[V5.1 and later]Information center: Hints for using this documentation

The information center displays the documentation for various releases of IBM WebSphere Application Server. From the WebSphere software Web page you can select and view information about the releases, including additional formats for the information contained in the information center.

What you would like to do?

The following descriptions apply to the online information center. The information center is implemented using the WebSphere help system. At times, the WebSphere help system available for download might include new or changed features relative to the online information center. See "Work offline" for more information about downloading the WebSphere help system.

Perform searches

Help yourself or someone else find a topic again

Suppose you find a particularly useful topic in the information center. Here are convenient ways to ensure you can find the topic the next time you need it.

Identify what is new or changed

Print the documentation

Make sure your browser is compatible

Work offline

Choose the best approach for finding information -- navigational options

Navigational options arrange and rearrange topics in various ways, in anticipation of your preferences and goals.

Note that although navigation in an information center resembles the table of contents of a book, some parts of the information center navigation are optimized for quick lookup rather than sequential reading.

All topics by feature

This part of the navigation is best if you want to read topics in the sequence shown in the left hand navigation. Organized according to technology features supported by the product, it walks you through the entire set of information for a technology such as Web services for J2EE, introducing conceptual background, tasks, and reference topics in the order in which you are likely to need them. For each technology, the documentation spans user roles from Installer, to Developer, to Administrator.

Reference

This part of the navigation is best for accessing particular facts, quickly. Like a telephone book, this part of the navigation is not meant to be read sequentially.

Planning, Migrating, Installing, and other tasks

These parts of the navigation are best if you know approximately what you want to accomplish. For example, you can browse through entries under Migrating to see the broad range of technology features that can be migrated, and to locate the migration instructions for a particular one. The general pattern for these navigation entries is What you want to do > What you want to do it to, such as Tuning > Servers > Clusters if you want to tune application server clustering capabilities for improved performance.

A topic in this part of the navigation might have nothing to do with the topic immediately proceeding or following it in the navigation, in terms of completing the tasks sequentially. Once you display one of these topics in the right side of the information center, use the links within the topic itself to find closely related tasks, concepts, and reference material in other parts of the information center. If following many links in the right hand frame causes you to feel lost, use the Show in Table of Contents (Show in Table of Contents button) button. It opens the left hand navigation to the location of the topic you are viewing in the right side of the information center.

See later for more information about these navigational options.

As an alternative to navigating the topic-based information center, note the PDF versions available on the product Library page: www.ibm.com/software/webservers/appserv/library.html

Here are some scenarios that further illustrate the most effective way to navigate the information center. They assume you have expanded the navigation for a particular product edition within the information center, such as WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment.

You are new to the product and want to find a high level overview and summary of changes. Clicking the name of a product edition at the top level of navigation will display a welcome page containing many links to help you get started. Also consult the Product overview and Scenarios parts of the navigation. Additionally, the Site Map is marked according to which topics have undergone substantive technical updates since their last release.
You are looking for an example of how to write an administrative script that configures a JDBC provider. See the many examples under Reference > Scripting.
You are studying product security features and wonder what kinds of global security settings are available in the administrative console. Browse the list of Reference > Settings for security related settings, such as global security.
You wonder what comprises the application programming model. Anywhere you see Applications in the navigation, such as All topics by feature > Applications, you can click the word to display an overview of the technologies that comprise the programming model.

Within All topics by feature > Applications, you will find application programming information, though it is mixed with administrative information. If you are developing applications and then deploying them into a test environment, for example, having this process-oriented view can be handy.

Under Developing > Task overviews, you will find starting points for working with various technologies, such as Web services. These starting points span user roles, from Developer through Administrator. In the other sections under Developing, you will find all available development tasks organized according to what is being developed.

You can browse Reference > Javadoc for the nuts and bolts of the WebSphere programming interfaces.

You want to pinpoint particular development tasks, such as how to use data access programming interfaces. Expand Developing, then Resources > Data access. The Resources container refers to technologies grouped as J2EE resources according to the J2EE specification.
While updating your application to access a database, you need to refer to the Javadoc for com.ibm.websphere.j2c. See Reference > Javadoc.
You want to find and read everything there is about Web services support. At this stage, you are more interested in the end-to-end process than pinpointing particular administrative or development tasks. Expand the All topics by feature part of the navigation to show All topics by feature > Applications > Web services. For sequential reading, also consider the PDF versions available on the product Library page.

You might wonder how to know to find Web services under Applications. Browse the navigation a little to learn where the various technologies reside. These patterns are repeated consistently throughout the navigation, for easy learning even if they are not immediately intuitive to you. Where did you expect to find a topic? Suggestions for organizing the navigation are invited, using the Feedback link available in every topic.

You need a quick definition of the term "access intent." Click Glossary.
You want to find all of the tasks associated with Migrating, independent of the technology features to which they pertain. First, find the activity that you want to do: Migrating. Click the word Migrating for an overview of the task of migration. Click Migrating > Getting started for overviews and general migration information. Expand it to see all of the types of things that can be migrated. Here you will find the tasks for migrating each of these technology features.
You want to tune your security configuration. First, find the activity that you want to do: Tuning. Then identify what you want to tune: Security. The entire navigation path is: Tuning > Security. Any information about tuning security will be located here.
You wonder what the task of "Assembling" involves. For a description of a navigational entry at the first, second, and sometimes third level, click the navigational entry. For example, clicking the word Assembling displays an overview of the packaging and configuration tasks that comprise assembling an application, in J2EE terminology.


Navigation container details

The left hand frame, commonly called the navigation frame, contains "books", which house the expandable table of contents. The table of contents is revealed by clicking on the "book" of choice. The table of contents for each book is based upon activities, or high level goals, that are to be achieved, including:

Note: The above mentioned goals are common for customers getting their first taste of the product. Before proceeding into any of the goals mentioned it is wise to be familiar with the content in the product overview section. Once familiarity with the product has set in customers should certainly start planning to set up their environment by visualizing the end product. When the plan has been checked and double checked and is definitely the "plan" for your company, then move towards installing, or in some cases migrating to the latest version of the product.

Note: Configuring and administering are goals common to system administrators who regularly tend to systems and provide maintenance regularly. While configuring lends itself more to one time only changes, administering is generally seen as a daily activity.

Note: All of these goals are centered around applications and the application lifecycle. Once an application has been developed, it must be assembled, and finally deployed onto the Application Server, where the application can perform the work it was designed to do.

Note: Each of these goals is unique in that there is not a common theme, as seen in some of the other groupings of navigation "books". Securing is focused on achieving the highest level of security available for the system. Tuning is applicable to performance and optimizing the entire system, including the individual pieces, to run at a maximum efficiency. Troubleshooting is geared towards users in task failure who want some quick direction to assist in fixing their problem.

Topics

This documentation mentions topics several times, but what is a topic? A topic is an information unit that makes sense even when read by itself. Every topic in the information center fits one of three templates, reflected in the pattern of the topic titles.

Distinguishing among task, concept, and reference topics certainly is not necessary for using the documentation, but can help you understand the navigational options better. The Reference section contains only reference material. All topics by feature contains the entire set of concept, task, and reference topics. The remaining parts of navigation again contain the entire set of concept, task, and reference topics, only organized differently from All topics by feature.