IBM WebSphere Application Server version to version comparison

1. © 2010 IBM Corporation
WebSphere
WebSphere Application Server
Version to version comparison

2. © 2010 IBM Corporation
WAS Support Lifecycle
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/websphere/support/lifecycle/

3. © 2010 IBM Corporation
List of supported various industry standards
Source: Wikipedia, validity of this information has been checked

4. © 2010 IBM Corporation
WAS V7.0 New Features
It is a Java EE 5 compliant application server.
Following are the flagship features introduced by WebSphere Application Server Version 7:
 Flexible Management
Flexible Management facilitates administration of a large number of WebSphere Application Server
base edition and Network Deployment topologies that might be geographically distributed.
 Business-Level Application
Business-Level Application is used for managing application artifacts independent of packaging or
programming models.
 Property Based Configuration
The Property Based Configuration feature simplifies the experience of automating administration: an
administrator can update the WebSphere Application Server Version 7 configuration using a simple
property file.
 Anumber of additional capabilities were made available for V7 in the form of feature packs which are
optionally added to a V7 install. Feature Pack content has the same quality and support as main
release content - the purpose of a feature pack is to deliver new innovation before the next major
release. The following feature packs were provided for WebSphere Application Server V7:
– Feature Pack for Modern Batch
– Feature Pack for OSGi Applications and JPA 2.0
– Feature Pack for SCA
– Feature Pack for Web 2.0 and Mobile
– Feature Pack for XML
– Feature Pack for Communication Enabled Applications

5. © 2010 IBM Corporation
WAS V7.0 Performance Improvement
 V7 Web Services performance improvements of up to
100% over the WAS V6.1 Web Services FEP
 V7 EJB3 performance improvements of over 30%
 V7 64-bit memory footprint reduced by 33% and overall
performance improved by 10%. 64-bit memory and
performance now equivalent to 32-bit!
• Dominates the overall benchmark category by 33%
• Commanding lead in the throughput per core and
single 4-core system categories
• Leading Oracle/HP and Oracle/Sun by more
than 16% in performance per CPU core
IBM
Oracle
Oracle
Sun
BEA
BEA

6. © 2010 IBM Corporation
WAS V8, V8.5 and V8.5.5 New Features
 Version 8.0
– It is a Java EE 6 compliant application server and incorporates the capabilities originally delivered as
feature packs with WAS V7. This version of WAS is installed using the IBM Installation Manager.
 Version 8.5
– It offers the same Java EE 6 and Java SE 6 (by default) as V8.0 and also provides - and can be
configured to run on - Java SE 7. The primary new capabilities in V8.5 are the Liberty profile of
WebSphere Application Server and the intelligent management features.
– The Liberty profile of WebSphere Application Server is included with all the commercial editions of
the server, providing a lightweight profile of the server for web, mobile and OSGi applications. It is a
functional subset of the full profile of WebSphere Application Server, for both development and
production use, with an install size of under 50 MB, a startup time of around 3 seconds and a new
XML-based server configuration which can be treated as a development artefact to aid developer
productivity.
– Intelligent management capability is added in the Network Deployment and z/OS editions. This
integrates operational features that were previously available in the separate WebSphere Virtual
Enterprise (WVE) offering: application editioning, server health management, dynamic
clustering and intelligent routing.
 Version 8.5.5
– It includes significant enhancements to the Liberty profile compared to v8.5. The WebSphere
Application Server Liberty Core edition leverages the lightweight and dynamic aspects of the Liberty
profile.

7. © 2010 IBM Corporation7
WAS V8, V8.5, V8.5.5 Performance Improvement
 Java 6
– JVM runtime enhancements
– JIT optimizations
 Application Performance Improvements vs. WAS v7
– DayTrader: Up to 20%
– OSGi Applications: Up to 26%
 End-to-end performance improvements vs. WAS v7 including
– Up to 15% faster product installations
– Up to 20% faster server startup time for developers
– Up to 69% faster application server creation in a large topology
– Up to 31% faster application server cluster creation in a large topology
– Up to 22% faster application deployments in a large topology
– Up to 11% better vertical scaling on larger multi-core systems
– JPA 2.0 optimizations with DynaCache and JPA Level 2 cache
Performance is based on measurements and projections using standard IBM benchmarks in a controlled environment. The actual throughput or
performance that any user will experience will vary depending upon many factors, including considerations such as the amount of multiprogramming in the
user's job stream, the I/O configuration, the storage configuration, and the workload processed. Therefore, no assurance can be given that an individual user
will achieve results similar to those stated here.
Performance data is
based on WebSphere
Application Server in a
distributed environment

8. © 2010 IBM Corporation
WAS 8 Performance Improvement
• We focused on performance for v8 because of the TCO advantages that high performance
drives
 WAS V8 is up to 85% higher throughput than WAS V6.x
 WAS V8 is up to 20-26% higher throughput than WAS V7
• From a raw throughput for EJB apps (i.e. # of transaction) standpoint, v8 is upto 20%
faster than the latest update of v7. WAS v8 also provides 26% better throughput when
running OSGi Apps vs. running Spring 3.0 apps on WASv7 (OSGi Apps contains the
standardized Spring component model)
• Beyond throughput, we also deliver end-to-end performance enhancements like 20%
faster startup for developers, 15% faster installs and 69% faster app server creation in a
large topology.
 Automation of problem determination task via HPEL (High Performance Extensible Logging)
– Up to 6x faster than V7

9. © 2010 IBM Corporation
Liberty Profile
 The Liberty profile supports a subset of the Java EE 6 stack.
 Supported technologies that are supported by all versions of the Liberty profile:
– Java Servlet 3.0
– JavaServer Faces (JSF) 2.0
– JavaServer Pages (JSP) 2.2
– Java Expression Language 2.2
– Standard Tag Library for JavaServer Pages (JSTL) 1.2
– Bean Validation 1.0
– Java Persistence API (JPA) 2.0
– Java Transaction API (JTA) 1.1
– Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) 4.0
– Java API for RESTful Web Services (JAX-RS) 1.1
 WebSphere Application Server Liberty Core (support full Java EE 6 Web Profile
specifications)
– Contexts and Dependency Injection for Java (Web Beans 1.0)
– Dependency Injection for Java 1.0
– Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1 (includes Interceptors 1.1) - EJB Lite subset

10. © 2010 IBM Corporation
 Additional supported technologies:
– Java API for XML-Based Web Services (JAX-WS) 2.2
– Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB) 2.2
– SOAP with Attachments API for Java (SAAJ) 1.3
– Java Message Service API (JMS) 1.1
– Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1 - Message-Driven beans
– OSGi Technology:
• Web Application Bundles (OSGi R4.2 Enterprise, Chapter 128)
• Blueprint Container (OSGi R4.2 Enterprise, Chapter 121)
– Blueprint Transactions
– Blueprint Managed JPA
• JNDI (OSGi R4.2 Enterprise, Chapter 126)
• OSGi application of Java EE technologies that are supported by the profile