The following WebSphere Work Area APIs and SPIs are not available on Liberty:

• com.ibm.websphere.workarea
• com.ibm.wsspi.workarea

This rule flags any instance of these packages once per Java class. You must modify the application so that it can run on Liberty.

Although no exact alternatives exist, review the following migration suggestions.

Evaluate usage

Take note which features of Work Area APIs and SPIs are used in your code and consider which features are needed. Refer to the com.ibm.websphere.workarea Javadoc.

Some of the more difficult features to migrate from are:

• Nested Work Areas
• Unidirectional Work Areas
• Data is thread-scoped
• Work Areas configured with a nondefault PropertyModeType
• read_only
• fixed_normal
• fixed_readonly

Potential alternatives

com.ibm.websphere.appserver.api.DistributedMap

• DistributedMap accesses the WebSphere local cache to store key, value Object pairs
• A default cache is bound in JNDI at services/cache/distributedmap
• Caches can be distributed through addition of a network cache provider such as WebSphere eXtreme Scale

java.lang.ThreadLocal

• Can be used to store a generic Object at a thread-scope
• Each thread that accesses ThreadLocal (using its get or set method) has its own, independently initialized copy of the variable
• ThreadLocal instances are typically private static fields in classes that associate state with a thread (for example, a user ID or transaction ID)
• Java 8 Javadoc
• Java 21 Examples

java.lang.InheritableThreadLocal

• This class extends ThreadLocal to provide inheritance of values from parent thread to child thread
• When a child thread is created, the child receives initial values for all inheritable thread-local variables for which the parent has values
• Java 8 Javadoc

Database

• If your data needs to persist or requires external access, storing it in a database might be a good fit
• You can configure a data source and a JDBC driver so that an application that is running on your Open Liberty server can connect with a relational database, such as IBM Db2, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, or MySQL. Learn more
• You can create a CDI producer to provide access to a NoSQL database, such as MongoDB or CouchDB. Learn more

DistributedMap example

This example shows how you can migrate to DistributedMap if your application does not need any of the difficult features to migrate from, which are listed in the Evaluate usage section.

The default WebSphere Dynamic Cache instance is created when the cache is enabled in the administrative console and is bound into the global JNDI namespace with the name services/cache/distributedmap. More cache instances can be created by using a properties file cacheinstances.properties or by defining a resource-ref for in cache in your module's deployment descriptor.

Read more and see example code in the Open Liberty Documentation for DistributedMap:

• Enabling DistributedMap
• DistributedMap Documentation
• DistributedMap Configuration Options

UserWorkArea	DistributedMap
begin(java.lang.String name)	InitialContext ic = new InitialContext(); DistributedMap distributedMap = (DistributedMap)ic.lookup("services/cache/customObjCache");
complete()	Mostly not applicable, but consider invalidating keys in a DistributedMap if you no longer need them distributedMap.addChangeListener(...) distributedMap.invalidate(key)
get(java.lang.String key)	distributedMap.get(Object key) // returns Object
getMode(java.lang.String key)	Not applicable
getName()	Not applicable
remove(java.lang.String key)	distributedMap.addChangeListener(InvalidationListener listener) distributedMap.invalidate(Object key) Alternatively, you can set timeToLive or inactivityTime when you set or update an Object in DistributedMap. distributedMap.put(Object key, Object value, int priority, int timeToLive, int inactivityTime, int sharingPolicy, Object[] dependencyIds)
retrieveAllKeys()	Set dmSet = distributedMap.keySet(boolean includeDiskCache); // returns Set String[] keys = dmSet.toArray(new String[0]);
set(java.lang.String key, java.io.Serializable value)	distributedMap.put(Object key, Object value) distributedMap.put(Object key, Object value, int priority, int timeToLive, int inactivityTime, int sharingPolicy, Object[] dependencyIds) distributedMap.put(Object key, Object value, int priority, int timeToLive, int sharingPolicy, Object[] dependencyIds)
set(java.lang.String key, java.io.Serializable value, PropertyModeType mode)	Not applicable

For information about other APIs and SPIs that are not supported on Liberty, see Some APIs and SPIs are not available on Liberty.