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| PeterPotkay |
 Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 3:29 pm Post subject: WTX -Endangered Species? |
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Poobah
Joined: 15 May 2001
Posts: 7722
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I thought I saw a thread, can't find it now, where some of you were talking about WTX being obsolete in WMB 8, or maybe even at WMB 7, because the new Broker versions do what WTX does so much better / faster / easier?
Correct? And is there anything written up on this officially?
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Peter Potkay
Keep Calm and MQ On |
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| Esa |
| Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:53 am Post subject: |
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Grand Master
Joined: 22 May 2008
Posts: 1387
Location: Finland
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You must mean this thread. Found it by searching with WTX + legacy.
I haven't seen or heard anything official. These are peoples personal opinions.
I think WTX is not endangered as a species, but it's obvious that it won't be put it in the same cage with Message Broker so often in the future. Many companies (or most companies) that use it don't even have Message Broker. But it's true that many things that you could do with WTX only can now be implemented with DFDL and the new mapper. For example record level exeption handling. |
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| mqsiuser |
| Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 2:06 am Post subject: |
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Yatiri
Joined: 15 Apr 2008
Posts: 637
Location: Germany
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Also see here.
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Just use REFERENCEs |
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| lancelotlinc |
| Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 6:03 am Post subject: |
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Jedi Knight
Joined: 22 Mar 2010
Posts: 4941
Location: Bloomington, IL USA
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Tea leaves often show us the truth we sometimes do not want to see.
1. WTX provides some customers with valuable assistance in transforming industry-compliant data payloads. WTX accomplishes this in a rigid, brittle way.
2. WTX is a legacy product and does not work well with modern architectures. It requires platform-specific deployment considerations and a special build process that is difficult to fully automate.
3. Some of the source used to build customer WTX functions is maintained in binary form and cannot be source-text compared to previous versions so that managers can approve or disapprove the software source code change (ie. ClearCase vdiff tool).
4. WTX architecture is not multi-threaded friendly. Many problems exist when customers have WTX maps execute in the same Execution Group. The only known workaround is to limit each EG to a single WTX map. This means that for every WTX map, the customer must create a new EG. As you can imagine, this can grow to be unmanageable.
5. WTX Design studio runs on 32-bit Windows only. Linux and 64-bit Windows OS results in WTX being unable to function.
6. Type tress have to be re-imported every time some minor change to the XML schema happens rather than re-synchronize the type tree to the existing map. This requires deleting the old definition, which can be cumbersome and time-consuming.
7. WTX does not interface well with Java tooling or adapters.
....
And I could go on for a few dozen more examples. These are reasons that smart customers are migrating away from WTX as fast as possible.
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| mqjeff |
| Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 6:09 am Post subject: |
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Grand Master
Joined: 25 Jun 2008
Posts: 17447
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One can remember that DFDL and the Mapper were co-developed by both the Broker development team and the WTX development team.
One should also decide what it means to say "WTX". Does one mean a specific set of technologies? Or does one mean "a product sold by IBM".
Is Message Broker v8 the same product as MQSeries Integrator 2.0? |
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| Vitor |
| Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 6:16 am Post subject: |
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Grand High Poobah
Joined: 11 Nov 2005
Posts: 26093
Location: Texas, USA
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| lancelotlinc wrote: |
| These are reasons that smart customers are migrating away from WTX as fast as possible. |
But accepting all that, there's no official word on this. It's all opinion. Which was the question the OP was asking.
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Honesty is the best policy.
Insanity is the best defence. |
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| mqjeff |
| Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 6:19 am Post subject: |
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Grand Master
Joined: 25 Jun 2008
Posts: 17447
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| Vitor wrote: |
| lancelotlinc wrote: |
| These are reasons that smart customers are migrating away from WTX as fast as possible. |
But accepting all that, there's no official word on this. It's all opinion. Which was the question the OP was asking. |
Yes, but.
If the Broker v8 product is fully capable of handling all of the functions of Broker v7+WTX, without needing to pay additional license cost for WTX, then that's not *just* an opinion question.
And, to be clear, Broker v8 *is* fully capable... |
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| lancelotlinc |
| Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 6:24 am Post subject: |
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Jedi Knight
Joined: 22 Mar 2010
Posts: 4941
Location: Bloomington, IL USA
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I would also re-state my earlier post that the WTX brand name may be re-used, but the current implementation (WTX v8.4) needs a very deep-dive re-write to overcome significant deficiencies.
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| Vitor |
| Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 6:48 am Post subject: |
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Grand High Poobah
Joined: 11 Nov 2005
Posts: 26093
Location: Texas, USA
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| mqjeff wrote: |
Yes, but.
If the Broker v8 product is fully capable of handling all of the functions of Broker v7+WTX, without needing to pay additional license cost for WTX, then that's not *just* an opinion question. |
Well, yes.
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| rekarm01 |
| Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 4:11 pm Post subject: |
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Grand Master
Joined: 25 Jun 2008
Posts: 1415
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| mqjeff wrote: |
Yes, but.
If the Broker v8 product is fully capable of handling all of the functions of Broker v7+WTX, without needing to pay additional license cost for WTX, then that's not *just* an opinion question.
And, to be clear, Broker v8 *is* fully capable... |
How are those DFDL Industry/Enterprise software packs coming along? That would go a long way towards eliminating the current need for Broker+WTX.
Whether WTX remains a part of the WebSphere family or ends up somewhere else is another matter, but there's no official word on that, either. |
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| scarified |
| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 9:18 am Post subject: WTX is thriving |
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Newbie
Joined: 01 Jun 2006
Posts: 8
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There seems to be some crazy rumors starting in this forum. Let's look at the facts...
| lancelotlinc wrote: |
| 1. WTX provides some customers with valuable assistance in transforming industry-compliant data payloads. WTX accomplishes this in a rigid, brittle way. |
One of WTX's strengths is it's robust data handling. It doesn't stop when it hits errors, and it can process just the good transactions in a file (and explain why the bad transactions were rejected). This contrasts with other technologies such as MRM and DFDL which can be extremely brittle unless given rigidly clean data to work with.
| lancelotlinc wrote: |
| 2. WTX is a legacy product and does not work well with modern architectures. It requires platform-specific deployment considerations and a special build process that is difficult to fully automate. |
WTX is actually IBM's strategic Universal Transformation product. It has constantly evolved to support many architectures including SOA, BPM, J2EE, hardware applicances, virtualization and most recently cloud. It is now one of the cornerstone products in IBM's Smarter Commerce portfolio - which is where IBM is investing most heavily these days.
The maps are platform specific, but there is only one tool used to build all of them - "mcompile" - and it is shipped with Design Studio as a command line application - ideally suited for automation.
| lancelotlinc wrote: |
| 3. Some of the source used to build customer WTX functions is maintained in binary form and cannot be source-text compared to previous versions so that managers can approve or disapprove the software source code change (ie. ClearCase vdiff tool). |
WTX maps and trees are maintained in binary form, but they can be exported to text (either using Design Studio, or command line tools) and can be source-text compared to previous versions. Both the binary and text artifacts can be version controlled - in fact maps and trees are both first class artifacts in any Team Repository system that Eclipse supports.
| lancelotlinc wrote: |
| 4. WTX architecture is not multi-threaded friendly. Many problems exist when customers have WTX maps execute in the same Execution Group. The only known workaround is to limit each EG to a single WTX map. This means that for every WTX map, the customer must create a new EG. As you can imagine, this can grow to be unmanageable. |
WTX is multi-threaded friendly, but you can also design maps that are not multi threaded if you choose to. You do not need to limit each EG to running a single WTX map. As a matter of fact, the checklist of things you need to do to run multiple copies of maps concurrently in any single EG is explained in the user documentation - here ...
http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/wtxdoc/v8r3m0/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.websphere.dtx.wtx4wmb.doc%2Freferences%2Fr_wtx4wmb_running_multi_instances_of_maps.htm
Notice the above link is specific to WTX 8.3 and WMB 7. In WTX 8.4 and WMB 8 the behaviour changed so that now WTX/WMB are thread safe by default (you can still however opt to force maps to be not thread safe if for any reason you want that).
| lancelotlinc wrote: |
| 5. WTX Design studio runs on 32-bit Windows only. Linux and 64-bit Windows OS results in WTX being unable to function. |
WTX 8.4 Design Studio runs as a 32 bit application on 64 bit Windows - exactly like Message Broker Toolkit does. They share the same code base.
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wmbhelp/v8r0m0/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.etools.mft.doc%2Fbh25990_.htm
WTX itself runs as both a 32 and a true 64 bit application on both Windows and Linux.
| lancelotlinc wrote: |
| 6. Type tress have to be re-imported every time some minor change to the XML schema happens rather than re-synchronize the type tree to the existing map. This requires deleting the old definition, which can be cumbersome and time-consuming. |
Ever since 8.2, WTX has had the ability to work with XML schemas directly - no need to import them into Type Trees anymore. If you add a new field to an output schema, you (obviously) need to define a new rule for it in your map. If you add a new field to an input schema and intend to do nothing with it in the map, or remove/edit a field that wasn't used in the map, then you do not need to edit the map at all - just recompile it with the new XML schema.
| lancelotlinc wrote: |
| 7. WTX does not interface well with Java tooling or adapters. |
The tooling for WTX, Design Studio, is actually written in Java and it runs on Eclipse. It installs on top of Message Broker Toolkit, IBM Integration Developer and Rational Application Developer. Some of WTX's own adapters are written in Java (look for m4***.jar in your WTX installation directory - that's them) and have been since version 6. Some WebSphere adapters are shipped out of the box with WTX (FTP, Email, IMS), and WTX provides a public Java API which allows you to create your own adapters - in Java. |
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| mqjeff |
| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 9:23 am Post subject: Re: WTX is thriving |
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Grand Master
Joined: 25 Jun 2008
Posts: 17447
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| scarified wrote: |
| WTX is actually IBM's strategic Universal Transformation product. |
cite? |
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| scarified |
| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 9:42 am Post subject: Re: WTX is thriving |
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Newbie
Joined: 01 Jun 2006
Posts: 8
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| mqjeff |
| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 9:56 am Post subject: |
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Grand Master
Joined: 25 Jun 2008
Posts: 17447
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I still wouldn't consider that official word, per se. Certainly one can hope that an IBM developer forum would not allow people to represent themselves as leads of an IBM product team if they were not.
But it's still a far far cry from an official product announcement.
And, again. There's a difference between IBM continuing to sell a product called "WTX", and IBM continuing to sell the same thing that WTX is today. |
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| lancelotlinc |
| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 10:14 am Post subject: Re: WTX is thriving |
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Jedi Knight
Joined: 22 Mar 2010
Posts: 4941
Location: Bloomington, IL USA
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| scarified wrote: |
| lancelotlinc wrote: |
| 3. Some of the source used to build customer WTX functions is maintained in binary form and cannot be source-text compared to previous versions so that managers can approve or disapprove the software source code change (ie. ClearCase vdiff tool). |
WTX maps and trees are maintained in binary form, but they can be exported to text (either using Design Studio, or command line tools) and can be source-text compared to previous versions. Both the binary and text artifacts can be version controlled - in fact maps and trees are both first class artifacts in any Team Repository system that Eclipse supports. |
Please provide instructions to use ClearQuest for approving or disapproving source code changes, as a supervisor would approve or disapprove changes to an ESQL file.
I might not be aware of these procedures. If I can convey these procedures to our management, you might have remedied one of the main motivations to remove WTX from our corporate architecture.
The supervisor needs to approve or disapprove source code changes and see those source code changes in Text form. From ClearQuest, open an existing BaseCM activity, select Unified Change Management tab, then View Changeset.
You represent WTX as the flagship. This implies that WTX is a leader in all areas. This is not true. WTX fails on ClearQuest integration and thread safety.
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