As more and more of us migrate to Lawson System Foundation (LSF) 9.0 (including WebSphere) you’ll be called upon to “Re-Deploy your Web Applications” each time you install a LSF patch or Service Pack.

The Web Applications include Lawson Security, BPM (a.k.a. Process Flow), and IOS. The above applications are delivered by Lawson as Enterprise Archive files (.ear) and need to be re-deployed to your WebSphere Application Server (WAS) to take advantage of new functionality and bug fixes.

The Lawson recommended process is to login to the WAS admin console and click thru several screens as you:

1. Stop the Enterprise Applications (Lawson Security, BPM, and IOS)
2. Uninstall the Enterprise Applications
3. Synchronize the Nodes
4. Install each ear File
5. Save to the Master Configuration
6. Synchronize the Nodes again
7. Start the applications
8. Generate the WebServer plugin-cfg.xml file
9. Propagate the plugin-cfg.xml file (If your web server is remote from WAS)

1.  Administrative Console – A web enabled application that allows you to do most administrative, installation, and configuration tasks.  Using this option is recommended if you are not yet familiar with WebSphere and need some hand holding along the way. 

Figure 1. Snapshot of the administrative console.

2. wsadmin –A command line utility that allows interactive and scripting capabilities to manage your WebSphere Application Server. This tool uses the Bean Scripting Framework (BSF), which supports a couple of scripting languages. The two supported scripting languages as of today are Jacl and Jython. Using this tool along with either of the scripting languages allows you to automate the tasks thereby increasing repeatability and reducing errors.

So what is Jacl and Jython?

Both Jacl and Jython are JVM embedded versions of the popular scripting languages Tcl and Python respectively. If you know either of these languages already you are in luck. If you don’t then the toughest thing about them is choosing which one to standardize upon. After looking at each one in detail I decided to use Jython since its object oriented syntax was more familiar to me. The downside to Jython is that it’s only been in use with WebSphere since version 6.0 and therefore there are not too many examples out on the net to use as a starting point. To learn more about jython visit: http://www.jython.org.

Both of these languages interact with the wsadmin tool via JMX and 4 standard Mbeans to allow full access and control of the different administrative components of WAS.

Figure 2.  wsadmin Mbeans

• AdminApp – install, modify, and administer applications.
• AdminConfig – create, change WebSphere Application Server static configuration.
• AdminControl – work with live running objects, perform traces and data type conversion.
• AdminTask – access administrative commands to provide alternate ways to access configuration commands.

Sample Script

The following sample script uses Jython to demonstrate the re-deployment process of the Lawson Web Application “BPM”. Feel free to use the sample script below as a starting point to develop your own dynamic Jython scripts to use in your patch application process. There are a myriad of ways to improve this script to be more dynamic but I leave that as an exercise for the reader. Enjoy!

- QUOTE OF THE ISSUE –

“The world is full of willing people,
some willing to work, the
rest willing to let them.”

-- Robert Frost

Share your Tips & Tricks. Send them to mailto:letter-tips@lawsonguru.com.
You can view Tips & Tricks from past issues on the Tips & Tricks page on LawsonGuru.com.

This month's submission comes from David Williams of Paradigm Business Solutions.

Date to String in JavaScript

[This tip only works with locales that enter dates in MM/DD/CCYY formats.  Next month I'll share some code for handling the others -- Ed.]