9 Understanding the Deployment Process

Before you deploy Oracle Fusion Middleware applications, such as Java EE applications or SOA Composite applications, you should understand the deployment process, such as designing and developing applications and deploying those applications to Managed Servers.

This chapter describes the following topics:

9.1 What Is a Deployer?

A deployer is responsible for deploying applications, such as Java EE applications, ADF applications, SOA Composite applications, or WebCenter Portal applications, to WebLogic Server instances or clusters.

A user who is functioning as a deployer should be granted the Oracle WebLogic Server deployer security role. The deployer security role allows deployment operations, as well as viewing the server configuration and changing startup and shutdown classes. To grant this role to a user, use the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console. See "Managing Security Roles" in the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console Help for more information.

9.2 General Procedures for Moving from Application Design to Production Deployment

This section describes the general procedures involved in moving from application design and development to deployment in a production environment. It contains the following topics:

9.2.1 Designing and Developing an Application

In many cases, developers use Oracle JDeveloper to create their applications. Oracle JDeveloper is an integrated development environment (IDE) for building service-oriented applications using the latest industry standards for Java, XML, Web services, portlets, and SQL. JDeveloper supports the complete software development life cycle, with integrated features for modeling, coding, debugging, testing, profiling, tuning, and deploying applications.

In this environment, you use the integrated Oracle WebLogic Server, which is packaged with Oracle JDeveloper for testing your applications.

For information about developing your applications, see:

9.2.2 Deploying an Application to Managed Servers

After you have designed and tested your application with the integrated Oracle WebLogic Server, you can deploy the application to a Managed Server instance. For example, you may have installed Oracle WebLogic Server and configured a domain, including a Managed Server, in your production environment and you want to deploy the application to that Managed Server.

The following books provide specific information about deploying the different types of applications:

This section provides an outline of the major steps involved when you migrate your application from the integrated Oracle WebLogic Server to an environment separate from the development environment. Those general steps are:

  1. Package the application. For Java EE, ADF, and WebCenter Portal applications, you package the application in an EAR file. For Oracle SOA Suite, you package the application into a JAR or ZIP file.

    For information about packaging the application, see:

  2. Set up your environment. This includes:

  3. If your application uses a database, set up the JDBC data sources.

    For more information about setting up the JDBC data sources, see:

  4. For Oracle SOA Suite, create connection factories and connection pooling. For more information, see "Creating Connection Factories and Connection Pooling" in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle SOA Suite.

  5. Create a connection to the target Managed Server.

    From Oracle JDeveloper, you can deploy your applications to Managed Server instances that reside outside JDeveloper. To do this, you must first create a connection to the server instance to which you want to deploy your application.

    For more information, see:

  6. For Oracle SOA Suite, create a SOA-MDS connection, if the SOA composite application shares metadata with other composites. See "Creating a SOA-MDS Connection" in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle SOA Suite.

  7. Create a configuration plan or deployment plan, which contains information about environment-specific values, such as JDBC connection strings or host names of various servers. For more information, see:

  8. Migrate application security, such as credentials, identities, and policies. For more information, see:

  9. Create a deployment profile. A deployment profile packages or archives a custom ADF, WebCenter Portal, or SOA application and associated files so that the application can be deployed to an Oracle WebLogic Server Managed Server instance. Deployment profiles are created at the project and application level.

    For more information, see:

  10. Migrate Oracle JDeveloper extensions for Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle WebCenter Portal. Table 9-1 shows the extensions and where they are documented:

    Table 9-1 Oracle JDeveloper Extensions

    Component Extension See

    Oracle WebCenter Portal

    WebCenter Portal extensions

    "Creating and Provisioning a WebLogic Managed Server Instance" in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle WebCenter Portal

    Oracle SOA Suite

    SOA extensions

    "Installing Additional Oracle Fusion Middleware Design Time Components" in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Guide for Oracle JDeveloper

  11. Deploy the application to a Managed Server.

    For more information, see:

9.2.3 Automating the Migration of an Application to Other Environments

You can automate the migration of an application by using WLST or ant scripts. This makes it easier to deploy your application to multiple environments or Managed Servers and to deploy updated versions of the application.

For more information about using scripts to migrate an application to other environments, see:

9.3 Diagnosing Typical Problems

The following describes some of the typical problems that you may encounter when you deploy an application to a Managed Server:

  • Connection information. Ensure that you have correctly configured the connection to the target Managed Server. See Steps 4, 5, and 6 in Section 9.2.2.

  • Oracle JDeveloper extensions. Ensure that you have migrated any Oracle JDeveloper extensions. See Table 9-1.

  • Data sources. Ensure that you have correctly configured JDBC data sources. See Step 3 in Section 9.2.2.

  • Security configuration. Ensure that you have migrated application security, such as credentials, identities, and policies. See Step 8 in Section 9.2.2.

In addition, see the "Troubleshooting Common Deployment Errors" in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle SOA Suite for information about troubleshooting SOA applications.