Designing applications

Read about best practices for designing WebSphere® applications, particularly in the realm of WebSphere extensions to the Java™ Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) specification.

When designing WebSphere applications, follow the example set by the Samples. Refer to the code in the Samples Gallery that is available with the product. In particular, the Samples Gallery highlights new and WebSphere-specific aspects of the programming model.

Consult the architectural suggestions in Application design consideration.

Use the following links to find relevant supplemental information about designing WebSphere applications. The information resides on IBM® and non-IBM Internet sites, whose sponsors control the technical accuracy of the information.

These links are provided for convenience. Often, the information is not specific to the IBM WebSphere Application Server product, but is useful all or in part for understanding the product. When possible, links are provided to technical papers and Redbooks® that supplement the broad coverage of the release documentation with in-depth examinations of particular product areas.

Web resources for learning

  • IBM Developer site

    IBM Developer is an IBM technical resource for developers, providing a wide range of tools, code, and education on DB2®, eServer™, Lotus®, Rational, Tivoli®, and WebSphere as well as on open standards technology such as web services, Wireless, Linux®, XML, Java technologies, and more. By providing focused and relevant technical information for developers, developerWorks offers choices you can apply to building and deploying applications across heterogeneous systems. Using developerWorks, you can take full advantage of open standards and the IBM Software Development Platform in an on demand world.

  • The top 10 (more or less) J2EE best practices

    The authors, who are IBM consultants and performance experts, describe this document in the following way: Over the last five years, a lot has been written about Java EE best practices. There now are probably 10 or more books along with dozens of articles that provide insight into how Java EE applications should be written. In fact, there are so many resources, often with contradictory recommendations, navigating the maze has become an obstacle to adopting Java EE itself. To provide some simple guidance for customers entering this maze, we set out to compile the following top-10 list of what we feel are the most important best practices for J2EE.

  • IBM Patterns for e-Business

    Patterns for e-business are a group of reusable assets that can help speed the process of developing Web-based applications. The patterns leverage the experience of IBM architects to create solutions quickly, whether for a small local business or a large multinational enterprise.

  • Best practices for using XSLT in WebSphere Application Server applications

    The author states: I explore the reasons why some WebSphere Application Server applications use XSL for HTML production instead of JavaServer Pages (JSP) files. I will compare the performance of XSLT for HTML/XHTML production against JSP files and browser formatting. I will then provide guidance on how to improve XSLT performance in WebSphere Application Server should you decide to go this route. While this article focuses on the use of XSLT for the production of HTML, the performance best practices are directly applicable to other WebSphere Application Server uses of XSLT, such as XML-to-XML transformations and XML-to-text transformations.

  • Resource reference list

    The product has a large amount of existing documentation. Use the user communities and other non-IBM sites such as http://websphereadvisor.com/ that gather knowledge about using WebSphere products as a guideline to find the documentation that you require.

See also the documentation for the type of application that you are developing, such as web applications, EJB applications, web service applications, or applications that use messaging.