Create WebSphere Application Server

After successful installation of IBM WebSphere, a new application server needs to be created from commandline. This can be done with the server command inside the bin directory where WebSphere Liberty Core is installed. Once navigated to the bin directory, open a terminal/command prompt and create a new application server.

Configure WebSphere

After successful installation of IBM WebSphere, Blueriq needs a modification of the default configuration of WebSphere. These configuration changes are listed below. All of the configuration below will be done from the directory where the Application Server for Blueriq is created. New servers created with the server command inside the bin directory will be created in this directory.

Config location

The config location of Blueriq can be provided as a JVM option. To set the config location, a file needs to be created inside the Blueriq server folder called jvm.options. With this file the

-Dspring.config.additional-location=file:///<absolute path to config location with slash (/) at the end!>

-Dspring.config.additional-location=file:/<absolute path to config location with slash (/) at the end!>

Configure Blueriq Server

WebSphere Liberty Core uses a server.xml to configure the application server. This file resides inside the Blueriq server folder. The default configuration looks like this, some adjustments are needed for Blueriq to be able to run. More information about the server.xml and its elements can be found here.

<server description="new server">

    <!-- Enable features -->
    <featureManager>
        <feature>jsp-2.3</feature>
    </featureManager>

    <!-- To access this server from a remote client add a host attribute to the following element, e.g. host="*" -->
    <httpEndpoint id="defaultHttpEndpoint" httpPort="9080" httpsPort="9443" />
                  
    <!-- Automatically expand WAR files and EAR files -->
    <applicationManager autoExpand="true"/>

</server>

Add or replace the following code blocks inside the server.xml.

Inside the featureManager element Websphere Liberty features can be enabled, for Blueriq only the webProfile-7.0 feature is required.

<featureManager>
	<feature>webProfile-7.0</feature>
</featureManager>

When setting the host attribute inside the httpEndpoint element to <your_host_here> Blueriq can be accessed from a remote client, otherwise it would only be available on localhost.

<httpEndpoint id="defaultHttpEndpoint" httpPort="9080" httpsPort="9443" host="your_host_here"/>

With the application element properties of an application are defined. In the location attribute an absolute path can be set or a path relative to the server-level apps directory. 

<application id="Blueriq" location="blueriq-runtime-application.war" name="Blueriq" context-root="runtime" autoStart="true"/>

When the configuration is done, the server.xml should look like this.

Deploy Blueriq

Place the Blueriq runtime WAR inside the location assigned in the application element of the server.xml. Once placed there, navigate to the bin directory of Websphere Liberty Core.  Open a terminal/command prompt and start the blueriq server.

JDBC drivers

When you need to configure JDBC drivers, see Configuring JDBC database drivers for Websphere Liberty Core.