelerator\properties\ lcaccelerator.properties)

When using basic authentication for the portlets, every user must type in their personal credentials manually in the personalize mode of the portlets or shared credentials can be supplied from the Credential Vault.

If you are planning to use SSO environment, please refer IBM connections wiki from the following location. It has details for various types of SSO environment.

www-10.lotus.com/ldd/lcwiki.nsf

5.  Stop and Restart Portal Server

TESTING IN PORTAL
Once all the configurations are done you can login to the portal. You will see the IBM connections tab with the pages profiles, blogs, forums etc as in the below image. In the edit mode, select Personalize option and enter the username and password in the portlet as below and save it.

You need to enter the username and password in only one portlet and its transmitted to all other portlets. Logout of the portal and login once again and you can see all the connection portlets are displayed with the corresponding connection content. Profiles portlet is displayed in the image below.

This completes the integration of WebSphere Portal and Connections. To learn more about Prolifics, visit www.prolifics.com.

Sanju Varghese, a Senior Consultant for Prolifics, is an experienced Portal and JEE Architect. He was with IBM Global services for six years delivering WebSphere Portal based solutions to its major customers and is certified in Java,IBM WebSphere Portal and BPM . He has performed different IT roles ranging from being an Architect, Consultant, Technical lead and Software developer for several large projects .Currently his main focus area is integrating Portal with Collaboration software. Besides specializing in IBM technologies he likes reading, traveling, watching and playing cricket. He holds a Bachelors Degree in Computer Engineering from Pune University, India.

Integrating WebSphere Portal 8 With IBM Connections Using Web App Integrator - Part 2

This article is the second part of the article which explains details of integrating IBM WebSphere Portal with connections using web app integrator portlet and connections portlets. In the first part we saw an introduction of web app integrator portlet and installed a web app integrator portlet in the portal server and tested successfully. This part explains the steps needed to connect the installed web app integrator portlet with IBM Connections.

CONFIGURING PORTAL FOR INTEGRATION
From portal side we need to do two steps as we did in the first part for testing the WAI portlet.

• Create a URL page in the portal using the New URL button, with unique name and set the URL value in the page property, in advanced section->HTML, set URL of the connections server.
• Enter the unique name in the web app integrator portlet to generate the script.

 

CONFIGURING CONNECTIONS

We need to add the generated script in the header.jsp in connections server.If you search for header.jsp in connections you will see multiple header.jsp files in source directories and all are identical. 

We need to create a header.jsp in the customization directory. Customization directory is mentioned during installation. On Microsoft Windows, if you accepted the defaults during installation, the customization path is C:\Program Files\IBM\LotusConnections\data\shared\customization. This can be found in Websphere admin console of connections server. Customization directory is stored as the value of the websphere environment variable, CONNECTIONS_CUSTOMIZATION_PATH.

1. Create a directory called "templates" at <customizationDir>\common\nav\.
2. Copy the header.jsp file from any of the application source directory to the new templates directory. For example, copy the header file from <WAS_home>\Activities.ear\oawebui.war.\nav\templates.
3. Copy the script generated from the WAI portlet in the header.jsp
4. Restart the connections server.

Another websphere environment variable, CONNECTIONS_CUSTOMIZATION_DEBUG can be found in the admin console as well. Set the value of this variable to true and then we should not need to restart connections server for jsp changes.

TESTING INTEGRATION 

If you have properly configured till this point, then you can go back to portal. Navigate to the URL page you created, here Connections Integration page, you should see the connections inside the portal. 

We have completed the integration of WebSphere Portal and Connections. I used Portal 8 and IBM Connections 3.01 for this article.You should be able to use it for other versions as well with minimal or no changes.

This article explains the basic integration techniques between portal and connections.For an excellent user experience and to make a seamless transition from application page to application page you should work with a theme developer to place additional theme modules.This will enhance the smooth transition between product pages and produce the desired user experience.

In the next part, Part 3, we will see how to integrate IBM WebSphere Portal and Connections using the Connections portlets.

Sanju Varghese, a Senior Consultant for Prolifics, is an experienced Portal and JEE Architect. He was with IBM Global services for six years delivering WebSphere Portal based solutions to its major customers and is certified in Java,IBM WebSphere Portal and BPM . He has performed different IT roles ranging from being an Architect, Consultant, Technical lead and Software developer for several large projects .Currently his main focus area is integrating Portal with Collaboration software. Besides specializing in IBM technologies he likes reading, traveling, watching and playing cricket. He holds a Bachelors Degree in Computer Engineering from Pune University, India.

IBM Operational Decision Manager 8.5 Upgrade Series Part 1 – Decision Center

In this series of articles we’ll follow along with an upgrade from a relatively complex customized 7.1 installation of IBM WebSphere Operational Decision Manager to IBM Operational Decision Manager (ODM) 8.5.

ODM 7.5, 8 and 8.5 bring us a number of valuable features and capabilities:

Highlights:

• Enhanced business user experience with new change management, governance capabilities & business console
• Branching and merging of branches
• Business focused simplified collaborative environment o Governance framework for managing releases and multiple referenced rules sets (services)
• The ability to execute business rules from mobile applications
• Events capabilities, the addition of Complex Event Processing CEP capabilities to ODM
• Business ability to test rules with complex results using excel scenarios
• XXX Mainframe
• Operational enhancements
• Ability to decouple the management console from the execution environment and manage embedded rules remotely.
• Enhanced automatic generation of decision point web services HTDS

For reference on features:
What’s new in version IBM ODM 8
What’s new in version IBM ODM 8.5

The above new capabilities and potential end of life for 7.1 are usually drivers to upgrade to a later version.

In this article we’ll look specifically at migrating Decision Center formally known as rule team server, in later articles in this series we’ll look at the rules migration, testing, migration of customized decision validation services, decision server and more.

Migration of Decision Center Data (fka RTS)
Decision Center stores its information in a database, from version to version there will be changes made to the database structure and IBM provides scripts to assist with migrating information to the latest versions. The first issue we ran into was that the ANT migration documentation provided was confusing. Initially we thought that the script needs a running 7.1 decision center server and to be pointed to an 8.5 database. We edited the properties file in the bin folder called teamserveer-anttaks.properties and add the OldDatabaseSchemaName which is the 7.1. schema and an output file location where you would like the SQL to be generated. Datasource name for 7.1 and server URL and login credentials. The migration script gives a number of options to migrate various aspects, for the schema we’ll use gen-migration71-script option to the ant command.

DC Database migration Issue 1: Documentation
The following exception is thrown when we try to run the conversion:
[gen-migration71-script] ilog.rules.teamserver.model.IlrConnectException: Could not deserialize result from HTTP invoker remote service [http://localhost:8080/teamserver/
remoting/session]; nested exception is java.io.InvalidClassException: ilog.rules.teamserver.model.IlrSessionContext; local class incompatible: stream classdesc serialVers
ionUID = 4729857957054555657, local class serialVersionUID = 8906827035412667122

Solution:
After some experimentation and chatting to IBM, we figured that the old schema has to be on the same database server as what the 8.5 DB server is using and that the ant script should be pointed at the 8.5 decision center server and not the 7.1 RTS.

DC Database migration Issue 2: Inconsistent Data
There were two issues missing data and duplicate names that now need to be unique in the 8.5. version. We are not sure of the reasons why data was missing, but the script filed on missing data in the artifact tables where information existed in version tables for some rules version as part of a baseline. The report names for DVS simulations where the same and needed to be made unique because of a new table constraint.

Solution:
The solution was to delete the versions of the rules that were missing from the artifact table because the baseline was in recycle bin.
delete from baselinecontent where version=item.ID;
delete from version where id=item.ID;
and
Update SCENARIOSUITEREPORT set NAME=item.NAME

Issue 2: Secure Team Server (HTTPS) 

If you are attempting to connect to a secure SSL enabled server then you may get an exception. SSLHandshakeException

Solution:

In order to get around this exception you’ll need to download and then import the certificates. To download the certificates brows the home page of decision center and click view certificates in the browser and download a .cer file. The next step is to import the certificate to your local JRE trust sore

e.g. 

keytool -import -keystore "C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\lib\security\cacerts" -file C:\Users\abcd\Desktop\ RTS_Certficate.cer

Customized Branding 

The first port to 8.5 was the branding customization. This is generally used in a Multi-tenants scenario. A custom skin was added in the skin-faces-config.xml under the web-inf folder with the CSS and properties copied to the skin and customized. Additional tabs where also added as part of the customization where a file tabs.jsp was added to the custom folder.

Issue 1: CSS & Properties Merge

The custom Message.properties can’t be ported directly as some new keys are added to the 8.5 version like with CSS changes a file diff and edit will need to be done.

Solution:

The best resolution was to compare the properties & CSS file from 7.1. to the custom properties and pull the differences out which can be applied to version 8.5 new skin files directly.

We have to do a file diff on the differences between the CSS files.

Issue 2: JSF version changes

The have changed the underlying JSF 1.1 to myfaces 1.1.5

Solution:

Add the following liens of code to your faces-config.xml in the web-inf folder of teamserver war.

<renderer>

    <component-family>javax.faces.Command</component-family>

    <renderer-type>javax.faces.Button</renderer-type>

    <renderer-class>org.apache.myfaces.renderkit.html.jsf.ExtendedHtmlButtonRenderer</renderer-class>

</renderer>

<renderer>

    <component-family>javax.faces.Command</component-family>

    <renderer-type>javax.faces.Link</renderer-type>

    <renderer-class>org.apache.myfaces.renderkit.html.jsf.ExtendedHtmlLinkRenderer</renderer-class>

</renderer>

Extension Models

If you have any custom extensions model, make sure that you upload the .brdx and .brdm files on the Decision Center Installation Wizard screen.

API Changes
We encountered a number of changes in the API’s, this is not an exhaustive list but the ones that we ran into as part of an upgrade/migration.

Migration of Decision Center from 7.1 versions to 8.5 requires updating the APIs as well as any customized skin/branding being used.

API and Method Changes

1. API changed from ilog.rules.teamserver.web.servlets.IlrDownloadServlet to ilog.rules.teamserver.web.servlets.IlrTestingDownloadServlet.
2. IlrApplicationException needs to be handled if you are calling IlrDefaultSessionController.onCommitElement.
3. IlrApplicationException needs to be handled if you are calling IlrDefaultSessionController.elementCommitted.
4. API changed from ilog.rules.teamserver.web.servlets.IlrDownloadUtil to ilog.rules.teamserver.web.servlets.IlrDownloalUtil.
5. IlrWUtils.getTimeZone() now returns an object of com.ibm.icu.timezone.

The next parts of this article will cover decision server, decision validation services customizations and other migration items.

To learn more about Prolifics, visit www.prolifics.com.


Ryan Trollip is Prolifics’ Decision Management Practice Director. Ryan is an experienced solutions architect and implementation lead with a strong background in business driven and improvement focused solutions with an emphasis on Decision Management. Ryan has a proven track record of delivering successful projects, with over 15 years of experience covering project management, enterprise architecture, account management, and design/programming in a decision management context. Prior to joining Prolifics, Ryan was an Architect and Technical Account Manager, independently and for IBM/ILOG, focused on leading the delivering complex decision management projects.

Amrinder Singh Brar is a Technical Lead for Decision Management at Prolifics. Amrinder has 8 years of experience in software development with 4+ years of extensive experience in ILOG/BRMS world. His key expertise lies in implementing Decision Management solutions in Banking, Telecom, HealthCare and Travel domains. Prior to joining Prolifics, Amrinder worked as a Solution Consultant for various ILOG migration and implementation projects with Telecom and IT majors.

Strategy for Security: A Pure Bargaining Model

The Stalemate
Strategy development can be thought of as a form of bargaining in my opinion, where security and audit, each with a stake in the successful implementation of the strategy, arrive at the table with specific agenda, putting forth and withdrawing arguments, driven by expectations of what the applications, infrastructure and support teams will accept or reject, and depart the table with an agreement that satisfies fewer goals than what they hoped to achieve to begin with.

Formulation of a roadmap for enterprise security is not concerned with the efficient application of forces like power and influence, as much as with the exploitation of potential synergies coming from the combined gain at stake for all involved. It is concerned with the possibility that particular architecture-driven operational outcomes are better (not worse) for all parties involved.

‘Pure’ Bargaining
Achieving consensus on a strategic roadmap for enterprise security can be modeled as a form of pure bargaining- a term used to describe bargaining in which each party is guided mainly by his expectations of what the other will accept. With each party guided by expectations and knowing very well that the others are guided by expectations too, these very expectations begin compounding achieving an effect that leaves only one exit path, someone making a final and sufficient concession to resolve the deadlock.

This result is quite contrary to the fact that actually, there is a range of possible architectures of which any single one is acceptable to all parties than no agreement at all. To insist on any one of the agreeable alternatives is a form of pure bargaining, since either party would take less than their dream solution than nothing at all because that would only cost money, and it leaves the firm no better off than what it started with. Either party would take 'less' also because it knows that 'receding' to reach agreement is also an option at any point in the process, since there is no reprimand for agreeing after disagreeing!

The underlying tactical approach is especially suited to Security because the essence of pure bargaining tactics employed is the voluntary and irreversible sacrifice of a position of strength in order to reach a point of advantage, even though the advantage is somewhat diluted. It is the paradox that the power to limit the adversarial parties stems from an ability to confine oneself to a smaller range of choices- to give up some freedom of choice to gain leverage in a pure bargaining situation.

Quick Case Study:
Authentication Strategy Case in point is creating a strategy for achieving seamless authentication across the enterprise. The applications architect might not want a reverse proxy solution for an authentication gateway because he already owns a farm of proxy servers that service web requests for his applications. He prefers an approach that augments the existing technology instead of stacking another farm of reverse proxies in front! The security architect advocates the use of a virtualized object space that a reverse proxy enables you to create because it helps manage authorization in the long run. The audit manager cares more about the security perimeter than the specific technology stack within the perimeter. The infrastructure architect wants homogeneity in hardware across the technology stack to ensure his team has a manageable learning curve in order to support the solution. The helpdesk manager is worried about how users might be impacted no matter which alternative is picked as the authentication architecture.

In the scenario depicted above, the application architect is negotiating from a position of strength because he owns the applications, the infrastructure architect is also negotiating from a strong position because his stake is already in the ground- a certain type and model of hardware is powering the business applications! However, they don’t just get their way because the security architect has a point too. Creating a single reverse-proxy based gateway eliminates any instrumentation at the proxies the applications architect owns, and also provides a long run alternative to finer grained authorization should the business need it. The audit manager might appear to be neutral to the discussion, but knows that adding a reverse proxy widens the security perimeter and requires thorough security compliance certification of the reverse proxy servers. This is more work and more risk for an otherwise smoothly running operating firm!

Strategic Moves shrink the ZOPA
I would be remiss if I did not talk about how the perceived bargaining set for each of the participants changed at each bargaining step, and also how the parties who were in a position of strength changed their expectations in observation of how well others accepted or rejected their ‘shifting’ bottom-line or ‘reservation price’ demands. The zone of possible agreement (ZOPA) initially is very large as all parties in positions of strength seem to have inflated perceptions of their non-cooperative alternatives and won’t give in without a fight. Pure bargaining tells us that someone has to concede for the stalemate to be resolved in the favor of achieving a ‘surplus’ outcome- one that results in all parties gaining something by participating in the process. At each bargaining step the zone of possible agreement shrinks as the weaker participant, the security architect evaluates the expectations of the stronger parties, navigates the terrain, uses his expertize to model impact to business, to user and to long run utility of choosing between the different alternatives to not only improve his alternative but also to worsen the other side’s alternatives at the same time.

The Concession
Experience reveals that the application and infrastructure architects have to let go, albeit selectively, of their biases towards pure proxy and homogenous hardware to accommodate the setting up of a reverse proxy as best response for a segment of applications duly benefiting from one, and an alternative solution like a plugin for proxy servers that is a best-response to another segment of applications. The audit manager has no choice but to add to his inventory of tasks the ‘seal-and-certify’ of all new components to avoid triggering an end-of-year audit. The helpdesk manager also will duly ask for process flow and user impact analysis from all parties concerned. Examples illustrating pure bargaining tactics abound in security strategy formulation.

To learn more about Prolifics, visit www.prolifics.com.

Javed Shah is a Practice Director for Security at Prolifics with more than 12 years experience in identity and access management architectures. He has broad exposure developing identity and access management solutions, and system software components that deliver reliable data security, web enablement and user lifecycle management services to customers. Before joining Prolifics, Javed founded and ran a professional services company in India for 6 years. Spanning over a decade, Javed has led identity management projects to successful exits at Nestle, University of California San Francisco, Kaiser Permanente, ABM Industries, BRE Properties, UPS, Tampa General Hospital and E*TRADE Bank. He was also the leader of the ITIM Level 3 defect resolution and analysis team in India where he was responsible for handling all customer defects for North America and Asia. Javed holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a Certificate in Implementing and Managing an Enterprise Architecture using the Zachman Framework and the CISSP certification. He is also currently pursuing an MBA from the Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley.

Integrating IBM WebSphere Portal 8 With IBM Connections Using Web App Integrator – Part 1

IBM Connections is a leading enterprise social software which provides social networking tools for businesses. Existing IBM WebSphere portal users are exploring ways to seamlessly integrate Connections into Portal. This article explains details of integrating WebSphere Portal with IBM connections using Web App Integrator portlet and Connection portlets.

In the first part of this blog series, I will give an introduction of Web App Integrator portlet and the necessary steps to install it in WebSphere Portal Server. In the second part, I will provide details of the configuration of Web App Integrator and IBM connections. The third and final part of this blog series will include details needed to install and configure Connections portlets.

WEB APP INTEGRATOR (WAI)
Web Application Integrator for IBM WebSphere Portal is a solution which allows external web applications to be integrated with WebSphere Portal. Generally there are two approaches used to access external web applications in portal. The first approach is to display the external application in a portlet in portal page by developing a custom portlet. The second approach is to include the entire external application inside a Portal page. WAI uses the second approach with more flexibility than the existing web clipping methods. There are no viewing area constraints (no scroll bars) in WAI and all Java scripts and links within the integrated Web App continue to function as expected. The user experience suggests that the user is still within the Portal environment even though they are, in reality, natively accessing Connections.

INSTALLING WEB APP INTEGRATOR IN PORTAL
Web Application Integrator portlet is available as catalogue version from the IBM Lotus green house. WAI can be downloaded from the following location. Users need to register with the site before downloading.

https://greenhouse.lotus.com

Once unzipping the downloaded file, webappintegrator.zip, users can see folders for the various portal versions. It has WAI portlets for portal 6 version to current 8.0.0.1 version. In earlier versions WAI was packaged as a web archive (war) file but for recent versions it’s packaged as portal application archive (paa) file. To install paa files we need portal solutions installer (si) but portal 8 has an inbuilt solutions installer so this is not needed for version 8.

To install deploy and configure the WAI we need to follow the below steps:
1. Determine the correct version of the WebAppIntegrator portlet that should be used (8 or 8.0.0.1) and extract the files in that folder.
2. Copy WAIPortlet.paa to a temporary directory on your portal server.
3. Make sure WebSphere Portal Server is running.
4. Open a command prompt window and cd to <wp_profile>\ConfigEngine

Execute the following config tasks for Windows:

Here temp dir name is the location of paa file (<wp_profile>\paa), was pwd and wps pwd are the was admin password and the portal admin password respectively. For UNIX its ./ConfigEngine.sh instead of ConfigEngine.bat. Restart the portal server.

TESTING INSTALLATION IN PORTAL
Before integrating with the connections, we can do a quick test to see WAI is installed as expected. Login to portal as administrator and then navigate through the administration-> Manage Pages, you can see the WAI portlet as below, with a button to generate the HTML script tag.

To test we need the following steps:
1. Create a test.html with following contents and place in the wps.war(located at <wp_profile>\installedApps\<cell name>\wps.ear\wps.war)

2. Create a URL page in the portal using the New URL button and set the URL value in the page property, in advanced section->HTML, set value as http://<servername>:<port no>/wps/test.html.
3. Create a unique name, as shown in the WAI test Page above.
4. Generate script through WAI portlet using the unique name.
5. Place the generated script in the test.html immediately after the beginning <body> tag.

Now you can test by navigating to the WAI test Page. You will see the page appear as below.

This concludes the first part of this blog series. In Part 2, we will see how to integrate the installed WAI with IBM Connections.

To learn more about Prolifics, visit www.prolifics.com.

Sanju Varghese, a Senior Consultant for Prolifics, is an experienced Portal and JEE Architect. He was with IBM Global services for six years delivering WebSphere Portal based solutions to its major customers and is certified in Java,IBM WebSphere Portal and BPM . He has performed different IT roles ranging from being an Architect, Consultant, Technical lead and Software developer for several large projects .Currently his main focus area is integrating Portal with Collaboration software. Besides specializing in IBM technologies he likes reading, traveling, watching and playing cricket. He holds a Bachelors Degree in Computer Engineering from Pune University, India.

Is Your Integration Project Costing More Than It Should?

Over the years I’ve been directly involved in a great number of IT software development projects at Prolifics. And without exception these have all involved integration of a number of software components – whether it is integrating back-end systems such as SAP, plugging in external services from business partners, or the more relatively straightforward integration of new business systems or processes to in-house business services.

And something I’ve seen all of these projects having to deal with is the fact that software integration introduces some very real dependencies in development and test plans and environments – all of which require a fair amount of attention and a non-trivial amount of coordination and resources which could impact the time and budget estimates.

But what if there was a way to reduce the cost and planning impact of these dependencies?

Monica Luke and I tackle this topic in a new IBM whitepaper that discusses the usage of business service virtualization and testing techniques and tools to remove bottlenecks and reduce costs in building today’s modern, interconnected applications.

Many of our IBM customers will be interested in the discussion on example service architecture as well as mobile and portal domains. We briefly contextualize the value for customers using products such as WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus, IBM Integration Bus (previously WebSphere Message Broker) and MQ, WebSphere DataPower, IBM Business Process Manager, WebSphere Portal Server and IBM Worklight.

Read our whitepaper here:

Use Service Virtualization to Remove Testing Bottlenecks






How do I get started?
This is a great time to highlight Prolifics' very own IV&V (Independent Verification and Validation) practice. IV&V is an important aspect of our global delivery model, providing customers with end-to-end testing solutions that help to improve productivity and quality while reducing overall cost of all software development activities.

Our team has extensive experience in testing large, interconnected, critical business applications, and is ready to help you reinvent the way you approach your testing – backed by a service framework and testing accelerators that have been field tested and refined for over a decade.

Interested in taking a deeper dive? Connect with me!
Twitter - @greg_hodgkinson
Email - ghodgkinson@prolifics.com
LinkedIn - Greg Hodgkinson

To learn more about Prolifics, visit www.prolifics.com.

Gregory Hodgkinson is the Lifecycle Tools and Methodology Practice Director at Prolifics and an IBM Champion for Rational. Previous to that he was a Founder, Director, and the SOA Lead at 7irene, a visionary software solutions company in the United Kingdom. He has 16 years of experience in software architecture , initially specializing in the field of component-based development (CBD), then moving seamlessly into service-oriented architecture (SOA). His extended area of expertise is the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), and he assists Prolifics and IBM customers in adopting agile development processes and SOA methods. He is still very much a practitioner, and has been responsible for service architectures for a number of FTSE 100 companies. He presents on agile SOA process and methods at both IBM (Rational and WebSphere) and other events, has also co-authored a Redbook on SOA solutions, and contributes to DeveloperWorks.