Curious about IIS Server, WAS Server and others...

eostic · Post by **eostic** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 4:27 pm

The first question would be...why are you asking? Most of these things are intenal bits that are historical or part of the architecture and have very little meaning anymore.

Years ago parts of the architecture were based on Universe, but the code paths were separated several years before the IBM acquisition of Ascential (acquisition was 4 1/2 years ago) and they no longer resemble or are dependent upon each other, and ASB is a throwback to "Ascential," but again, has no meaning now except that it is tied to the internal pieces that perform the communications plumbing within an Information Server domain.

The formal definition of IIS sometimes depends on the time of day and who you are talking to, but most times it is defined as InfoSphere Information Server, to recognize the branding.

Information Server is a data integration solution..it has a lot of capabilities.

Information Server uses WebSphere Application Server for things like authentication and support for access to metadata, as well as providing a robust web interface for browser based clients like Business Glossary. It also provides a fully compliant application server for the deployment of web services and other SOA solutions via Information Server (among other things).

Ernie

eostic · Post by **eostic** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 4:35 pm

oops. missed your wisd question. do some searches. There ought to be a lot of entries on it in here...look also at the RTI/Information Services Director forum....

Ernie

chulett · Post by **chulett** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 5:33 pm

Hmm... I always assumed the 'SB' in 'ASB' stood for Service Bus and that the 'A' was... Ajax or Aqualogic or something. No?

ray.wurlod · Post by **ray.wurlod** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 5:43 pm

ASB = (WebSphere) Application Server Backbone - it is the bus over which services are delivered. ASB agent is only required if the DataStage Server and WebSphere Application Server (WAS) are on separate machines.

IIS (IBM Information Server) provides support for the XMETA unified metadata database - though this database is accessed (by the various products in the Information Server suite) only through the services exposed through WAS.

WISD = WebSphere Information Services Director. Follow Ernie's advice about sources of information about WISD (and WISL and various other combinations!).

mavrick21 · Post by **mavrick21** » Thu Sep 17, 2009 11:04 am

Ernie,

I'm preparing for DataStage upgrade from 8.0.1 to 8.1 and there are steps which involve restarting servers/services like IIS Server, WAS Server, ASB Node agents and other services which I could barely comprehend. Hence I was curious to understand the underlying architecture.

Ray,

I've few more questions from your answer.
1) Ascential DataStage 7.5.1 just had a server consisting of the engine which used to run the jobs. Now that IBM has added WAS and IIS components what do they do? Is there any advantage of adding these components?
2) Now there is DataStage server and WAS. What's that for? Which one has the DataStage engine which actually run the jobs?

DataStage gurus,
Thanks for your time. I really appreciate it.

Sreenivasulu · Post by **Sreenivasulu** » Thu Sep 17, 2009 11:19 am

Datastage server is now hosted in a industry standard application server called websphere.
Advantage of IIS is that you can log on to the datastage system using web
Going forward i think the job designer could also well be webbased.

Regards
Sreeni

eostic · Post by **eostic** » Thu Sep 17, 2009 11:19 am

It's not a choice anymore.

The former work horse of DataStage Server from 7.x and earlier is now the "engine", and all the connectivity and authentication functionality is handled by WAS. Together, "all of it" is IIS.

The two (and all the other parts) work together.... your DS client connects "thru" the WAS in order to do DS Job Design.... WAS "talks" to the DS Engine when necessary using the various plumbing pieces that are in the ASBAgent.

As you might imagine, there is a lot of communication that goes on when designing, starting and doing other things with DS Jobs, and the DataStage Engine also communicates back to the core of Info Server also.

Ernie

mavrick21 · Post by **mavrick21** » Thu Sep 17, 2009 2:07 pm

Thanks Sreeni and Ernie.