WebSphere® Application Server is a proven, high-performance transaction engine that can help you
build, run, integrate, and manage dynamic business applications. This
release introduces key enhancements to help you succeed in the current
dynamic and competitive marketplace by introducing the new lightweight
Liberty profile and by offering breakthrough advances in developer
productivity, application server resiliency, and improved operational
efficiency.
This product excels as the foundation for a service-oriented architecture
with the following main benefits:
- New Liberty profile: a lightweight application foundation
The Liberty
profile is a highly composable, fast to start, ultra lightweight profile
of the application server that is optimized for developer productivity
and smaller, simpler production server deployments.
This product now offers the IBM® WebSphere Application Server Liberty Core offering. IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty Core is a lightweight profile of the
application server along with a simplified configuration approach.
It supports the Java EE Web
Profile, including CDI, Managed Beans, and EJB Lite. Its fast restart
times, small size, and ease of use make it a good option for building
web applications that do not require the full Java EE environment of traditional enterprise
application server profiles. Liberty also can be used in production;
and because it is a dynamic configuration, the application server
provisions only the features required by the running applications.
The Liberty profile is available in all editions of the WebSphere Application Server product, and is
the only server profile in the new WebSphere Application Server Liberty Core edition.
The Liberty profile that is available in the WebSphere Application Server (base), WebSphere Application Server, Network Deployment, and WebSphere Application Server, Express® editions provide
additional capabilities beyond those available in the Liberty Core
edition.
To try out the Liberty profile and use the Liberty
profile to develop applications that run on the WebSphere Application Server Liberty profile
or full profile, you can download
the no-charge developer edition from the WASdev community page. This edition runs on distributed platforms including IBM i, and on the Apple Mac. To use the Liberty profile in a production environment
with guaranteed service levels and IBM support, you must purchase WebSphere Application Server Liberty Core, WebSphere Application Server (base), WebSphere Application Server, Network Deployment or WebSphere Application Server, Express. The Liberty
profile is included with these editions, and can also be downloaded
separately (as an edition-specific archive file) from Passport Advantage® online. The associated service is available
from Fix Central.
- Fast, flexible, and simplified application development
Use
the new Liberty profile to jump-start application development, and
speed project completion.
WebSphere Application Server Version 8.5 extends its rich
application development and deployment environment to also provide
the following enhanced capabilities:
- Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) support in OSGi applications for the full profile
- Support for WebSphere SDK Java Technology Edition
V7.0 as an optional pluggable JDK
- Support for Web 2.0 and Mobile Toolkit to extend enterprise applications
to mobile devices
- Support for a new migration toolkit to help you not only migrate
your applications, but to identify and resolve application problems
before migration
- Enhanced resiliency
Take advantage
of enhanced resiliency of the application server to automatically
detect and respond to certain failure scenarios. Improvements include
automatic detection of certain types of memory leak and improved fault
tolerance in service integration bus resiliency to handle the failures
of the messaging infrastructure.
- Integrated tools
WebSphere Application Server now provides
integrated tooling to help you easily develop, assemble, and deploy
your applications to WebSphere Application Server Version 8.5 and includes
a rapid-deployment feature for testing applications in the Version 8.5 runtime environment.
- Improved operations, security, control, and integration
Improve operational efficiency and controls for managing
complex environments in a way that is less time consuming and resource
consuming. Take advantage of the benefits of the option to select
and switch between IBM WebSphere SDK Java Technology Edition Version
7.0 or 6.0 as well as powerful new batch capabilities. Enhancements
for problem determination include cross component tracing (XCT), improved
log and trace filtering, and support for IBM Support Assistant Data Collector. You can achieve richer
application security with greater flexibility and more granular control
using enhanced security with administrative audit features.

New feature:
The new features that are
described in this topic are current as of the original release of
the product version. Changes in this documentation that are related
to service releases are marked with fix pack icons.newfeat
This
version offers robust improvements, whether you are new to the product
or making the transition from a prior release. Use this topic to obtain
a high-level summary of the new features in this release. To learn
more about the new and changed features in key areas that affect your
specific roles in your business, see the information about what is
new for installers on IBM i operating
systems, administrators, security specialists, developers, and troubleshooters.
New Liberty profile: a lightweight application
foundation
WebSphere Application Server includes the Liberty profile that is optimized for both operational
and developer productivity. Key operational benefits include, but
are not limited to, the following capabilities:
- Ultra lightweight modular runtime environment, with an install
size of around 50 MB
- Incredibly fast startup time
- Java EE web application
and OSGi application deployment support
Java EE and OSGi application deployment support for the following: Java EE Web Profile, Java API for XML Web Services (JAX-WS), and Java Message Service (JMS), message-driven
beans (MDB) messaging application deployment
LDAP registry federation support
- Deployment, as a package, of an application and configured server
- Managed, centralized deployment to many nodes of a packaged application
and server
- Platform support for distributed platforms, IBM i, z/OS®, and Mac OS
The Liberty profile currently supports a subset of the following
parts of the full
WebSphere Application Server programming model:
- Java Database Connectivity
(JDBC)
Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) Web Profile
JAX-WS
Java Message Service (JMS)
- OSGi applications
You can enhance the liberty profile
with your own product extensions. A Liberty product extension can
contain features that extend the server runtime capabilities, server
templates to create customized server configurations, and other content.
Your features can make use of a powerful new system programming interface
(SPI) that provides entry points to the runtime and access to system-level
services that are not available to applications.
Familiar WebSphere Application Server enterprise qualities
of service, such as security and transaction integrity, are enabled
as required.
- Deploying applications to a Liberty profile
server
This profile supports two models of application deployment:
- Deploy an application by dropping it into a "dropins" directory.
- Deploy an application by adding it to the server configuration.
The file transfer feature enables
remote deployment of applications.
Because it is composable,
each Liberty profile server is usually configured to include only
the capabilities that are needed by the applications that it serves.
This approach keeps each deployed server small and agile.
- Network deployment of Liberty profile servers
- The job manager provides the ability to distribute and deploy
a Liberty profile server and applications, and start or stop embedded
resources. Administration through the job manager provides the following
key features:
- Support for central administration through job manager host target
jobs. You can submit job manager jobs that support the full lifecycle
of Liberty profile resource deployment from initial install, to updates,
to uninstall. A deployment manager is not required, although you can
use the job manager function available on a deployment manager to
administer the Liberty profile and its resources.
- Quick installation of the Liberty profile. You can extract the
Liberty profile resource and simply run the install Liberty profile
resource job. There is no requirement to run a formal installation
tool, such as Installation Manager, to use Liberty profile resources.
Liberty profile resources are packaged as compressed files that are
ready for use after extraction.
- Support for flexible sharing of resources
such as a software development kit (SDK), runtime binary files, server
configuration, and application binary files among many server instances.
- Non-destructive update enables easy installation of new versions
of any resources. You can switch easily between old and new resources,
or run concurrent versions of resources.
- No requirement for agent on target hosts, which reduces administration
costs.
The Liberty profile now supports a new,
highly scalable, Liberty collective management infrastructure that
is an alternative to using job manager. The Liberty collective management
infrastructure provides the following key features: - Support for central administration using the Liberty collective
controller Java Management Extensions
(JMX) managed beans (MBean). You can use the MBeans to support the
full lifecycle of the Liberty profile resource deployment from the
initial install, to updates, to uninstall. A WebSphere Application Server full profile deployment
manager or job manager is not required.
- Support for file transfer through the Liberty collective controller
to transfer files to and from Liberty profiles, including application
archives and configuration files.
- The Liberty cluster feature enables Liberty profiles in the collective
to be organized into application server clusters, enabling simplified
lifecycle management using MBeans that operate on the cluster as a
whole.
- Quick installation of the Liberty profile. You can extract the
Liberty profile resource and simply use the MBeans to perform installation.
There is no requirement to run a formal installation tool, such as
Installation Manager, to use Liberty profile resources. Liberty profile
resources are packaged as compressed files that are ready for use
after extraction.
- Support for flexible sharing of resources such as a software development
kit (SDK), runtime binary files, server configuration, and application
binary files among many server instances.
- Non-destructive update enables easy installation of new versions
of any resources. You can switch easily between old and new resources,
or run concurrent versions of resources.
- No requirement for agent on target hosts, which reduces administration
costs.
- Clustered collective controller supports high availability of
administration infrastructure, and scalability to manage over 3000
Liberty servers.
- Support for Jython clients.
Faster installation with
smaller footprint
- Take advantage of improved installation of the Liberty profile
with Installation Manager. The Liberty profile is now an independent
Installation Manager install with a correspondingly small offering
size. Use Installation Manager to add Java to your Liberty profile install. Java is packaged separately, so install just
the version you need, or use your own Java that meets Liberty minimum requirements.
You can also install the Liberty profile
by extracting one or more archive files. Options include a core archive
file that is approximately 50 MB which supports both web profile and
OSGi applications, an extended archive which adds web services and
messaging capabilities to the core Liberty function, and an additional
archive that includes extras such as an embedded Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) container and Java Persistence API (JPA) client
which can be used independently of the Liberty core.
- After installation is complete, you can use the server packaging
tool to create a minimum-sized serviceable archive for a specific
Liberty server. You can then use this package to perform manual archive
installation, or perform installation through job manager or the liberty
collective controller.
Enhanced performance monitoring
and problem determination
- Use dynamic caching for improved performance of web applications.
- Take advantage of enhanced performance monitoring capabilities
to monitor thread pools, database connection pools, messaging, and
web services.
- Use binary logging in Liberty servers to increase logging and
tracing performance and reduce the load on the Liberty profile servers
using the default log and trace facilities. Binary logging is based
on the High Performance Extensible Logging (HPEL) technology provided
in full profile servers. It is an alternative to the default log and
trace facility.
- Leverage timed operations in Liberty profile servers to issue
warnings in log files when JDBC calls in their application server
are operating more slowly than expected.
Support for JMS messaging in
Liberty profile
- Liberty profile supports asynchronous messaging as a method of
communication that is based on the JMS programming interface. The
JMS interface provides a common way for Java programs (clients and Java EE applications) to create, send, receive, and read asynchronous
requests as JMS messages. Liberty profile supports JMS messaging through
the following providers:
- Liberty embedded JMS messaging provider
- Service integration bus
- WebSphere MQ messaging
provider
- Liberty profile also supports automatic asynchronous messaging
using message-driven beans. Messages are automatically retrieved from
the JMS destinations, optionally within a transaction, and then sent
to the message-driven bean in a Java EE application. This approach removes the need for the application
to explicitly poll the JMS destinations.
Fast, flexible, and simplified application
development
WebSphere Application Server includes the following key new features and enhancements to
ease, simplify, and extend the application developer experience:
- The Liberty profile
- The Liberty profile provides a simplified and lightweight development
and application-serving environment for web and OSGi applications.
Familiar WebSphere Application Server enterprise
qualities of service, such as security and transaction integrity,
are enabled as required. Key benefits include, but are not limited
to, the following capabilities:
- Free and frictionless download for development purposes
- Ultra lightweight modular runtime environment, with an install
size of around 50 MB
- Incredibly fast startup time: under 5 seconds for simple web applications
- Simplified configuration for quick time to productivity
- Availability of WebSphere Application Server Developer Tools as Eclipse plug-ins for broad tooling support
- Platform support for distributed platforms, IBM i, z/OS, and Mac OS
- Because it is composable, each Liberty profile server is usually
configured to include only the capabilities that are needed by the
applications that it serves. This approach keeps each server small
and agile. The Liberty profile includes support for the following
capabilities:
- Blueprint
- Java Database Connectivity
(JDBC)
- Java Management Extensions
(JMX)
- Java Platform, Enterprise
Edition (Java EE) Web Profile
- Bean Validation
- Common Annotations for the Java Platform 1.1
Contexts and Dependency Injection 1.0 specification
- Debugging Support for Other Languages
Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) Lite subset of the EJB
3.1 specification
- Java Servlet 3.0 feature
- Expression language
- Interceptors
- Java Persistence API (JPA)
- Java Server Faces (JSF)
- Java Server Pages (JSP)
- Java Transaction API (JTA)
Managed beans
- Standard Tag Library for JavaServer Pages (JSTL)
JAX-WS
Java Message Service (JMS)
MongoDB - client configuraton support for
an open source, highly scalable, noSQL database
- Security for Liberty profile includes support for:
- Basic user registry
Support for password hashing
Custom user registries
EJB security
LDAP registry federation support
- Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) user registry
Messaging security
Password encryption in configuration files
- Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
- Web security
Web services security
- Web application bundle (WAB)
- Integrated support for WebSphere Application Server Web 2.0 and Mobile
Toolkit
The WebSphere Application Server Web 2.0 and Mobile Toolkit simplifies the addition of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax)
rich desktop and mobile user interfaces and Representational State
Transfer (REST) Web services to Java Web applications. Web 2.0 capabilities, such as Ajax and REST, help
application developers to create more connected, interactive applications,
that result in higher customer satisfaction, user productivity, and
enhanced decision making. New mobile Ajax components enable developers
to create mobile web applications that run on devices such as smartphones
and tablets.
- New migration suite of tools to prepare, analyze,
and migrate WebSphere applications
and other competitive applications
Enjoy faster application migrations using the extensive set
of tools to help you plan for and implement application migrations.
The IBM WebSphere Application Server Migration toolkit
is a suite of tools and knowledge collections, provided at no charge,
to quickly and cost-effectively migrate to WebSphere Application Server V7, V8.0 or V8.5,
whether from a previous version of WebSphere Application Server or competitive
application servers including Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Application
Server, JBoss Application server, and Apache Tomcat. This toolkit
provides a single solution for identifying, analyzing, and resolving
application code quality and compliance requirements. You can obtain
this migration toolkit from the developerWorks® IBM WebSphere Application Server
Migration Toolkit page.
- Support for OSGi programming model enhancements for
the full profile, including EJB support
Take advantage of enhanced modular application development
by assembling OSGi applications from reusable bundles that contain
Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB)
assets for the full profile. The enterprise beans in your OSGi bundles
can be developed from scratch, or you can include existing EJB assets
and migrate them to use OSGi modularity with minimal code changes.
Stateful, stateless, and singleton enterprise beans are supported.
Your OSGi application can also contain message-driven beans (MDB).
You can deploy and configure an OSGi application that contains
enterprise beans in a similar way to deploying and configuring a Java Platform, Enterprise Edition
(Java EE) enterprise application,
by using wsadmin or the administrative console.
- Support for IBM WebSphere SDK Java Technology Edition Version 7.0
This IBM Software Development
Kit (SDK) provides a full-function SDK for Java that is compliant with the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) 7 application programming interfaces
(APIs). With IBM WebSphere SDK Java Technology Edition
Version 7.0, you can develop and deploy Java applications at the Java 7 API level and continue the "write once, run anywhere"Java paradigm at the Java API level. The SDK contains the Java application Runtime Environment
and other tools that enable developers to create Java applications.
WebSphere Application Server supports IBM WebSphere SDK Java Technology Edition Version
7.0 as a pluggable JDK. Java 6 is installed with the product and used by default. You can optionally
install Java 7 support and then
enable it using the managesdk tool.
Enhanced
resiliency
WebSphere Application Server Version 8.5 provides enhanced
user availability and application server resiliency with resiliency
enhancements for the service integration bus.
- Improvements to the recovery of messaging engine
errors
When a recoverable database error is detected by the high availability
(HA) manager, the messaging engine is stopped, and the standby messaging
engine is started automatically, if available. The other applications
running in the application server are not affected by the failure
of the messaging engine.
- Enable the messaging engine to restart after a
failure
When a messaging engine fails due to recoverable database problems,
it is disabled and failed over to another messaging engine in the
cluster, if configured for high availability. In the event that the
active messaging engine does not responding to the database, the standby
messaging engine is able to take ownership of the database because
the active messaging engine holds only short duration locks. This
action also ensures that only one active messaging engine can access
the database at a given time. The disabled messaging engine is automatically
enabled after a specific time and is available for failover.
- Retain the count of the failed deliveries
after the messaging engine is restarted
When a message delivery fails, the messaging engine attempts
to redeliver the message repeatedly and the delivery count increases
incrementally each time. The redelivery count is persisted to the
message store and is made available for the messages even after the
messaging engine is restarted.
- Enhanced
memory leak detection and protection
WebSphere Application Server provides
top down pattern-based memory leak detection, prevention, and action
by watching for suspect patterns in application code at run time. WebSphere Application Server has some means
of protection against memory leaks when stopping or redeploying applications.
This product monitors application and module activity and performs
diagnostic actions when an application or an individual module stops.
This feature helps in increasing application up time with frequent
application redeployments without cycling the server.
- Improvement
to the messaging engine to prevent holding long running database locks
When the messaging engine uses a database as the message store,
you can configure the messaging engine to acquire short duration locks
on the database; thereby, preventing it from holding long running
locks on the database. The new locking mechanism also helps the standby
messaging engine to acquire the database ownership when a JVM, hosting
the messaging engine in a highly available clustered environment,
becomes unresponsive until a specified period of time.
- Improvements
to service integration bus performance
Improved messaging engine startup time by loading the destinations
concurrently in a multi-core architecture. The concurrent loading
is possible if the message store is configured with the database which
supports parallel reads by multiple threads. The performance improvement
is directly proportional to the parallel processing capability of
the database and the capacity of the system on which the messaging
engine is running.
- Recovery
of the messaging engine configuration from the message store
You can use the recoverMEConfig command
to restore the configuration information of the messaging engine from
the message store in case the configuration files are lost or corrupted.
Improved operations,
security, control, and integration
WebSphere Application Server Version 8.5 includes the following
highlights for greater security and for enhanced operations and control
for application development, management, and problem determination.
- Improved operations and control
- Simplified problem determination
- Enhanced security for administrative configuration audit tracking
- Improved integration and service mapping
Improved operations and control
Enhancements for IBM HTTP Server on z/OS
IBM HTTP Server for WebSphere Application Server includes z/OS exploitation for MVS™ Datasets, operator console commands, WLM
classification, SMF logging, and more codepage conversion flexibility.
Session Initiation
Protocol (SIP) serviceability and monitoring enhancements
WebSphere Application Server provides
enhanced serviceability and monitoring capabilities for the SIP container
and proxy to enable SIP developers and administrators to more quickly
identify and resolve problems when running SIP applications. Leverage
the following improvements to monitor and aid problem determination
within SIP networking environments:
- Use new PMI counters to diagnose issues of network congestion,
session replication, task duration, rejected messages, timer invocations,
queue monitoring.
- Use features within the High Performance Extensible Logging (HPEL)
log and trace infrastructure to troubleshoot SIP call flows across
SIP proxies and SIP containers. When HPEL is enabled, the collection
of SIP context is automatically enabled and includes identifiers for
the session, the SIP call, and the application session.
- Use the SIP session memory dump utility to help debug problems
related to SIP container sessions. By configuring the SIPContainerMBean
method to use various trace methods, you can specify the SIP session
details to dump to the specified trace file.
- Use the Unmatched Message Listener API to receive incoming Session
Initiation Protocol (SIP) request or response messages that cannot
be processed by the SIP container so that your application receives
a call back when a message is not matched to an existing dialog. Use
this feature to identify and resolve records associated with calls
that may have failed from a different geography, to recognize denial-of-service
(DoS) attacks, or to discover network components that are not behaving
correctly.
- Enhanced SIP proxy logging capabilities include logging for both
complete SIP messages and rejected SIP messages. To troubleshoot rejected
messages, you can use trace logging to record the SipCallId of specific
messages that have been rejected.
- Option to select and switch between IBM WebSphere SDK Java Technology Edition Version 7.0 or 6.0
WebSphere Application Server provides
support for the IBM WebSphere SDK Java Technology Edition
Version 7.0 as an optional pluggable Java development kit (JDK). Java 6 is installed with the product and used by default. Use
the managesdk tool to optionally install and enable Java 7. You can optionally switch between using Java 6 or Java 7 to best meet your business needs.
- Enhancements for Java batch support
WebSphere Application Server provides
powerful new batch application features. Enhancements include support
for parallel batch processing to reduce batch job elapsed time, memory-overload
protection for batch workloads, integration of workload scheduler
to submit batch work from scheduler products like Tivoli® Workload Scheduler, and numerous xJCL
and programming model improvements to increase application development
flexibility.
- OSGi Blueprint
security improvements
You can configure bean security in the Blueprint XML file of
your OSGi applications, so that the methods of the bean can be accessed
only by users that are assigned a specified role. You can configure
bean-level security, so that a single role is associated with all
the methods of the bean, or you can configure method-level security,
where different roles are associated with specific methods.
- Support for the OSGi application console
The WebSphere Application Server administrative console provides pages that you can use to examine
or debug a specific set of OSGi bundles running on an application
server. You can, for example, view and explore the package and service
dependencies between the bundles in an OSGi application.
- Support for the Service Component Architecture (SCA)
OASIS programming model implementation
WebSphere Application Server Version 8.5 adds support for
the SCA OASIS programming model implementation. The product provides
partial support for the following OASIS specifications:
This product also supports EJB binding, POJO, JAXB and SDO as
data types.
- Support for Derby
10.8
Connect your applications to the latest versions of a wide
array of industry-leading databases to enable maximum deployment flexibility. WebSphere Application Server Version 8.5 has been tested with
and includes the Derby 10.8 database.
Simplified problem determination
- Cross component trace
(XCT) enables correlation of log and trace entries with minimal cost
Use the cross component trace facility to identify the root
cause of problems across components. XCT annotates log and trace entries
so that log entries that are related to a request that is serviced
by more than one thread, process, or even server are identified as
belonging to the same unit of work. This enhancement enables administrators
and support teams to follow the flow of a request from end-to-end
as it traverses thread or process boundaries.
- Enhancements to
log and trace filtering using application name, request ID, or custom
extensions
Use the High Performance Extensible Logging (HPEL) LogViewer
command-line tool to filter records based on the content of log and
trace record extensions. The application server automatically creates
an appName extension for each log and trace record related to a Java Platform, Enterprise Edition
(Java EE) application, indicating
the name of that application. The application server also automatically
creates a requestId extension when cross component trace is enabled
for each log and trace record created during the processing of certain
types of requests (for example HTTP or JMS requests), indicating the
unique ID of that request. You can add custom extensions to HPEL log
and trace entries using the LogRecordContext API.
- Improved troubleshooting using IBM Support Assistant Data Collector
The IBM Support Assistant Data Collector for WebSphere Application Server tool focuses on
automatic collection of problem data and is now included as part of
this product. It also provides symptom analysis support for the various
categories of problems encountered by IBM software products. Information pertinent to a type of problem
is collected to help identify the origin of the problem under investigation.
The tool assists customers by reducing the amount of time it takes
to reproduce a problem with the proper RAS tracing levels set, as
well as by reducing the effort required to send the appropriate log
information in to IBM Support.
Extended repository options
- Enhanced
security for administrative configuration audit tracking
WebSphere Application Server Version 8.5 enables you to track
changes made to your application server configuration using checkpoints
made through the extended repository service. A full checkpoint
is a complete copy of the entire configuration repository. A delta
checkpoint is a subset snapshot of the configuration repository that
is made when you change a product configuration. Use a checkpoint
to restore the configuration repository back to a prior state. To
determine what has changed in the configuration, you can extract from
a delta checkpoint to obtain the before and after versions of the
files that were saved.
Improved integration and service
mapping
Service mapping to enable simple SOA integration
capabilities through service routing and transformation
When using the WebSphere Application Server full profile, you can use service mapping to route and transform
requests and responses between service clients and service providers,
so that you remove the dependency of the service client on either
the service provider location or the service provider interface. Service
mapping makes it easier for application developers to shield their
applications from minor changes in the services on which those applications
depend, and administrators can control to which service interactions
the service mapping applies.