You’ve been with your application server for a while. Things are getting stalled. It's gotten old and just doesn’t perform the way it used. No one supports it anymore. Now you want more. You've started playing around with the idea of being able to take advantage of new technologies or get your application in the cloud. It's time to move on, but you don’t want to be in that boring migration phase for too long. What are your options? You’ve recently learned more about your application and what it contains using the Inventory Report from the WebSphere Application Migration Toolkit for Application Binaries (Binary Scanner). Now I'll show you how to use the Technology Evaluation report to learn which Java/Jakarta EE technologies your application is using and where it can run.
To get started
- Download the Binary Scanner Installer from here.
- Unpack the Binary Scanner using
java -jar binaryAppScannerInstaller.jar
- Run the unpacked jar on your application
java -jar wamt/binaryAppScanner.jar /path/to/your/app/SampleApplication.ear --evaluate
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The report shows the various Java/Jakarta EE technologies you are using. It looks like WebSphere traditional, WebSphere Network Deployment traditional, and WebSphere traditional for z/OS will support you as you are making your transition as easy as possible should you choose the latest of either of these platforms. So that's great, now you are feeling more optimistic about your search. With that optimism, you are starting to become pickier with your selection. You’ve done some research and found out that although WebSphere is a capable application server, Liberty's fast startup, small footprint, and zero-migration capabilities are worth putting in a bit more effort to make the move. Don’t worry, the WebSphere Application Migration Toolkit still has your back. You can get more out of the evaluation report if you modify your command from earlier to use --all instead of --evaluate.
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In this new report, you will see that the technology that was keeping you from a smooth migration now has a hyperlink. Clicking on the linked technology takes you to a section in the comprehensive report that describes the migration path for older technologies that Liberty does not support.
Now that you have a better idea of the current technologies used by your application, you can make a more informed decision about which platform to choose. Should you have any more concerns you are encouraged to go through the remaining sections in the recent report you generated.
Have some fun and give Liberty a try to get your app back in gear.
See the IBM Developer learning path Modernizing applications to use WebSphere Liberty to discover all the application modernization tools available with WebSphere Hybrid Edition.
Also, check out the other articles in this app modernization blog series.