June 8, 2007
by Andy Piper
During the past few years I’ve come across a number of instances where customers have wanted to script the build and deployment of WebSphere Message Broker solutions. I’ve actually spoken about this a few times at conferences. The most common approach that customers have adopted has been to use Ant to tie in with the rest of their application build processes.
In an earlier developerWorks article, I included an example plugin node that could invoke an Ant task. There should be a build.xml file included with the sample code for this article that could help you to get started. I’ve also helped customers to write their own automated build and deployment processes using Ant.
Now, a new developerWorks article from Zhongming Chen, Ida Leung and Dave Spriet covers the use of Ant to drive the mqsicreatebar command for scripting the creation of broker archives. It’s a great article and well worth a look.
This isn’t the end of the story. Often, the overall process will also include checking out of source control, apply version tags, and deploying the BAR file. However, this article introduces the topic and should be a good starting point. You could also use the Configuration Manager Proxy API to control other broker tasks, as Matt Lucas describes in another developerWorks article.
Incidentally, if you want to know more about Ant, I personally really like the book Java Development with Ant by Erik Hatcher and Steve Loughran.
