Administer HTTP transports for the Web container with the administrative console

Components of WebSphere Application Server - Express uses HTTP transports to communicate with each other. Your application also uses HTTP transports to receive and reply to client requests.

In WebSphere Application Server - Express, version 5.1, HTTP transport functionality is a supported internal Web server that you can use in a production environment. You do not need to configure a separate HTTP server instance for your application server. However, it is recommended that you use a separate HTTP server instance, because other Web servers can offer advanced functionality and improved performance.

Before you decide which type of transport to use, consider the following limitations of the internal HTTP transports:

• Internal transports do not support Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).

• Existing Common Gateway Interface (CGI) support must be implemented as servlets. That is, convert any existing CGI programs to servlets.

• Internal transports do not support session affinity for workload balancing.

• Because static content can not be served directly by an external HTTP server, overall application server performance can be adversely affected.

• Web servers generally are more susceptible to security exposures than application servers are. If a production environment includes an external Web server and an application server running on two separate machines, many of the Web server's security exposures can be limited to the machine where the Web server runs. However, if you use the internal HTTP transport, the internal HTTP transport always runs on the same machine as the application server. As a result, a security exposure in the Web server can expose both the Web server's and application server's environments.

You can use the administrative console and wsadmin to configure HTTP transports for your application server.

• Use the administrative console to configure HTTP transports

• Use wsadmin to configure HTTP transports

Use the administrative console to configure HTTP transports

1. Start the administrative console.

2. Expand Servers and click Application Servers.

3. Click the name of your application server.

4. On the application server's page, click Web Container.

5. On the Web Container page, click HTTP transports.

6. Add, modify, or remove an HTTP transport.

   • To add a new HTTP transport, follow these steps:

     1. Click New.

     2. Configure the HTTP transport settings.

     3. Click Apply or OK.

   • To modify an HTTP transport, follow these steps:

     1. Click the host name for the transport that you want to modify.

     2. Make your changes.

     3. Click Apply or OK.

   • To remove an HTTP transport, follow these steps:

     1. Select the transport that you wanto to remove.

     2. Click Delete.

7. Save the application server configuration.

Use wsadmin to configure HTTP transports

On the CL command line, run the STRQSH (Start Qshell) command.

Run the cd command to change to the directory that contains the wsadmin tool:

cd /QIBM/ProdData/WebASE51/ASE/bin

Start wsadmin.

At the wsadmin prompt, run this command to identify the application server and assign it to the server variable:

set server [$AdminConfig getid /Cell:myCell/Node:myNode/Server:myAppSvr/]

where myCell is the name of the cell that contains your application server, myNode is the name of the node that contains your application server, and myAppSvr is the name of your application server.

Run this command to identify the Web container for the application server and assign it to the wc variable:

set wc [$AdminConfig list WebContainer $server]

Run these commands to list all of the transports that belong to the Web container and assign it to the transports variable:

set transportsAttr [$AdminConfig showAttribute $wc transports]
set transports [lindex $transportsAttr 0]

These commands return the transport objects from the transports attribute in a list format.

Run this command to identify the transport to be modified and assign it to the transport variable:

set transport [lindex $transports 0]

Run this command to modify the address attribute to change the host and port:

$AdminConfig modify $transport {{address {{host {myHost}} {port 9081}}}}

Run this command to save your changes:

$AdminConfig save