After stumbling out of the gate, Entity Java Beans return with a whole new attitude.

By Joe Pluta

In my most recent article on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), I mentioned that I consider Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to be terribly over-engineered. In that same article, I mentioned my longstanding opinion that Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) was originally in the same category. I in fact once said EJB was one of the first technologies that had "jumped the shark" before being officially released.

However, EJB has evolved.

I have seen the future of the System i, and it's very bright—-and a little bit scary.

I speak every year at iSeries DevCon, and every year I try to get to the keynote address because I never know what I'm going to hear, but I know it will be interesting. This year in particular I'm glad I made it, because Mike Smith, IBM Distinguished Engineer and i5/OS Chief Architect, gave a presentation on what can only be called the future of IT in System i terms.

As I listened to him, it became clear to me that far from abandoning the System i, IBM has instead positioned it to become the central platform for IT in as wide a range of shops as you can imagine. I've also gleaned a few other things from reading and talking to people, and it's clear that the System i is probably the premiere platform to be on, especially in business applications. At the same time, it's just as clear that the System i is going to change and IBM's vision of its future is starting to really come into focus.

In this column, we return to our roots with a detailed how-to on installing the latest version of WebSphere Express on System i.

I recently did my very first scratch install of i5/OS. And while IBM provides really good instructions for doing so, the nature of the process is such that a first-timer can get a bit uneasy even when things are going correctly. For example, there were places where the documenter knew that a certain step would take a long time and sort of took it for granted that the installer would be OK with that. Luckily, I ran across Dr. Franken's build log for Frankie III, and he was kind enough to record a couple of places where the installation seemed broken but wasn't. (If you aren't familiar with Dr. Franken or the Frankies—short for FrankenSeries—then you should by all means read some of the stuff on the good doctor's Web site!)