FIGURE F


Being able to preview a page locally to test your code is great. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Alternatively, you can download and deploy the applications on a locally running version of Tomcat.

The benefits and costs of WebSphere (and this class)
If your company is already using WebSphere, then the benefits of this TLCC class are obvious to you. Considering the amount of money that a WebSphere server costs (WebSphere Application Server 4.0, Advanced Edition, is $10,778 for digital download), spending $399 to train you to better take advantage of that investment seems a small price to pay.

If $10,778 seems like a high cost for a WebSphere server, then get ready for some more sticker shock when you learn the price of a WebSphere Studio Application Developer license. The digital download price is, get ready, $3,132. If you compare this to $469 for a digital download of Domino Designer, you can quickly see that you're in a whole different league of application development tools, at least cost-wise. But, you can choose to view it from the positive side that IBM thinks that this software is so valuable that it is worth the high cost, and companies are apparently buying into this as well since they're purchasing the software. And given the high cost of just the WSAD software, spending $399 to learn how to use it effectively suddenly seems like a bargain investment.

Setting up a test server
As I mentioned before, you don't need to set up a test server to start working with the WebSphere server, but you can if you like. One thing I've done in order to become more familiar with the server side of WebSphere was to buy a computer to use for testing and to partition it and install Linux on it. I then downloaded and installed the free trial version of WebSphere Application Server for Linux. The investment was minimal, $650 for the testing machine (an HP Pavilion 521n), $69 for PartitionMagic software, and $69 for a combo CD and DVD packaged version of SuSE Linux 8.0 Professional. All in all, it was a very small investment to make in order to have my own testing environment and build my own skills. If you would like to set up your own test environment, I'd suggest taking a look at the following two pages:

Visit IBM's Speed-start your Linux application page at http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/offers/linux-speed-start and visit the WebSphere Download Evaluation Center at http://www7b.software.ibm.com/wsdd/downloads/evaluation.html.

Also note that you can request a two CD set from IBM that contains most of the trial software you'll need for building your own Linux applications. If you attended IBM developerWorks Live! this past May you received a copy of this CD set in your conference materials, so get started!

How to get the most out of the course
Try the following techniques to make sure you get the most out of the course.

Have just Notes and WSAD open at the same time and right-click on your task bar and choose "Tile Windows Horizontally." This will especially help you when you're doing an activity and don't want to Alt+Tab or switch between screens all the time. To further enhance this, set your display resolution as high as you can (1024 x 780 or above) in order to see as much of each of the screens as you can. See Figure G for an example of how this looks.