WAS v8.5 > WebSphere applications > Service integration > Message stores > Data storesConfiguration planning for a messaging engine to use a data store
You must consider a number of choices before you configure a messaging engine to use a data store.
Relational database management system (RDBMS) for the data store
You might want to choose the RDBMS that we use for other applications, particularly if you are already familiar with the tools we use for managing that RDBMS. You might also want to consider the following criteria:
- Performance
- Scalability
- Availability, especially if you are running messaging engines in a high availability environment
When a new messaging engine that uses a data store is created on a single server, it is configured to use an Apache Derby data source by default. This enables the messaging engine to run without needing any additional configuration. The default embedded Derby data source is sufficient for many purposes. Other relational database management systems offer more comprehensive tooling and improved performance, particularly scalability on larger machines with more than two processors.
WAS supports direct customer use of the Apache Derby database in test environments only. WAS v8.5 does not support direct customer use of Apache Derby database in production environments.
Database topology
You must consider several options when selecting the relative location of a data store and its messaging engine:
- Decide whether the data store will run on the same node as its messaging engine, or on a remote node. In some cases, running the data store on a remote node can improve performance. In other cases, a local database provides performance equivalent to a remote database. You might want to conduct our own performance analysis, because the performance characteristics can be very sensitive to the hardware specification.
- Decide whether the data store will have a dedicated database, or share a database with other data stores.
Automatic creation of database tables
Consider whether you want WebSphere Application Server to create the data store tables automatically or whether you want the database administrator to create the tables beforehand:
- WAS can create the data store tables automatically if you select the Create tables option when we configure the data store to use a data source. To choose this option, first ensure that WAS has sufficient authority to create tables and indexes by setting up the required privileges for the chosen database.
DB2 for z/OS restriction: The option for WAS to create the tables is not available with DB2 for z/OS . If we use DB2 for z/OS, the database administrator must create the data store tables manually.
- To enable the database administrator to create the tables manually, you must provide data definition language (DDL) statements created using the sibDDLGenerator command.
Amount of BLOB space required to hold message data
Message data is stored in a database table column of datatype BLOB. Before you create a data store, you must consider the size of your expected workload to ensure the database administrator creates a sufficiently large BLOB space to hold your message data.
Related concepts:
Data stores
Related
Configure a JDBC data source for a messaging engine
Create data store tables
Reference:
Data store tables
Database privileges