What is WebSphere?

WebSphere is a set of Java-based tools from IBM that allows customers to create and manage sophisticated business Web sites. The central WebSphere tool is the WebSphere Application Server (WAS), an application server that a customer can use to connect Web site users with Java applications or servlets. Servlets are Java programs that run on the server rather than on the user's computer as Java applets do. Servlets can be developed to replace traditional common gateway interface (CGI) scripts, usually written in C or Practical Extraction and Reporting Language, and run much faster because all user requests run in the same process space. In addition to Java, WebSphere supports open standard interfaces such as the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) and is designed for use across different operating system platforms. One edition of WebSphere is offered for small-to-medium size businesses and another edition for larger businesses with a higher number of transactions``
WAS provides a servlet server that is installed as a "bolt-on" to a Web (HTTP) server. The HTTP server provides static Web pages and when it is equipped with a servlet server such as WebSphere, it can provide dynamic Web pages that are modified on the fly by data that is on your iSeries. Servlets are the Java programs that communicate directly with the servlet server and send it the formatted data to enable Web transactions and data access. The Java programs in turn can do it all or they can call high level language (HLL) programs such as those written in RPG and COBOL to fetch and/or update the necessary data.
With a servlet server such as WebSphere, the code called by the server is always based on Java. The bottom line is that if you want the IBM mainstream method for serving dynamic data to a Web browser, you need a servlet server such as WebSphere in any of its versions and packages. WebSphere is currently at version 6.0 and there are a few numbers following it such as 6.0.2.1 which better depict its version and micro release and PTF levels.
WebSphere is in many ways a Web operating system that operates under control of the system's operating system. Just like i5/OS, it is very large, complex, and sophisticated. Though you may be able to do simple things with just a bit of WebSphere knowledge, to become proficient in it, you have to invest quite a bit of time. To give you an idea of the complexity of WebSphere and the things you can know overall to make it work effectively in your shop, there are a number of manuals that IBM provides for you to learn and use the product. In fact, there are seven separate PDF manuals for version 6.0 that address the many aspects of hosting a WebSphere server from installation to administration to troubleshooting.
The following list contains the purpose of each of these PDF format manuals and the number of pages in each. Considering that the manuals are two weeks behind the Web version, for me they are much easier to work with than playing the hypertext game on the Web. They are all downloadable to your PC. Additionally, they are being updated all the time so these page counts are how they look right now at the beginning of the fourth quarter, 2005. The WebSphere manuals include the following:
Installation, 66 pages Administration, 2690 pages Performance, 300 pages Security, 1196 pages Troubleshooting, 336 pages Migration, 170 pages Program Development, 1366 pages That's about 6,000 pages. Though you don't need all of those pages to set up and get some simple things running with WAS Express, if those pages we