WebSphere Links

This is a collection of links to IBM WebSphere information, maintained by Charles Roth, for IBS use.  Please feel free to send me more(!), at croth@ibsentg.com.  The parent page is Charles' IBS Resources page.  This page was last revised on 5 December 2000.

• General Information
  1. Developer's Peek into WebSphere Commerce Suite 4.1.  An excellent overview of the pieces of WebSphere, including C++ vs. Java parts.

  2. WebSphere Commerce Studio "online information".  On-line guide to concepts and tasks in Studio (esp store creator).  Good info about the Java Beans that can be used for Product and Category display. (Requires IBS ENTG userid.) 

  3. Commands, Tasks, Overridable Functions and Database Tables PDF files.  Also related PDFs.

  4. Customizing an E-commerce Site with Commerce Suite.  (A copy of the CD by the same name.)  Good info about net.data programming, macros, overridable functions.

  5. Net.Data Language Manuals.  The two most useful manuals from this set are also available here as PDFs: Programming Guide and Reference Guide.

  6. Sample Overridable Function information.

• Books
  1. E-business with Net.Commerce.  Good summary of the net.data tools on which websphere 4.1 is built.  Essential if you want to use the "mass import" tool to populate your database.

  2. IBM WebSphere Starter Kit book.  Pretty horrible, but if you must work with WebSphere, there are at least tantalizing clues that may point you at other useful stuff.

• Software
  1. Download WebSphere Studio 3.5.  Free trial version, ~200 MB, limited to publishing 250 pages at a time.

• Bugs, Workarounds, and Fixes
  1. Publishing outside 'localhost'.  In Commerce Studio, if you have difficulty publishing a store or a project to a host other than 'localhost', create a new publishing stage with only one (the desired) host.  Then publish that.  (Thanks to Quinn Stone.)

  2. %macro_function() does not take parameters.  The net.data 6.1 "macro language" syntax allows the creation of internal functions with %macro_function().  The documentation states that these functions may take parameters, but in fact this does not work (parameters are ignored) on many platforms, including Windows/NT and Solaris.

     Fix: there is a patch/upgrade, to version 6.1.1.1, that allows parameters.  To apply the patch, install Net.Data 6.1.1.1 (NetDataSun6111.tar.Z), and the shared object library libdtwshr.so.Z.  Follow the normal Net.Data installation instructions, but note the following problems in the installation instructions.

     (Note that as of 4 December 2000, this patch is not available from the general fixes area -- although that areas is a good one to monitor.  See http://www-4.ibm.com/software/data/net.data/support/index.html, and follow the "support downloads" link.)

  3. Recursive %macro_functions.  Net.Data 6.1 does not allow recursion.  Trick/work-around: define the function twice, once with an empty body, once with full code.

  4. Problems publishing from WebSphere Studio?  See the list of common problems and solutions (from IBM tech support, apparently not on their web site).

  5. Can't get ExecCmds to work?  The documentation for the WebSphere Commercesuite commands describes how to use ExecCmds to execute multiple commercesuite commands.  Unfortunately, the documentation is flat out wrong, at least on the Solaris platform (and, I suspect, most of the non-AS/400 platforms).

     Specifically, on page 41 of the WebSphere Commerce Suite (Pro Edition) manual Commands, Tasks, Overridable Functions and Database Tables, there are examples that use ExecCmds to run multiple commands, that set parameter in_0_url to "/X", and parameter url to the final page to be executed.  This has the effect of running the first command only, and then producing an error as the browser is sent to a document "X" in the web server root.

     IBM tech support, on 12/27/2000, said to try not setting the url parameter at all, and setting in_0_url to the final target page.  Supposedly this setting is ignored until the very last command is executed.  I've had one test case that actually worked this way; I'm trying others.

     Note: a common "gotcha" in using ExecCmds is to try and use a full URL in the "cmd_1" parameters.  Remember that "cmd_1", "cmd_2", etc. must be command names, such as "AddressAdd", not the full URL that you would ordinarily use to execute such a command.

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