Service oriented architecture (SOA) could revolutionize the way we think about IT. Why is that possible? Because SOA finally has the potential to make the concept of reuse real. Companies have been talking about reuse for years, but have never been able to transform that talk into full...

There's no question that Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) will continue to lead the IT and business agenda. After all, an SOA offers a flexible, extensible, and composable approach to reusing and extending existing applications and services, as well as constructing new ones.

IBM Rational's six principles of systems engineering are a set of high-level systems development guidelines derived from the careful analysis of successful, complex systems development engagements over the past ten years.

In the first part of this series, I examined two factors that are essential for project success: compensating for lack of face-to-face communication and writing better use cases. In the final part of this series, I will outline two additional elements that are vital in software develop...

Although there is no silver bullet that can protect your software development organization from all the challenges it might encounter in the course of a project, recognizing the importance of synchronization among all the different departments and functions within your organization wil...

In this article, WebSphere consultant Roland Barcia answers questions on developing J2EE and Web services applications on IBM Rational Application Developer V6 and deploying and testing those applications on WebSphere Application Server V6. Topics include using the various wizards, p...

The need to respond to changing business demands with flexible IT solutions has led many businesses to service oriented architectures (SOAs). An SOA is an IT framework that combines individual business functions and processes, called services, to implement sophisticated business applic...

The IBM Rational Professional bundle can help your development organization to accelerate software development by integrating systems analysis, design, coding, and developer and systems test activities around a common underlying tool infrastructure. This simplifies the development team...

There is a great synergy between the Rational Team Unifying Platform and the IBM development tools, such as IBM Rational Application Developer, IBM Rational Web Developer, and IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition. While WebSphere developers build, test, and de...

There is often a gap between what the business needs are and what IT delivers. Modeling the business, and the directly related IT systems to it, helps define the most effective opportunities for automation. Business modeling also helps the development team get a head start by helping ...

A lot has been said about the opportunities presented by service-oriented architectures (SOAs), especially their ability to enable business flexibility in an interoperable, technology-agnostic manner. But little has been said about verifying the functional quality of these SOA applicat...

Modeling can be an effective way to manage the complexity of software development. It enables you to understand and analyze your requirements, explore possible architectures, develop and communicate your designs, assess changes, and create robust, flexible systems. In spite of these vi...

Most IT shops recognize the need for applying Java technology. So what keeps Java from becoming even more prevalent than it is today?

WebSphere Portal is all about the integration of users and administration, a common look and feel, and a standardized application programming model. With Portal, various back-end systems can be integrated to a common user experience. However, there are various cases where you will have...

Developing J2EE applications can be time-consuming and error prone, and deploying them for execution on an application server only adds to the complexity. Even a simple 'Hello World' Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) requires multiple files to be created and maintained in the correct locations...

The velocity of business is ever increasing, and business agility is at a premium. Companies are faced with a myriad of challenges such as managing service levels in a complex, heterogeneous environment, increasing resource utilization while maintaining availability and reliability, an...

In this Q&A, Tony Nadalin, chief of security architecture for IBM Software discusses ways in which companies can protect their mission critical data even as they connect their networks with outside partners.

Organizations are increasingly using thread pools to enhance WebSphere Application Server performance by providing users with required information quickly without monopolizing resources required for other commands.

Evolving J2EE specifications continue to provide developers and architects with added performance muscle and flexibility for building and optimizing enterprise applications. J2EE advances are both a boon and a challenge as they can provide additional capabilities while also requiring r...

How well does your application perform? It is probably one of the toughest questions to answer accurately. It is not only a question of how many requests your application serves per second or per minute, but also how your application scales with respect to other performance metrics. It...

Portals enable users, employees, customers, and suppliers to expand beyond their traditional boundaries by providing a single common interface to access globally dispersed content and applications. Most important, portals also allow users to communicate with other enterprise applicatio...

Performance tuning practices are sometimes based on the run-time characteristics of vendor-specific Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) or application servers. Because Java code will likely outlast the environment for which it is initially designed, developers must ensure that their code has ...

In a production environment, memory leaks can force organizations to add more memory and hardware resources. They can even cause an application to crash unexpectedly. In theory, Java memory leaks should not emerge as a development or production issue because the garbage collector is re...

As the gap increases between technology innovation and the constricted capabilities of inherited legacy systems, many organizations are evaluating the costs and benefits of migrating their infrastructures and enterprise applications to new generations of Web-based infrastructure techno...

Computer security is an important aspect of any IT architecture. The requirement for security vigilance is especially critical, given the widespread availability of technology that potentially enables novice hackers to penetrate corporate IT defenses simply by using a tool available on...