betweenGo

IBM Rational Application Developer (RAD) is basically a typically IBM heavy version of Eclipse.  WebSphere is a typically IBM heavy version of a J2EE server.  Therefore you would think you could debug web applications using RAD fairly easily like you can on JBoss or ATG DAS using Eclipse.

However I could not find anyone on my latest project who knew how to do this.  Fortunately after much Googling I found this PDF document, Debugging Applications in IBM Rational Application Developer, and on page 12 are instructions on how to do this.

The instructions seem to be a little out of date so here are my instructions.

1. Log into your Integrated Solutions Console.  The default URL is http://localhost:9060/ibm/console/login.do.
2. Navigate using the left side column to Servers –> Application Servers.
3. Select the Application server you want to debug from the list of Application servers.
4. Under the Configuration tab select the Debugging Service link which is near the bottom right in the Additional Properties section.

   

5. Select the “Enable service at server startup” checkbox.  Note the JVM debug port.

   

6. Press the Apply button.
7. In the Messages box, which appeared at the top after pressing the Apply button, click on the Save link.

   

8. Stop and start your Application Server.  It should now be running in Debug mode.
9. In RAD go to the project for the web application you want to debug.
10. From the menu select Run –> Debug Configurations.
11. Select Remote Java Application and press the New button (it’s the top left button).  For the port set it to the JVM debug port (default is 7777).
12. Press Apply.  Then press Debug.  It should connect to WebSphere’s JVM.

Now you can set breakpoints and even change small amounts of code which will be deployed automatically to WebSphere.  No more waiting 15 minutes to test every change you make because builds are so brutally long.

*Time* Ticking away… by Michel Filion

This is a neat trick for automatically setting a date or timestamp property to the current time.  I learned it while perusing the ATG Repository Guide.

Date and Timestamp Properties

A repository item can use properties whose values are dates or timestamps, with the value set to the current date or time, using the java.util.Date, java.sql.Date, or java.sql.Timestamp classes. You can have a property whose value is set to the current time or date at the moment a repository item is created. You can do this by setting the feature descriptor attribute useNowForDefault. For example:

<property name="creationDate" data-type="timestamp">
  <attribute name="useNowForDefault" value="true"/>
</property>

For more information about this technique, see the Assigning FeatureDescriptorValues with the <attribute> Tag section in this chapter.

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