deltalounge

Oracle WebLogic Server 12c (12.1.1) is available for download. The main themes of the new release are according to Oracle:

• Java EE 6 and Developer Productivity
• Simplified Deployment and Management with Virtualization
• Integrated Traffic Management
• Enhanced Availability and Disaster Recovery
• Much Higher Performance
• Seamless Upgrade

WebLogic Server 12 is available as installer or ZIP distribution. Download WebLogic Server 12c. Other useful links:

• The documentation library, including the Installation Guide.
• Blog post by Arun Gupta on using the WLS 12c – Using Zip Installer
• Markus Eisele already published already quite some 12c post on his blog.

Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse (12.1.1) available

Shortly after WLS 12c Oracle also has released OEPE 12.1.1 – Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse. It is certified on Windows 7/XP/Vista, MacOS, and Linux. OEPE is supported on JDK 6.

• The installation guide for OEPE.
• The installer is available both as ZIP and Full Installer. Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse full installers include Oracle WebLogic Server 12c and Oracle Coherence 3.7.1.
• OEPE Homepage

Update: WebLogic 12.1.1 VirtualBox Appliance available

With OTN Virtual Developer Day a WebLogic 12c VirtualBox appliance became available. On the appliance there are Labs and other Java development tools like: Hudson, Subversion, Maven, NetBeans IDE, and Eclipse (including OEPE).

Installing WebLogic Server on Ubuntu and JRockit 64 bits. This installation will later be used to install Oracle Service Bus.

Download the WebLogic Server installation files from OTN or E-Delivery.

Make sure the JAVA_HOME refers to the proper Java installation:

$ JAVA_HOME=/oracle/jrockit-jdk1.6.0_24 export JAVA_HOME
$ PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH; export PATH

Check that the proper Java version will be used:

$ java -version
Oracle JRockit(R) (build R28.1.3-11-141760-1.6.0_24-20110301-1432-linux-x86_64, compiled mode)

If you are installing WebLogic Server on a 64-bit platform using a .jar installation program use the downloaded wlsversionnumber_generic.jar . Start the installation using the following command. Include the -d64 flag in the installation command when using a 32/64-bit hybrid JDK.

$ java -d64 -jar wls1035_generic.jar

• Welcome screen – Click Next
• Choose Middleware Home Directory – Create a new Middleware Home and enter the directory of your choice
• Register for Security Updates
• Choose Install Type – Choose Custom to be able to select the JDK of choice
• Choose Products and Components – No changes needed
• JDK Selection – Pick the JRockit JDK previously installed
• Choose Product Installation Directories – No changes needed
• Confirm Product Installation Directories
• Installer is running
• Installation complete

An overview of the WebLogic Server installation screen can be viewed in the gallery:

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While I had to document these steps for a customer that is new to WebLogic Server, I thought why not share these relatively easy steps in a blog post as well. So here they are. The screen shots that come with it are at the bottom.

Create Data Source

1. Use a browser to go to the WLS Console, for example http://somehost:7001/console/login/LoginForm.jsp
2. On the home page, click the Data Sources link. You can find it in the Domain Configurations, Services section;
3. On the Summary of JDBC Data Sources page click the New button (to change current configuration click the link of the Data Sources you want to change);
4. Choose the Name, JNDI Name, and select the Database Type (Oracle). Click Next to confirm and continue;
5. Choose the Database Driver. This is depending on the selected Database Type. We used Thin XA for Instance connections for the Data Sources created in the project. Click Next;
6. Click Next after you read the Transaction Options;
7. Enter the Connection Properties and after that Next to confirm and continue:
• Database Name
• Host Name
• Port
• Database User Name
• Password
8. Click the Test Connection button, and if the test succeeded click next;
9. On the Select Targets page check for example the AdminServer. Click finish.

More on configuring JDBC on WebLogic Server can be found here (and the PDF on JDBC admin).

To prepare your visit to Oracle OpenWorld 2010, this post provides some links to selections of sessions with a focus on eg BPM, AIA, et cetera. Here is my top ten:

1. Oracle AIA – Application Integration Architecture
2. Architects and architecture
3. BPM – Business Process Management
4. Cloud Computing
5. Data Integration
6. EDA – Event Driven Architecture
7. Fusion Middleware development
8. Java EE
9. Middleware for Enterprise Applications
10. SOA – Service Oriented Architecture

Plug

Okay, i’ll plug two sessions:

• Customer – S314708 – Transform Your Business with Oracle Application Integration Architecture | Monday, September 20, 14:00 | Moscone West L3, Rm 3011
• Colleague – S316135 – From Oracle Forms to a Service-Oriented Architecture with Oracle SOA Suite 11g | Tuesday, September 21, 5:00PM | Marriott Marquis, Salon 9

Have Fun

If you’re not using elastic IP you have to configure WebLogic / SOA Suite running on EC2 to listen to external calls. A good example of such an external call would be: you trying to deploy a composite from the JDeveloper installation on your local PC. If you don’t configure this you’ll run into:

Error sending deployment request to server

java.net.ConnectException: Connection timed out: connect

To configure the External Listen Address log into the WebLogic Console.

• Select Environment – Server
• Click the server (AdminServer)
• Click Advanced to show the advanced settings
• Enter the External Listen Address
• Restart WebLogic

It can be helpful to also edit your host file to save you from retyping the quite long EC2 host name over and over again.

It is possible you noticed that after the installation of Oracle AIA 11g R1 starting the Managed Server of WLS takes more time than before the installation. This is not only due to the new Composites. There are also some settings you could change to reduce the time the Managed server to which you deployed AIA needs to start up.

Change JDBC settings

To alter some of the JDBC settings that are configured during the AIA 11g installation go to the WLS Adminnistartion console – http://yourserver:port/console. In the Domain Structure choose: > Services > JDBC > Data Sources.

Change the settings of the following JDBC Data Sources that were created during the install of AIA of the AIA Demo:

• AIACentralDS
• AIADataSource
• FODDataSource
• FODDS
• LifeCycleDataSource
• mds-soa
• XrefDataSource

In the Settings for "Data Source Name" select the Configuration and the Connection Pool tab. Expand the the Connection Pool tab by clicking the Advanced link. The alter the Login Delay from 30 to 0 seconds.

This will reduce the time that is needed to start the Managed Server by several minutes.

In this blogpost I’ll share some steps you can take to get your AIA 11g R1 installation back on track. If you do not perform the Pre-Installation Configurations as described in the Foundation Pack 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.2.0) Installation Guide (available as partnumber E17949-01 via eDelivery), it is possible that your AIA installation fails. After checking the pre-installation configuration it is possible to start the installation again if you follow these steps:

1. Navigate to /user_projects/domains/ and delete the edit.lok file.
2. Delete any file located in /user_projects/domains//pending
3. Log into the weblogic console and activate all the changes.
4. Restart SOA Suite and Weblogic domain.
5. Press retry button on the installation screen

If the installation screens are no longer available because you closed them, use the log files to figure out what targets haven’t been performed yet and run these targets (in the sample case below it were Deployments and PostInstallScript):

Move to the /aia30/aia_instances/aia30poc/bin and source ./aiaenv.sh.

ant -f /aia30/Infrastructure/Install/AID/AIAInstallDriver.xml -DDeploymentPlan=/aia30/config/FPInstallDP.xml -DPropertiesFile=/aia30/config/AIAInstallProperties.xml Deployments

ant -f /aia30/Infrastructure/Install/AID/AIAInstallDriver.xml -DDeploymentPlan=/aia30/config/FPInstallDP.xml -DPropertiesFile=/aia30/config/AIAInstallProperties.xml PostInstallScript

Oracle Application Integration Architecture, or AIA in short, recently became available for SOA Suite 11g R1. We did an installation of this AIA 11g R1 release. To prepare for this we used Foundation Pack 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.2.0) Installation Guide. Which is available as part number E17949-01 via edelivery. In the software requirements in the document it is stated that:

Download the AIA-Foundation Pack 11.1.1.2.0 patch 9717829 and follow the instructions in the document “Installing a fresh instance of AIA FP 11gR1 PS2 on Oracle SOA Suite 11g PS2” before you install AIA Foundation Pack 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.2.0). Apply AIA-Foundation Pack 11.1.1.2.0 patch 9717829 after you install AIA Foundation Pack 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.2.0).

Please be careful: patch 9717829 is only required if you are using SOA Suite 11g R1 PS2 (11.1.1.3). This can become clear when reading the document “Installing a fresh instance of AIA FP 11gR1 PS2 on Oracle SOA Suite 11g PS2” and the readme.txt that comes with the patch.

If you’re installing AIA-Foundation Pack 11.1.1.2.0 on SOA Suite 11g R1 PS1 (11.1.1.2) this patch is not needed.

AIA Foundation Pack 11g Certification Matrix

The certification matrix for AIA FP 11g R1 can be found here. It states:

AIA Foundation Pack 11gR1 (11.1.1.2) is certified against Oracle SOA Suite 11gR1 (11.1.1.2) or Oracle SOA Suite 11gR1 (11.1.1.3) through patch 9717829.

In the blogpost on the release of SOA Suite 11gR1 PS2, I mentioned a link to the documentation index. Since it hasn’t been update by now, I suggest you go to the middleware documentation page. This page is more up to date and has the link to the web library and download address (Alert! approx. 860 MB) of E14571-01 – the Fusion Middleware Online Documentation Library 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.3.0).

SOA Suite 11gR1 PS2 installation notes

Besides the reference in the documentation library to the Install Guide and the Quick Install Guide, there are several blogs describing the installation of 11.1.1.3. Which is actually a patch on 11.1.1.2:

• This post by Oracle ACE Eric Elzinga;
• The installation steps described by Theo van Arem;
• Installation of 11g PatchSet 2 on Windows by Niall Commiskey, members or Oracle PTS in EMEA;
• The one on Oracle blogs by James Taylor includes OSB 11.1.1.3

SOA Suite on Amazon EC2

This week it was announced that BPM 11g R1 is available as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). This AMI includes SOA Suite 11gR1 Patchset 2 and JDeveloper with the SOA and BPM extension. In AWS filter on 64-bit and put soa-bpm in the search box. This should enable you to find oracle-soa-bpm-11gr1-ps2-4.1-pub. Some of the tips I posted on x SOA Suite in the cloud could be useful here as well.

There are several advantages when working in a project with Oracle SOA Suite to have a local installation of the SOA Suite on your workstation. While developing and trying bits of code you can’t break other peoples work as you can on a central server. Running FMW 11g on a workstation with say memory on the low end of the spectrum can be challenging. In this blog I’ll show you some additional (to this previous post) measure that my blogless colleague Rob Heikoop came up with.

Rob came up with two things:

• Create an All in One AdminServer as described on the Oracle wiki. We skipped BAM in the installation Use only one Domain in WLS. You’ll have to combine the admin en the SOA_domain. Running just one domain saves memory.
• Keep the database centralized. In the central database each developer has it’s own SOA schema that is especially created for him. To do this run the RCU for every developer and use the prefix to reflect for example the developers initials (example of using RCU on slideshare). Not running the database on your workstation saves memory and CPU.

In order to have new developers being able to use this quickly we copy the reference installation (with plug-ins, patches and the works) and alter the configuration:

• Alter the scripts in the C:\Devel\SOAMiddleware\user_projects\domains\soa_domain\bin directory to reflect your workstation name instead of that of the reference machine. You can do this easily by using an editor like Notepad++ and use Search > Find in files > Replace in files. Otherwise you’ll be stopping your teammates server…. (again sorry Rob)
• Change the configuration files in C:\Devel\SOAMiddleware\user_projects\domains\soa_domain\config\jdbc to reflect the prefix created especially for you while using the RCU. Again Notepad++ can help you here.

Now you can start the tools:

• WebLogic Server: C:\Devel\SOAMiddleware\user_projects\domains\soa_domain\bin\startWebLogic.cmd
• JDeveloper: C:\Devel\SOAMiddleware\jdeveloper\jdeveloper.exe