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IBM® Rational® software helps organizations create business value by improving their software development capability. Rational software powers the IBM Software Development Platform, a complete and configurable solution that encourages teams to:
- Adopt iterative development practices that reduce project risk.
- Focus on architecture to develop more resilient systems.
- Effectively manage change and protect critical strategic assets.
The result is a more proficient software development team, and a more responsive, resilient, and focused business. The Rational solution combines software engineering best practices, market-leading tools, and professional services to drive continuous improvement in team capability.
I have already mentioned how the new and improved Rational products, announced in October 2004, can help you and other members of your development team succeed. Let us take a look at some of your questions.
Question: What is the best Rational product for business modeling? And how can you use it to model complex business processes?
Answer: I would like to point you at WebSphere® Business Integration Modeler, IBM Rational's preferred solution for business modeling. WebSphere Business Integration Modeler is an easy-to-use process modeling tool based on the Eclipse™ development environment that lets you simulate and validate as-is and to-be business processes. Within the tool, you use elements of the unified modeling language (UML) and the Rational Unified Process, namely business workers, business entities, business use case models, and business object models, to model your business processes.
For an in-depth article on business modeling, see Business Modeling with UML: The Light at the end of the Tunnel by Byron Baker. For more information on WebSphere Business Integration Modeler, see the WebSphere Business Integration zone.
If you want to complement the business models captured with WebSphere Business Integration Modeler with application models, you can use Rational Software Modeler or Rational Software Architect and create linkage relationships between your business model and your application model to help you understand the total impact of your changes. Rational Software Modeler and Rational Software Architect are UML 2.0 based visual modeling and design tools that allow users to clearly document and communicate different views on a system.
For more information, see the Rational Software Modeler page and the Rational Software Architect page.
Question: For the following types of projects, could you please describe a customized artifact, and which Rational product is used to produce such artifact, core project (i.e. new accounting system and complex business process analysis),
Answer: For a core project (the aforementioned accounting system), a customized artifact would be the system itself. For a complex business process analysis, a customized artifact would be the Business Object Model, which characterizes all of your business processes. (For a more in-depth view of Business Modeling, please see the above question.)
There are a few IBM Rational products you can use here to assist you in delving into specific types of projects:
- For business process modeling, WebSphere Business Integration Modeler allows you to capture the as-is and to-be processes of the business, as indicated above. For more information on WebSphere Business Integration Modeler, see the WebSphere Business Integration zone.
- For those aspects of the business that require software development, IBM Rational Software Modeler (also mentioned above) integrates with WebSphere Business Integration Modeler, and allows you to model the software requirements of your system from a variety of viewpoints. For more information, see the Rational Software Modeler page.
- If you want to augment your modeling efforts with more automated support for software construction, I recommend IBM Rational Software Architect, another one of the recently announced tools. Rational Software Architect adds additional functionality to IBM Rational Software Modeler, integrating design with implementation and developer testing tools that let you leverage model-driven development with UML 2.0 to craft well-architected applications and services. For more information on, see the Rational Software Architect page.
Question: Not everyone on my team is ready or willing to step up to full-scale modeling and model-driven development with the UML. Does Rational offer those staff an alternative to Rational Software Modeler and Rational Software Architect?
Answer: Absolutely! Developers that are more code-centric or visual programming driven in their style will be more interested in Rational Application Developer or Rational Web Developer. These tools are the renamed next versions of IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer and IBM WebSphere Studio Site Developer, respectively, and they allow you to utilize the full power of the Java™ programming language, J2EE, and a variety of modern and powerful Web development technologies to efficiently build, test, and deploy robust Java and Web-based applications and services.
For more information, see the Rational Application Developer page and the Rational Web Developer page.
Question: From Rational technology, can you describe the products and the models/diagrams that you can use for the following simple sequential activities required in most projects?
- Business modeling (i.e. to specify the business process to be automated and/or e-enabled).
- Use case (functional) modeling (i.e. to specify the use cases for the recommended solution for the above modeled business process).
- Design modeling (the design of the solution).
Amongst all is there any feature for automatic traceability that a change in a model would automatically reflect in all dependent (probably subsequent) models, for example, a change in the business model would automatically reflect in the use case model and the design, and a change in the functional model would automatically reflect in the design?
Answer: I would refer you to the above questions that I have answered dealing with business modeling.
For the additional functional modeling that you describe (use case and design), in addition to using the features of WebSphere Business Integration Modeler, I would also direct you to IBM Rational Software Modeler. Rational Software Modeler handles modeling other system aspects of the UML 2.0 specification, including:
- Use case diagrams
- Sequence diagrams
- Activity diagrams
- State Machine diagrams
- Composite Structure diagrams
- Component diagrams
- Deployment diagrams
- Communication diagrams
- Freeform diagrams
While there is no automatic traceability from model to model as you describe, Rational Software Modeler has the ability to automatically generate diagrams from other diagrams through a mechanism called model transforms. Within Rational Software Modeler, since it is based on Eclipse technology, you can also customize the tool to conform to your needs, through its advanced meta-modeling features. Depending on what you are looking for, I believe Rational Software Modeler can meet your needs to monitor changes in all of the models in your design.
For more information on WebSphere Business Integration Modeler, see the WebSphere Business Integration zone. For more information on Rational Software Modeler, see its main page.
Question: We want to migrate a Sun ONE™ J2EE application to IBM WebSphere. Could you please suggest the approach for that?
Answer: Without knowing the details regarding your application, I cannot assist you with any specific technical information, but here are a few things that might assist you in your migration efforts:
- Determine overall timeline for your migration.
- Determine all system requirements and hardware/software requirements.
- Determine the application assets that you wish to migrate over to your new environment.
- Begin by importing critical assets and testing them to insure proper migration.
- Continue by importing additional application assets and testing as they are migrated over.
- Finish migration, do final testing to insure compliance.
- Document everything and only after above are complete and working properly, schedule decommission of the old system.
I can also point you at some of our online resources that may help you:
- Here is a specific article on WebSphere migration, A Quick Guide for Migrating to WebSphere Application Server V5.
- developerWorks hosts a specialized Web site for Migration issues, it is known as the Migration Station.
- You can ask more specific questions in one of our online WebSphere forums.
- You can find specific information on the IBM Rational Application Developer and IBM Rational Web Developer products that will help you automate much of the construction aspects of your effort when bringing your application over to the WebSphere platform. See the Rational Application Developer page and the Rational Web Developer page.
Question: I am creating a project which implements C2A (Click to Action) functionality. In the wsdl file in the binding tag, it is giving an error stating:
"A wsdl:binding does not bind every wsdl:part of a wsdl:message in the wsdl:portType to which it refers to one of soapbind:body, soapbind:header, soapbind:fault or soapbind:headerfault."
I want to use portlet binding and not soap binding. Can you help with the necessary steps to be written?
Answer: It appears that you are not binding every part of your message. Have you checked your WSDL for completeness and made sure that all of the parts match up properly?
Using Click-to-Action to Provide User-Controlled Integration of Portlets is a good article on C2A and portlet binding. Pay particular attention to the "Enabling portlets" section. You need to use a custom JSP tag library on the source side and a custom binding section on the target side to ensure that it works properly.
The following article, Wiring Click-to-Action portlets for inter-portlet communication in WebSphere Portal V5, discusses using C2A for portlet communication. It also has a sample application that you may find useful.
Question: I am interested in Rational Rapid Developer as a tool for quickly building portal applications. However, it seems that this product is no longer available for download. All the IBM links lead to nowhere. Any idea what's the future of this product and if I can download a trial version from somewhere?
Answer: The IBM Rational Rapid Developer product has met its End of Life, and is no longer available.
Please do not worry, though. To continue meeting the needs of those developers, I would like to introduce you to IBM Rational Application Developer, our new offering for visual programming and other styles of rapid application development. Rational Application Developer includes a number of modern and powerful technologies that enable developers new to Java programming to very quickly build Java, J2EE, and Web applications with minimal conventional coding effort. Those technologies include JavaServer Faces (JSF) for visually constructing rich Web-based user interfaces; AWT, SWT, and Swing for visually building rich native client user interfaces; and Service Data Objects (SDO) for visually connecting to a variety of data sources.
And for those developers that are code-centric in their style, but are accustomed to more procedural programming languages and 4GLs, Rational Application Developer supports Enterprise Generation Language (EGL). EGL is a procedural language that allows you to quickly focus on and solve your business problem without being bogged down by underlying software technologies. EGL is used to capture the business logic of your applications, and the tooling automatically generates and maintains a Java implementation. We even offer a debugger that works at the EGL source code level, and a way to leverage JSF from your EGL code to visually build your application's GUI. For more information, see the EGL page.
Question: I have used WebSphere Studio Application Developer 5.1 to develop J2EE applications (support J2EE 1.3), now I want to migrate using RSA 6.0 (support J2EE 1.4). I am using the migration wizard provided in RSA 6.0. I found a problem in that RSA 6.0 does not compile the *.jsp file. The message is:
JspCompile runtime: java.lang.NullPointerException
How to resolve this problem? Is it a bug in RSA 6.0?
Answer: I would need to know more about how your application works and how you are trying to use the migration wizard before I can declare whether something is classified as a bug in IBM Rational Software Architect or not.
A Null Pointer Exception is a fairly common run time error, which can stem from variables (such as arrays) not being initialized, or other cases where a program is attempting to use a null in the place of an object.
I would ask you to try some sample code in the migration wizard to ensure that it is working properly, and take an additional look at your application to eliminate any potential issues.
Please take a look at the Rational Software Architect forums on developerWorks. As I have stated previously, connecting with other users of the product is invaluable in resolving issues. Finally, a call to IBM Rational Technical Support may help you to resolve the problem.
Question: RAD 6.0 in all its glory is here. How do you use it? Where is the owner's manual? The product is bursting with great features, but the documentation is lacking and there is nothing out there to help you learn how to use the product.
Answer: Let me point you to some resources that can help you with IBM Rational Application Developer 6.0:
- Main Rational Application Developer page on developerWorks.
- Introduction to IBM Rational Web Developer (and by extension, Rational Application Developer) 6.0.
- Easiest, breeziest EJB components: Using Rational Application Developer for WebSphere Software.
- Developing Java Server Faces Applications in Rational Application Developer .
- Build a Java auction client: Using the Java Visual Editor in Rational Web Developer 6.0.
In addition, you can participate in the Rational Application Developer forum to interact with other customers who are "taking the covers" off of the product, so to speak.
Question: When will WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition and Rational Rapid Developer features be incorporated into the new Rational Developer Platform?
Answer: The next release of WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition is pending and has not yet been announced. Customers using Rational Rapid Developer are being migrated to Rational Application Developer, as discussed in an earlier question.
For more information, see the recent product announcement. For more information on EGL, see the EGL page.
The author wishes to thank the following people for their invaluable help and effort on this article:
- Gary Cernosek
- Gary Clarke
- Robert Maksimchuk
- Jim Mann
- Emeka Nwafor
- Jim Ramaker
- Stephanie Parkin
- Michelle Ulrich
- Candace York
- developerWorks Rational Web site
- Rational Software Modeler page
- Rational Software Architect page
- Rational Software Architect forums
- Rational Web Developer page
- Rational Application Developer page
- Rational Application Developer forum
- EGL technology page
- developerWorks Migration Station page
- developerWorks WebSphere Business Integration zone
- developerWorks WebSphere Studio zone
- WebSphere forums
- Business Modeling with UML: The Light at the end of the Tunnel
- Using Click-to-Action to Provide User-Controlled Integration of Portlets
- Wiring Click-to-Action portlets for inter-portlet communication in WebSphere Portal V5
- Introduction to IBM Rational Web Developer (and by extension, Rational Application Developer) 6.0.
- Easiest, breeziest EJB components: Using Rational Application Developer for WebSphere Software.
- Developing Java Server Faces Applications in Rational Application Developer .
- Build a Java auction client: Using the Java Visual Editor in Rational Web Developer 6.0.
Meet the experts is a monthly feature on the developerWorks WebSphere Web site. We give you access to the best minds in IBM WebSphere, product experts and executives, who are waiting to answer your questions. You submit the questions, and we post answers to the most popular questions.
Aaron (Rusty) Lloyd is a technology evangelist for IBM developerWorks Rational. developerWorks is IBM's award winning Web site for IBM's developer community, providing technical information on all of IBM's software brands and associated technologies.
