Extending the Administration Console

Introduction and Roadmap

The BEA WebLogic Server® Administration Console is a browser-based graphical user interface that you use to manage a WebLogic Server domain. Because it uses the WebLogic Portal® framework to render its user interface, the process of extending the Administration Console is similar to creating or editing an existing WebLogic Portal application.

Administration Console extensions enable you to add content to the WebLogic Server Administration Console, replace content, and change the logos, styles and colors without modifying the files that are installed with WebLogic Server. For example, you can add a portlet that provides custom monitoring and management facilities for your applications.

The following sections describe the contents and organization of this guide—Extending the Administration Console.

Document Scope and Audience

This document is a resource for software vendors who embed (and rebrand) WebLogic Server in their products, software vendors who develop security providers or other resources that extend the functionality of WebLogic Server, and J2EE application developers who want to provide custom monitoring and configuration features for their applications.

It is assumed that the reader is already familiar with using Java, JavaServer Pages, and Apache Struts to develop J2EE Web applications. This document emphasizes a hands-on approach to developing a limited but useful Administration Console extension. For information on applying Administration Console extensions to a broader set of management problems, refer to documents listed in Related Documentation.

Guide to this Document

This chapter, Introduction and Roadmap, introduces the organization of this guide.
Understanding Administration Console Extensions, introduces the building blocks for creating Administration Console extensions.
Rebranding the Administration Console, describes how to create a WebLogic Portal Look and Feel and deploy it as an Administration Console extension.
Adding Portlets and Navigation Controls, describes how to add portlets that contain simple, static content to the Administration Console.
Creating Portlets That Match the Administration Console, describes how to create an extension that uses the Administration Console's JSP templates, styles, and JSP tag library.

New and Changed Console-Extension Features in This Release

The WebLogic Server Administration Console has been completely re-designed in this release. Prior to 9.0, the Administration Console used JSPs and its own framework to render its user interface; it did not use the WebLogic Portal framework, Apache Struts, or Apache Beehive.

Because the new architecture is so different, WebLogic Administration Console extensions built for prior releases of WebLogic Server will not function in 9.0. While you might be able to re-use the content and some of the logic in the JSPs that you created in previous Administration Console extensions, BEA no longer supports the APIs or JSP tag libraries that it provided for extensions prior to 9.0. In addition, you must now define portlets as the container for your JSPs.

If you added a node to the Administration Console navigation tree in a previous release, see Add Nodes to the Domain Structure Portlet (Optional) for information on how to do so in 9.0.

If you localized the text in your Administration Console extension prior to this release, see Create and Use a Message Bundle for information on how to do so in 9.0.