Some additional features that are included within the Web services support provided by WebSphere 6 are HTTP 1.1 Client support, for the use of Keep-Alives and Zips to improve performance, JAX-RPC Multi-Protocol support, giving the ability to bind with RMI (Receiving Module Identificaiton)/IIOP (Internet Inter Operable Protocol), Extended SOAP (Small Operator Assist Program) support, and improved system management.

Programming Model Extensions
As mentioned previously, many of the features of WebSphere Application Server Enterprise Edition have been moved into WebSphere Application Server/Express or Network Deployment. Some of the more interesting features that were folded into the Express version are Asynchronous Beans (which is now referred as WorkManager), ActivitySession Service, Application Profiling, Scheduler Service (renamed to Timer Service), Extended JTA (Java Transaction API) support, Internationalization Service, WorkArea Service, Object Pools, and Startup Beans. And in WebSphere Application Server - Network Deployment, you'll find Back-up Cluster support.

This new packaging makes sense, and makes choosing the right deployment much simpler.

Service Data Objects
SDO is designed to simplify and unify the way in which applications handle data. Using SDO, application programmers can uniformly access and manipulate data from heterogeneous data sources, including relational databases, XML data sources, Web services, and enterprise information systems.

SDO, in a nutshell, supports three key concepts: Data Objects, data stored in a disconnected fashion utilizing an optimistic data store concept, Data graphs, for using metadata and remembering data history, and Data Mediation, where a mediator service is responsible for populating the graph with data objects from the data source.

SDO coupled with JSF improves the capability of Rapid Application Development for J2EE applications.

Java Server Faces
JSF is a component-based framework that brings user interface development methods commonly used for building Java fat client user interfaces to the Java-based Web application development world.

In version 5.0.2 of WebSphere, JSF had to be deployed along with your application. Beginning with version 5.1.1, and continuing with version 6, JSF is now integrated with the Application Server.

JSF support provides you with a standard user interface framework for Java Web Applications, the ability to incorporate rich "Swing/AWT" Widgets for your web applications, Rapid Application development by creating a UI from a set of reusable UI components, simplified binding of application data to the Web forms, state management across server requests, a simple model for wiring client-generated events to server-side application code, the ability to create custom/re-usable user interface components, and drag and drop IDE support.

JSF brings J2EE user interface development up to a competitive level with other Rapid Application Development tooling.

Simplifying deployment and administration.
WebSphere 6 significantly improves on its ability to do deployment. Coined WebSphere Rapid Deployment, WebSphere 6 has improvements in annotation-based programming, Deployment Automation and Change Triggered Processing. Tooling and Toolkits that support these improvements are also shipped.