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Introduction to Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition

Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition provides you with the technologies and tools you need to effectively service-enable your existing resources, create composite services using process-driven development, and extend these composite services to interact with other applications and technologies. Each of these phases allows you to take distinct measurable steps that are effective for both project and enterprise level architectures.

The following sections introduce the key features of Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition, detail the WebLogic options available when you purchase a Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition license and provide a brief overview of Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition:

Note: Because there will no longer be any license check, you need to make sure that you only use the features that are included in the purchased licenses.

 

Key Features

The following table details the key features of Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition and outlines the benefits that these features provide.

Table 1-1 Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition Key Features 
Features
Benefits
Service Enable Existing Resources
Extensible Controls Architecture built on the Apache Beehive Control framework.
For more information, see Working with Beehive Controls and Controls: Getting Started in Apache Beehive documentation.
  • Access resources such as databases or other resources.
  • Encapsulate logic for reuse in other applications.
  • Modularize logic you want to keep separate from other application code.
  • Use Java 5 annotations to set control properties.
  • Provide mechanism to encapsulate business logic and to access enterprise resources such as databases, web services, EJBs, JMS message queues, and legacy applications using system controls.
  • Provide mechanism to fully customize access to a resource or encapsulate some application functionality using custom controls. You can design a custom control to do any task in an application.
Resource Connectivity
For more information, see Using Built-In Java Controls and Developing Adapters.
  • Provide out-of-the-box connectivity to Databases, EJBs, JMS, Web services, MQ Series, .NET, Tuxedo, file systems, and e-mail.
  • Provide additional J2CA-based pre-built adapters to leading enterprise applications and technologies.
Orchestrate Services using Process-driven Development
Process Modeling for Composite Services
For more information, see Guide to Building Business Processes.
  • Build, view, and change process models, with drag-and-drop graphical construction of complex composite service scenarios and two-way editing between Design and Source views.
  • Execute sophisticated Web service orchestration scenarios using composite process driven services.
  • Automatically accessible as a Web service, can easily invoke and respond to other Web services, and can be exported to Business Process Execution Language (BPEL).
  • Built-in support for asynchronous communication, lifecycle events, security, transactions, etc.
  • Supports proven process operations such as Synchronous and Asynchronous Communication, Branching, Nesting, Looping, Parallelism, Grouping, and Exception Handling.
  • Based on Process Definition for Java (PD4J-JSR 207), providing a seamless convergence between graphical representation of process flows in XML and Java for logic execution.
Process Monitoring and Management
For more information, see Process Configuration and Process Instance Monitoring in Using the Oracle WebLogic Integration Administration Console.
  • View process type information and locate specific processes for configuration.
  • View or update process type properties, the security policies for a process, and the selectors used to dynamically set control attributes for a Process or Service Broker control.
  • Activate or deactivate a non-versioned process.
  • Configure the activation time for a newly deployed process version, or rollback to a previous version.
  • View an interactive or printable process type graph.
  • View summary statistics that reflect system health and the summary or detailed status for selected instances.
  • Terminate or suspend instances, resume previously suspended instances, or unfreeze frozen instances.
Build for Integration
Unified Development Environment and Run-Time Framework
For more information, see Workshop for WebLogic User Guide.
  • Use a single tool, runtime framework, and programming model to orchestrate all enterprise services including custom Java Controls, Applications, and Web services.
  • Easily produce and manage custom-fit enterprise portals through interoperability with Web applications and Oracle WebLogic Portal.
  • Switch from writing code to immediately testing applications with one-button deployment, integrated debugger, and automated test harness.
Web Services
For more information, see Building Web Services with Workshop for Workshop for WebLogic User Guide.
  • Automatic support for state management, message correlation, and conversation lifecycles to handle asynchronous interaction models.
  • Support for loose-coupling with a visual tool enabling a standard and flexible technique to transform between XML and Java.
  • Employ higher-level, coarse-grained messages to enhance scalability and usability.
  • Secure applications with transport-level security and message-based security (authentication, signature, and/or encryption).
  • Extensibility and integration via SOAP interceptor mode.
Data Transformation
For more information, see Guide to Data Transformation.
  • Transformations packaged as controls that can be treated as resources and reused across multiple processes and integration solutions
  • Transformation of data between any of the following input-output data types: XML Data, Non-XML Data, Java Primitives, and Java classes
  • Gain a convenient Java object-based view of XML data without losing access to the richness of the native XML structure through XML Beans.
  • Support latest industry standards such as XSLT and XQuery for data transformation.
Standards Support
  • Support latest standards including SOAP 1.2, WSDL 1.2, UDDI 2.0, and WS-Security.
  • Annotations based on JSR-175 standards.
  • XML productivity tools based on emerging XML Beans, XML Schema, and XQuery standards.
  • Comprehensive support for Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) development and deployment, including design views for session and entity beans.
  • Implement Web applications based on the Apache open-source Struts framework.
  • Support for BPEL export for cross-platform interoperability.
An Enterprise Class Foundation
 
Industry Leading Application Server
  • Robust J2EE-certified application server functionality provides the essential capabilities and underlying infrastructure for enterprise-class applications: Security, system management and monitoring, failover via clustering, performance, scalability, transactions.
  • Native clustering that is completely transparent to the application.
  • Proven scalability and reliability in the most demanding enterprise environments.
  • Ensures that users experience no service interruption in mission critical applications. Use of in-memory replication to scale large clusters while ensuring high availability.
  • Allows reuse of different types of connections required to establish communications with clients, to databases, application adaptors, and message factories.
  • Delivers proven performance, scalability, flexibility, clustering, security, transaction management, and reliability to meet enterprise needs with confidence.

 

Installation

There is no separate installation procedure for Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition. The availability of features is dependent on the WebLogic product components and licenses purchased.

When you install Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Workshop for WebLogic, and Oracle WebLogic Integration (the components on which Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition functionality depends), a development license is included that enables a complete development framework for the installed components.

To enable the Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition capabilities for production, you must purchase a WebLogic Server Process Edition production license.

In the development environment, the features available in the Oracle WorkSpace Studio IDE are dependent on:

If you have installed Oracle WebLogic Integration and are running the server in a Oracle WebLogic Integration domain, the Oracle WorkSpace Studio IDE not only provides access to the controls and other functionality supported by Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition, it also provides access to Oracle WebLogic Integration features that are not supported by the Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition production license. To ensure that no unsupported features are used, you must restrict the development environment by using only the features as described in the following section.

 

Mode

The Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition production license is enforced at run time. However, as described in the previous section, the functionality available by default in the development environment is a superset of the functionality supported by the Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition production license. To ensure that the functionality available is consistent with the functionality supported by the production license, Oracle WorkSpace Studio now supports the Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition mode of operation.

Follow the steps to set the Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition mode

  1. After starting Oracle WorkSpace Studio, set the mode by selecting Window > Preferences...

    2. The Preferences... dilog box is displayed as shown in the following figure



  2. Click Weblogic Integration, and select the Set Weblogic Process Edition Mode check box.
  3. Click Apply
  4. Click OK.

If you are developing applications for a WebLogic Server Process Edition production environment, you must select the WebLogic Server Process Edition mode in Oracle WorkSpace Studio, before building any applications to avoid building applications that are not supported by your license at run time. Once you make this change, the new mode of operation is saved as an environment setting.

Notes: When you try to upgrade a 8.x or 9.x application that has unsupported controls, the IDE does not show any error during the upgrade process regardless of the Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition mode. However, when deployed, the application fails.
Note: If an unsupported control is created before switching to the Process Edition mode, the IDE continues to enable such controls. But, the application fails at run time.
Note: Also, when copying the unsupported controls from a different workspace to the current workspace, where Process Edition is enabled, the IDE does not show any error. However, the application fails to deploy.

 

Features

The Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition production license provides business process management, data transformation, and process monitoring capabilities that are available in Oracle WebLogic Integration, in addition to all the capabilities of WebLogic Server Premium. Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition does not include the Message Broker, WorkList, application integration framework, and trading partner integration capabilities that are available in Oracle WebLogic Integration.

The following table details the differences between Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition and Oracle WebLogic Integration.

Table 1-2 Feature Comparison Matrix 
Category
Feature
Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition
Oracle WebLogic Integration
Business Processes
Stateless process modeling and automation

Stateful process modeling and automation

Web application-based human interaction

Task-based human interaction (Worklist)

Business calendars

Data Transformation
XML and Java data transformation

Non-XML data Transformation

Format Builder for Non-XML data transformation

Message Broker
Inter-process pub/sub

Event generators for external events

BPEL Import/Export
Supports the BPEL 1.1 specification

Event Generators
File

Email

HTTP

JMS

MQ Series

TIBCO

Timer

Trading Partner Integration
B2B protocols (e.g., ebXML, RosettaNet)

Trading partner management

Oracle WebLogic Integration Administration Console Modules
System Configuration

User Management

Process Configuration

Process Monitoring

Message Broker Management

Event Generators

Worklist Administration

Application Integration Management

Trading Partner Management

Business Calendar Configuration

Integration Controls
File control

 
Email control

Http Control

WLI JMS control

Service Broker control

Dynamic Transformation control

Process control

MQSeries control

Message Broker controls

TPM control

Application View control

Worklist Control

XML Metadata Cache control

TIBCO Rendezvous control

RosettaNet control

ebXML control

 

Components

You can use a combination of the following components, or just use an individual component, to build an application.

Oracle WebLogic Server, the industry-leading J2EE application server, provides the critical infrastructure needed to develop integrated solutions, including security, transaction management, fault tolerance, persistence, and clustering. Leveraging WebLogic Server as the underlying deployment environment, Oracle WebLogic Integration uses Web services to integrate distributed systems inside and outside an organization and utilizes the Oracle WorkSpace Studio framework to simplify application development.

Oracle WebLogic Integration works seamlessly in the Oracle WorkSpace Studio environment. Oracle WebLogic Integration uses the power of Oracle WorkSpace Studio to provide a robust set of tools to develop and extend integration applications. Oracle WebLogic Integration provides graphical tools you use to edit your business processes, and human interaction task plans. These tools are available in the same Oracle WorkSpace Studio environment as your controls, Web services, and portal-building tools.

WebLogic Server Process Edition contains an IDE framework based on Eclipse 3.1.2.


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