What is new in this release

This topic provides a high level overview of what is new and changed in Version 6. The audience is anyone who is evaluating or planning to use Version 6, particularly users of previous versions or editions. Welcome to Version 6, which helps you:

• Rapidly understand and obtain value from new J2EE 1.4 technology

• Make the most of your existing resources and lower your total cost of ownership

• Work more productively, with easier to use installation and administration interfaces

• Support your growing business with a firm foundation to the WebSphere platform

There is now greater consistency in the WebSphere Application Server family from top to bottom, including in the Express version. Such features include support for J2EE 1.4 across the family, which makes it easier to develop and deploy applications using industry standard tools, and support for the latest Web Services standards, making it easier to integrate applications inside the enterprise as well as externally with customers, partners and supplier.

IBM WebSphere Application Server Version 6 provides customers better scaling so more concurrent users can access an application built on the software. This can help reduce administrative and licensing costs for companies and provides better flexibility to quickly bring additional user resources on board.

What is new for administrators

The biggest improvements and changes in system administration, monitoring, and tuning can be summarized as follows:

• Changes to the default configuration

• Incremental cell upgrade for easier migration

• Fine grained application update and other deployment improvements

• Enhanced administrative infrastructure, with J2EE 1.4 related changes

• Growing set of administrative commands

• Improved installation and configuration, with profiles

• Improved monitoring and performance tuning

• Default messaging provider

• Web server definitions

• Even more administrative improvements!

For details about each item, including links to relevant documentation, see What is new for administrators.

What is new for security specialists

The biggest improvement in security involves the set of supported specifications. See What is new for security specialists.

What is new for developers

The biggest improvement in development is support for the J2EE 1.4 specification, enabling you to take advantage of the latest Java technology, as described in Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) specification. All editions, including WebSphere Application Server Express, are J2EE 1.4 compliant.

Another big change is inclusion of several WebSphere programming model extensions in all WebSphere Application Server editions, that were formerly available only in certain editions. As a starting point for learning about the available extensions, see Learn about WebSphere programming extensions.

In addition, deploying applications has never been easier -- particularly redeploying updated applications or modules. For what is new with deployment, see New: Application deployment improvements.

For information about several smaller but significant changes in the development and assembly infrastructure, and for various types of WebSphere applications, see What is new for developers.

What is new for troubleshooters

The biggest change in troubleshooting support and serviceability is increased ability to automatically detect and recover from problems. Many serviceability improvements are described in the Education on Demand presentation:Serviceability enhancements.

The troubleshooting section has been revamped and expanded to include extensive support information, including the ability to search live, Web-based support resources by using the customized query fields in the "Web search" page.

For details about these and other changes, see What is new for troubleshooters.

Improvements to this documentation

• New How do I?... feature gathers documentation, multimedia demonstrations, tutorials, cheat sheets, and presentations for commonly performed tasks

• Improved installation documentation

• Improved scripting documentation

• Conceptual overviews and what is new topics have better content and are easier to find

• Quick start shortcuts direct you quickly to key materials

• New Learn about WebSphere applications section for studying the programming model

• Improved, task based table of contents

• Improvements to troubleshooting content and placement

Related concepts
Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) specification
Release Notes
Packaging
Cheat sheets for the administrative console

Related reference
Deprecated features in Version 6.0