Maximizing Performance and Scalability with IBM WebSphere [Paperback]

Adam Neat (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 4, 2003

Maximizing Performance Scalability with IBM WebSphere teaches the reader real world performance management methodologies and best practices with a bent toward an IBM WebSphere J2EE environment. It will enable the reader to match the benefits of WebSphere optimization and tuning to business benefits and describes best practice J2EE development topics that have direct impact on IBM WebSphere capacity and performance management. Neat also describes how to proactively manage the performance of an IBM WebSphere v4 or v5 platform, and explains how to tune WebSphere with performance and robustness in mind. Additionally, the reader will learn how to develop custom IBM WebSphere performance monitoring and management tools to track and plot potential bottlenecks and pending performance issues before they cause impact.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Adam Neat is a consulting manager for Accenture LLC, the world’s leading IT management and consultancy firm. Adam is the Australian & New Zealand e-Infrastructure lead (covering technical architecture areas such as host systems, storage systems, operating systems, and all things in-between) within the Communications & High Technology market unit. At Accenture, he is recognized as a global expert in infrastructure architectures. Adam is a member of the Accenture Architecture and Core Technologies domain within his global region, where he provides specialty expertise in technical architectures which cover technologies such as J2EE, Java, MQ, CORBA; middleware; large-scale systems; application design and architecture; and the deployment, configuration, and management of enterprise application servers such as IBM's WebSphere, BEA's WebLogic, and Sun’s SunOne Application Server. Adam is also heavily involved in the integration and production optimization of large scale Unix-based databases (DB2 and Oracle).

Adam holds a degree in Computing Information Systems and Hardware technologies from Monash University, has various certificates on Unix and NT platforms such as HP-UX, Sun Solaris, Microsoft NT and Digital Unix (Tru64 Unix, and is a full member of the Australia Institute of Management (AIMM).

Product Details

• Paperback: 552 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (December 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590591305
• ISBN-13: 978-1590591307
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,520,665 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Real world examples help you understand the theory, December 29, 2003

By 

Preston Romney (Midway, Ut United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Maximizing Performance and Scalability with IBM WebSphere (Paperback)

This book great to read from cover to cover, as well as simply using it as a reference guide. As some one who is familiar with the WebSphere platform, but new to performance tuning, I found that the topics where laid out in a very easy to understand progression.

I appreciate the first chapter as it builds the case for performance tuning. The examples given are 'real world'. They show how costly a project can get over time if you just "throw hardware" at a performance problem. This is a no brainer for most people that will read this book. However, all the dollar figures and numbers are great to bring to decision makers before a project begins to help you build a case for budgeting and planning for performance -before production!

It is very nice to finally find a book that compares and contrasts the different architectures of WAS 4 and WAS 5. Adam Neat describes each component in both versions 4 and 5, and how they are different.

This book is probably not for someone who is just getting started with WebSphere. I would definitely recommend this book to someone who is comfortable with the administration of WebSphere, and needs to learn the art of performance tuning. You won't be disappointed.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Where is WebSphere performance in this book?, March 25, 2005

By 

John Mors (Arlington) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Maximizing Performance and Scalability with IBM WebSphere (Paperback)

I found this book promising but extremely disappointing. Websphere has a lot of tools available for performance monitoring, but this books only mentions the most obvious of these in the last 14 pages. This is typical of the book, where it tends to address how to tune hardware and Windows / UNIX, but not WebSphere or even the JVM.

For an excellent introduction to WebSphere Prrformance see: Barcia, Roland et al. IBM WebSphere: Deployment and Advanced Configuration. Prentice Hall PTR. ISBN: 0131468626.

For performance and scalability, see: Roehm, Birgit et al. IBM WebSphere V5.1 Performance, Scalability, and High Availability WebSphere Handbook Series. http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg246198.pdf

For Scalability, also see: IBM. WebSphere Scalability: WLM and Clustering Using WebSphere Application Server Advanced Edition. http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/SG246153.html

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars an independent opinion, February 27, 2005

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Maximizing Performance and Scalability with IBM WebSphere (Paperback)

WebSphere is one of IBM's core software offerings, on a par with DB2. Accordingly, IBM has built up a huge portfolio of functionality in WebSphere. And it has published a series of books explaining its usage. By definition, these books should be considered authoritative.

So why should you even look at Neat's book? For one thing, he offers a different viewpoint on explaining what you can do with WebSphere. Remember that most users of WebSphere are companies that will have to invest considerable time and money in understanding and using it. Simply having a second written opinion on a particular aspect may help your understanding. And the cost of that (ie. the cost of this book) is trivial compared to the time it might save you. Let alone the cost of bringing in a consultant.

Another reason for the book's utility is simply that Neat is independent of IBM. It gives him greater flexibility to make objective assessments; particularly if some of these are negative.

One consequence of his independence is that the book devotes substantial space to issues involved in running WebSphere on Sun machines. Now IBM does offer WebSphere across a wide range of hardware. Naturally, including their own servers. To the best of my recollection, their WebSphere books simply do not give the extensive Sun coverage you will find here. Neat gives a realistic acknowledgement of the market presence of Sun for web applications.