WebLogic Server 12.1.1 VirtualBox Appliance

The virtual machine contains:

• Oracle Linux 5, JDK 1.6 +
• Oracle WebLogic Server 12.1.1
• Oracle Coherence 3.7
• Oracle TopLink 12.1.1
• Hudson 2.2
• Subversion 1.4.2
• Apache Maven 3.0.1
• NetBeans IDE 7.1 RC2
• Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse 12.1.1 / Eclipse 3.7
• Easter Egg: Introductory Labs for Oracle Coherence 3.7

All details on download and importing the appliance can be found on the VirtualBox instructions page. No need to say that the appliance has been released for development and testing purposes.

Labs

The image contains four Labs:

• Total Oracle WebLogic Server Development with Eclipse, Maven, and Hudson
• Hands on with an end-to-end Java EE6 Application
• A Step-By-Step Guide to Oracle Coherence
• Running the Coherence Examples Project in Eclipse

These can be found in the /home/oracle/labs/ directory. Web links to these Labs can be found here.

• 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).

The WebLogic Server and SOA Suite are started using the startWebLogic script (for windows .cmd and on Linux/Unix .sh). This script uses the setDomainEnv script to set the environment variable for the domain. The setDomainEnv script in turn calls the setSOADomainEnv that actually sets the USER_MEM_ARGS. That in the end are used in the startWebLogic script.

After the installation of OER the setDomainEnv not only calls the setSOADomainEnv. It also calls a script that sets the USER_MEM_ARGS for the oer_server in the domain. Apparently the memory required for OER is less than needed for the SOA Suite. Since the script for OER is executed last, memory setting remain low. As shown in the smippet taken from the setDomainEnv.cmd:

call "%WL_HOME%\common\bin\commEnv.cmd"
call "%DOMAIN_HOME%\bin\setSOADomainEnv.cmd"
call "%DOMAIN_HOME%\bin\setOERDomainEnv.cmd"

To solve the memory issue when starting the WebLogic Server using the startWebLogic script we alter the sequence so the setOERDomainEnv.cmd goes before the setSOADomainEnv.cmd.

If the installer put a second call to setSOADomainEnv.cmd in the setDomainEnv.cmd. That doesn’t work because the setSOADomainEnv.cmd contains the following check:

REM Skip running this script again if it was run once
if "%XENGINE_DIR%" == "" goto set_env
echo *********************************************************
echo ** SOA specific environment is already set. Skipping ...
goto end_set_env

.

Prepare – database

The most important part of the preparation for the installation of Oracle Enterprise Repository is the creation of tablespaces and the user that will hold the database objects.
Create the required tablespaces
You can change the names of the tablespaces and alter the path and names of the data files according to your needs. The example is based on an installation on the Windows OS. If your on Linux/Unix you probably know what to do to make it work on your platform…

CREATE TABLESPACE OER_DATA
    DATAFILE 'D:\oracle\oraclexe\oradata\XE\oer_data.dbf' SIZE 300M
 AUTOEXTEND ON NEXT 10240K MAXSIZE UNLIMITED
    EXTENT MANAGEMENT LOCAL AUTOALLOCATE
    LOGGING
    ONLINE
    SEGMENT SPACE MANAGEMENT AUTO;
 
CREATE TABLESPACE OER_LOB
    DATAFILE 'D:\oracle\oraclexe\oradata\XE\oer_lob.dbf' SIZE 300M
 AUTOEXTEND ON NEXT 10240K MAXSIZE UNLIMITED
    EXTENT MANAGEMENT LOCAL AUTOALLOCATE
    LOGGING
    ONLINE
    SEGMENT SPACE MANAGEMENT AUTO;
 
CREATE TABLESPACE OER_INDEX
    DATAFILE 'D:\oracle\oraclexe\oradata\XE\oer_index.dbf' SIZE 300M
 AUTOEXTEND ON NEXT 5120K MAXSIZE UNLIMITED
    EXTENT MANAGEMENT LOCAL AUTOALLOCATE
    LOGGING
    ONLINE
    SEGMENT SPACE MANAGEMENT AUTO;

Create the user
Change the user name and password (both OER in this case) to cater your needs.

CREATE USER OER IDENTIFIED BY OER
DEFAULT TABLESPACE OER_DATA
    TEMPORARY TABLESPACE TEMP;
 
GRANT CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW TO OER;
GRANT CREATE SEQUENCE TO OER;
GRANT CREATE SESSION TO OER;
GRANT CREATE SYNONYM TO OER;
GRANT CREATE TABLE TO OER;
GRANT CREATE TRIGGER TO OER;
GRANT CREATE VIEW TO OER;
GRANT UNLIMITED TABLESPACE TO OER;

Install OER

Us the follwing command from a dos prompt to start the OER installation. By default it will start in graphical mode. You can use the -mode option to start it in console or silent mode.

java -jar OER111150_generic.jar -log=C:\installSOA\logs\OER_install.log

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Run WebLogic Server Domain Configuration Wizard

To run the Domain Configuration Wizard on Windows you can click: Start > Programs > Oracle Products > Tools > Configuration Wizard. On any platform you can run the config script in the /common/bin/config.cmd. For example:

> cd oracle\Middleware\wlserver_10.3\common\bin
> config.cmd

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Post Install actions

To use all options in the Repository you need to install Java Web Start. To check whether Java Web Start is installed correctly use the test Java link.

In case the JNLP stuff (needed for java Web Start) doesn’t work. This Firefox JNLP fix might help you (via Andreas).

This guide is aimed at installations for developers and not for production machines. Unfortunately the installation of OSB is out of scope. I expect it to be upgraded to PS4 (11.1.1.5) soon. I could find any missing instructions while installing PS4 on a Windows7 VirtualBox.

This document looks very similar to the installation chapter in Getting Started with Oracle SOA Suite 11g R1.

Update

It was confirmed by Simone Geib, Product Manager in the Oracle SOA team, that both the OSB part and the PS4 update are coming soon.

Update September

The update for SOA Suite PS4 (11.1.1.5) including Oracle Service Bus is now available.

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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First download the installer from the JRockit download page. Make sure that the .bin file is executable. You can use chmod +x filename to make the file executable.

The installation guide for JRockit can be obtained from the JRockit Documentation page.

• Start the installer: ./jrockit-jdk1.6.0_24-R28.1.3-4.0.1-linux-x64.bin from the directory you download it or copied it to. Extracting can take some time.
• Click Next on the Welcome screen.
• Choose the product installation directory eg /oracle/jrockit-jdk1.6.0_24 and click Next
• Check optional components if you need them and click Next
• Watch the progress bar
• The installation is complete so press Done.

The screenshots of the installation process are in this gallery:

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Documentation

The AIA 11g Foundation Pack documentation:

• Foundation Pack 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.4.0)
• Foundation Pack 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.2.0)
• Oracle AIA Foundation Pack 2.5

Installation

Installing AIA FP (11.1.1.4.0) on SOA Suite 11g R1 PS3 explained by Edwin Biemond on the Whitehorses blog. The Oracle Installation and upgrade guide to go with it can be found here and a whitepaper on installation topologies and architecture.

Blogs on installing previous versions:

• Install of AIA 11g FP on Linux described by emarcel.
• AIA FP 11g install on a Windows 7 64 bits server.

Using Composite Application Validation System for non AIA Composites testing

Usings CAVS to test non AIA composites is described by Edwin Biemond.

SOA platform

Again after this session I came to the conclusion that in my opinion BAM is used too little.

During the session was raised whether people in the audience were using non-Oracle databases as dehydration store and Meta Data Store. The mainstream is using Oracle as dehydration store. And although it is certified, it is advised to use Oracle as the database for this purpose. On the Application Server, given the maturity of the J2EE platform, there is less discomfort in operations to deploy the SOA Suite on a non-Oracle App Server.

ADF

Only today I found out that there is an interesting JDeveloper 11g extension. The extension validates ADF code quality. Seems an interesting extension to check code quality besides the already available Java tools.

BPM

When comparing BPEL and BPM and looking into when to use what tool, the following was stated: For all things with human interaction BPM is the tool of choice. In integration driven appraoches BPEL is the tool of choice.

In Oracle point of view BPM includes:

• People
• Systems
• Documents

without the need for separate platforms.

Example of a custom Spring Java worklist application for Oracle BPM.

Tattie picking

The first keynote by Andrew Sutherland had a few great stories that leaded the way to show the rationale behind the Exalogic platform. This included a personal story on “tattie picking”. The larger part was on productisation and gave examples on increasing effiency in IT. One of the ways for the Exalogic platform is the one that is also used by Apple: If you limit the amount of hardware your OS of software stack has to be compliant with, that introduces a better controlled and optimized environment; “If you know the machine you need less code”. This is resulting in several efficiencies. Efficiencies both in the One Time Costs (CTB) and Recurring Costs (RTB).

One of the sound bites that stayed with me was:

The most sticky stack is the least sticky one

Indicating that the stack that is the most open and complying with standards is the one that is most likely to survive…

SOA/ BPM Reference Case

In the Partner SOA/ BPM Reference Case Leon Smiers of Capgemini introduced us to the BPM practise of Capgemini and two of their BPM cases. One of the quotes that I think is very true was:

SOA supports the success of BPM.

Besides that Leon stressed the structure, insight and compliance advantages that BPM efforts deliver. One of the things they learned by doing was the importance of showing BAM to business people. This really enables you to get visibility on a lot of stuff that is under the hood. Besides that it is a catalyst for generating more business value with ideas from the people you are showing BAM to.

WebCenter/ UCM Reference Case

During the WebCenter/ UCM Reference Case Vikram Setia of Infomentum shared great insight on how to deliver an excellent web site using Oracle technology. He did this in a very lively session showing us around a live site and telling what Oracle technologies were used behind the scenes. Besides the UCM and WebCenter stuff there were some cool uses database thingies like:

• Text Clustering
• Thesaurus
• Locator

SOA and BPM 11gR1 PS3 Update

Another intresting session was the SOA and BPM 11gR1 PS3 Update by David Shaffer. Mr Shaffer showed us some of the history and some of the highlight in the current stack. A more detailed dive into the latter will be on day 2 of the conference.

Wednesday’s Breakout Sessions

On the second day I will be attending the following breakout sessions:

• SOA Suite 11g PS3 & OSB
• ADF/WebCenter 11g integration with BPM Suite 11g
• BPM 11g, Whats New