Introducing WebLogic Platform
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BEA WebLogic Platform is a unified, simplified, and extensible platform for building, extending, integrating, deploying, and managing applications. WebLogic Platform includes a rich development and deployment framework for integrating valuable resources and tools into your environment: third-party application packages, custom applications, messaging systems, Web services, trading partners, and more.
Based on a foundation of open standards that are leveraged throughout, WebLogic Platform ensures interoperability, flexibility, and choice, enabling integration with and between existing applications and resources, and extensibility through ISV applications and solutions.
This document is intended for software developers and managers who are new to WebLogic Platform and who want to understand its features and benefits.
The WebLogic Platform product comprises multiple component products that can be used independently, or in combination, as required for your application. These component products, shown in the following diagram, are referred to as components for the remainder of this document.
The highlights of each component are described in the following sections.
WebLogic Server delivers an easy-to-use, industrial application infrastructure for building and integrating distributed applications. WebLogic Server centralizes application services, such as Web server functionality, business components, and access to back-end enterprise systems. It is based on standards such as J2EE, Web services, and XML, and it provides standards-based integration to enable application integration and investment protection. WebLogic Server also provides enterprise-level security and powerful administration facilities.
WebLogic Server provides the foundation for WebLogic Platform. The WebLogic Workshop, WebLogic Portal, and WebLogic Integration components, and all applications built with these components, utilize the WebLogic Server run-time environment to meet the demands of applications that span one or more enterprises. Enterprise-class run-time capabilities provided by WebLogic Server include the following.
WebLogic Workshop is a unified, integrated development framework that makes it easy for all developers—not only J2EE experts—to build powerful, standards-based J2EE applications across the entire WebLogic Platform. The WebLogic Workshop architecture includes the following basic components:
A graphical environment that you can use for building, testing, and debugging WebLogic Platform applications. The Workshop IDE's intuitive user interface lets you design your application visually and hides the complexity of J2EE programming.
The WebLogic Workshop IDE supports the ability to build applications that include any combination of the following:
WebLogic Portal simplifies the production and management of custom-fit portals. WebLogic Portal simplifies, personalizes, and lowers the cost of access to information, applications, and business processes, whether the person who needs such access is an employee, a partner, or a customer. WebLogic Portal achieves this goal by leveraging a unified portal framework, simplified portal lifecycle management, and modular portal business services.
To speed the development and administration of portal applications, WebLogic Portal provides the following features.
WebLogic Integration provides a development and run-time framework for unifying business process management, application integration, and B2B integration into a single, flexible environment.
WebLogic JRockit is a high-performance JVM optimized for server-side performance and scalability. WebLogic JRockit is supported by all WebLogic Platform components and is now fully integrated into the WebLogic Platform package. It is also available as a standalone JVM.
The following features make WebLogic JRockit a strong match for WebLogic Platform:
WebLogic JRockit is included with WebLogic Platform and is also available as a standalone product.
WebLogic Platform provides a single, highly integrated, high-performance, reliable solution, combining the advantages of a common application infrastructure with an easy-to-use, robust application development and management framework for the following classes of applications:
The following sections describe the commonly used application infrastructure and development paradigm supported by WebLogic Platform.
WebLogic Platform's common application infrastructure includes the following:
WebLogic Workshop's unified architecture makes it possible for developers to learn only a single programming model for building and integrating the full suite of WebLogic Platform applications, including Web services, Web applications, portals, and business processes. Its development environment provides an intuitive user interface that lets you design your applications visually. It also abstracts the more complex J2EE programming. Applications you build in the IDE are constructed from high-level components rather than low-level API calls.
The most common way in which developers become familiar with WebLogic Platform is by experimenting with application development or by prototyping initial applications. The Workshop IDE is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1 WebLogic Workshop IDE
The Workshop IDE simplifies application construction by providing a set of graphical elements, including the following:
OrderRequisitionControl process control. As you drag items from the Data Palette to the document workspace, code is inserted in the current entity to access the item being dragged. The IDE also includes the following:
href tag in a JSP or HTML page "autocompletes" to any file or image in the project.While you are developing applications in Workshop, the IDE provides easy-to-use access to views into those applications, in both the graphical Design View mode and the programmatic Source View mode. It also offers editors and palettes appropriate for each type of application, including the following:
To help you build dynamic, sophisticated Web applications, WebLogic Workshop provides Java page flows. A page flow is a Java class that controls the behavior of Web application components through the use of Javadoc annotations, methods, and, in most cases, forms. Java page flows provide an abstraction layer that helps you maintain efficiency in the following aspects of your Web application:
WebLogic Workshop makes it very easy to create and deploy Web services that adhere to Web services standards, such as Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Web Services Description Language (WSDL). Web services are accessed via XML messages. WebLogic Workshop provides tools for accessing and processing XML files received by Web services and for formatting XML responses. Web services built with WebLogic Workshop automatically leverage the power, reliability, security, and scalability of WebLogic Server, making them truly enterprise-class.
The Java controls model is extensible so that all users, including independent software vendors, can build tightly-coupled business logic components that seamlessly plug in to the Workshop's Integrated Development Environment (IDE). A key feature of a Java control is its ability to contain other controls. By nesting, you can use controls to wrap potentially complex business logic, along with access to resources, while exposing a relatively simple interface to developers. Once a control is created, it can be leveraged across all applications developed with Workshop.
Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) are server-side Java components of enterprise applications. The J2EE Specification defines the types and capabilities of EJBs, as well as the environments, or containers, in which EJBs are deployed and executed. WebLogic Workshop provides a built-in control, called the EJB control, that makes it easy to use an existing, deployed EJB in your application. WebLogic Workshop also enables you to create new EJBs.
WebLogic Portal provides a Workshop extension that includes designers for building portals, portlets, portal foundation services, personalization and interaction management, and integration services. These designers are graphical tools that enable you to create a sophisticated portal in minutes, by using a drag-and-drop function to manipulate data and setting properties on a grid. For example, if you create a portal file that appears with a default page and drag a sample JSP from the file tree onto that default page, a portlet is created for you automatically. You can then save the file and view the portal in a browser.
WebLogic Integration provides a Workshop extension for graphically implementing business processes that integrate applications, business users, trading partners, and other resources in the enterprise. Using the business process extension, the developer can define the process flow, the resources the process interacts with and the data that is passed to and from those resources, and the appropriate exception handling logic. The Mapper extension allows the developer to graphically map between XML, non-XML, and Java data within the business process. A set of integration controls is provided for use within the business process for integrating to a range of resources.
All these applications can be combined into a single application, all built in the same tool, and all sharing the same run-time characteristics provided by WebLogic Server.
Note that Workshop is a file-based system. All files created in Workshop are standard Java classes with annotations. While Workshop has many productivity features built into it, developers have the flexibility to use other IDEs for building applications that run on the Workshop run-time framework.
WebLogic Platform also provides and supports traditional WebLogic Server programming environments that allow developers to work within a level of complexity that is appropriate for them. For developers who prefer a flexible, low-overhead, custom development environment that includes off-the-shelf editors, such as Emacs or vi, WebLogic Server provides custom Ant tasks for the repetitive tasks required to build, configure, and deploy WebLogic Server applications. Any application built with these tools can be easily integrated into any other application that has been developed in the Workshop IDE.
WebLogic Platform provides a comprehensive infrastructure for combining custom development, portal initiatives, and enterprise application integration in a single development and run-time environment. To demonstrate the kinds of solutions you can implement, the WebLogic Platform distribution includes a sample application, called the End-to End WebLogic Platform Tour. This sample application introduces you to the principal features of the WebLogic Platform product. It also provides a launching point from which you can get started with the development and integration of your own applications.
This section describes the End-to-End WebLogic Platform Tour: it summarizes the structure of the application and explains how key components of the application are developed with WebLogic Workshop. This section also emphasizes ways in which you can extend this application to encompass an even broader range of resources, giving you a robust and comprehensive implementation.
The WebLogic Platform Tour depicts a scenario in which Avitek, a major vendor of electronic office equipment, has developed a corporate intranet using WebLogic Platform. The corporate intranet enables employees and managers to view information from an employee information database and manage office equipment purchases. These capabilities are provided by two systems:
The WebLogic Platform Tour shows how these functions can be integrated using WebLogic Platform.
The following sections explain how select components of the WebLogic Platform Tour are implemented with WebLogic Workshop:
This section concludes with links to a set of interactive demos from the documentation for the WebLogic Platform Tour. You can invoke these demos to see how to develop specific application components in Workshop.
The underlying purpose of the intranet portal described in the WebLogic Platform Tour is to provide Avitek's employees with a single point of access to the company's applications and data. Specifically, the intranet portal must do the following:
You can use the WebLogic Workshop Portal Extensions to quickly create a portal that has these features and more. WebLogic Portal provides the ability to integrate existing Web applications, whether developed with WebLogic Workshop or with other tools and application environments, into a single portal that provides a unified view of applications. Web applications integrated into the WebLogic Portal environment, in turn, provide user access to back-end application functionality, databases, and other IT resources.
The application accessed by this intranet portal consists of multiple Web pages. These Web pages need to be linked together into a unified set, so that an employee's path is well coordinated, and so that a variety of usage scenarios, including error conditions, can be handled appropriately. This linkage can be performed by a WebLogic Workshop feature called page flows, as shown in the following figure.
A page flow links together multiple Web pages in an application and coordinates the user's path through those pages and the associated flow of data. A page flow consists of a Java class with annotations, methods, and forms that are specifically designed to control the behavior of application components. Page flows are based on the Apache Struts framework.
A Web service makes software application resources available over networks using standard technologies. Because Web services are based on standard interfaces, including XML, HTTP, SOAP, and WSDL, they can communicate even if they are running on different operating systems and are written in different languages. For this reason, Web services provide an excellent approach for building distributed applications that must incorporate diverse systems over a network, such as the intranet portal and Office Equipment Order Management System in the WebLogic Platform Tour.
WebLogic Workshop provides the tools and infrastructure you need to build and deploy enterprise-class Web services based on these standard technologies. WebLogic Workshop's environment for building Web services is both simple enough for the application developer and powerful enough for the J2EE expert.
The WebLogic Platform Tour uses a Web service to invoke the Order Requisition business process in the Office Equipment Order Management System, shown in the following figure. This Web service enables the application accessed by the intranet portal to be completely decoupled from the back-end business logic of the Office Equipment Order Management System.
The Office Equipment Order Management System in the WebLogic Platform Tour is an application consisting of business processes that do the following:
The Office Equipment Order Management System integrates these applications so that they can exchange documents and data efficiently. Some of the business logic and enterprise resources to be integrated can be extended to include the following:
The following figure shows how a business process fits into the Office Equipment Order Management System software to control the execution flow of various operations in that system.
WebLogic Integration provides the following capabilities to support the application integration and interoperability requirements of this Office Equipment Order Management System:
EJB controls make it easy for you to use an existing, deployed EJB from within an application. Normally, to obtain access to an Enterprise Java Bean (EJB), you must perform several preparatory operations: look up the EJB in the JNDI registry, obtain its home interface, and then obtain an instance of that EJB.
WebLogic Workshop uses the notion of an EJB control to simplify access to an EJB. Once you have created an EJB control, any application you create in WebLogic Workshop—a Web service, a business process, a page flow—can use the control to access the EJB's business methods directly. The EJB control manages communication with the EJB for you, including all JNDI lookup, interface discovery, and EJB instance creation and management.
The WebLogic Platform Tour provides an EJB to track the status of office equipment orders. The business processes in the Office Equipment Order Management System use an EJB control to simplify the task of accessing this EJB when updating or displaying the status of an order.
The documentation for the End-to-End WebLogic Platform Tour includes the following online demos that show how to use WebLogic Workshop to build specific parts of the Tour application.
Together with its online documentation and demos, the WebLogic Platform Tour provides a comprehensive introduction to the sorts of applications and components you can build with WebLogic Workshop. Give the Tour a try and find out how easy it is to build and deploy enterprise-class applications with WebLogic Platform!
The following table provides links to useful information in the WebLogic Platform documentation set, such as topics that teach you how to use the tools for implementing, deploying, configuring, and monitoring applications and resources that run on WebLogic Platform.
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Installing BEA WebLogic Platform available at:
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Creating WebLogic Configurations Using the Configuration Wizard available at:
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Supported Configurations available at:
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BEA WebLogic Platform Tour Guide, available at:
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Introduction to WebLogic Server and WebLogic Express, available at:
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WebLogic Workshop Help, available at:
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Introducing WebLogic Integration, available at:
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Building Portal Applications, available at:
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Using WebLogic JRockit 1.4.2 SDK, available at:
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See the following topics in the WebLogic Workshop Help, available at:
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See the following topics in the WebLogic Workshop Help, available at:
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See the following topics in the WebLogic Workshop Help, available at:
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Introducing WebLogic Integration, available at:
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Introducing Trading Partner Integration, available at:
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Using the Worklist, available at:
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WebLogic Integration 8.1 Upgrade Guide, available at:
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WebLogic Integration Solutions Best Practices FAQ, available at:
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Managing WebLogic Integration Solutions, available at:
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Deploying WebLogic Integration Solutions, available at:
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Introducing Application Integration, available at:
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Using the Application Integration Design Console, available at:
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BEA WebLogic Adapters documentation Web site available at:
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Developing Adapters, available at:
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See also the following topics in the WebLogic Workshop Help, available at:
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The following topics in the WebLogic Workshop Help, available at:
WebLogic Administration Portal Online Help, available at the following location, describes tasks and information about managing portal applications:
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Application Examples and Tutorials Web page, available at the following location, provides a description of the Avitek Medical Records sample applications:
Avitek Medical Records Clustering Tutorials, available at the following location, guide you through the process of creating and configuring a new cluster:
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Developing WebLogic Server Applications, available at the following location, describes the different types of applications you can build on WebLogic Server using the J2EE programming model. This document also provides a high-level procedure for building and deploying those applications, and information about programming.
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The following documents are available at the WebLogic Server Programming Web page, available from the following location:
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Deploying WebLogic Server Applications, available at the following location, provides a comprehensive set of WebLogic Server deployment topics:
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Using WebLogic JRockit 1.4.2 SDK, available at the following location, provides instructions for using WebLogic JRockit SDK and JVM on the Windows and Linux platforms:
Tuning WebLogic JRockit 1.4.2 JVM, available at the following location, explains how to tune the JRockit JVM to optimize your application's performance:
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Configuring and Managing WebLogic Server, available at the following location, which provides links to instructions for starting, configuring, and monitoring WebLogic Server.
Creating WebLogic Configurations Using the Configuration Wizard, available at the following location, which explains how to create and extend WebLogic domains, and also how to use the Template Builder to create templates and template extensions from existing domains.
The following topics are available from the WebLogic Server System Administration Web page, available at the following location:
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Security in WebLogic Platform 8.1, available at the following location, gives an overview of the WebLogic Platform security service and provides links to instructions for configuring, programming, and managing security.
See also the WebLogic Server Security topic page, available at the following location, which provides a list of topics with information about configuring, managing, and programming WebLogic Server security.
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WebLogic Server Performance and Tuning, available at the following location, which describes how to tune all the components of your WebLogic Server environment for optimal performance. These components include the WebLogic Server software itself, applications that run on WebLogic Server, the JVM, the operating system, and the network.
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WebLogic Tuxedo Connector Administration Guide, available at the following location, which describes how to configure and administer the WebLogic Tuxedo Connector, which enables WebLogic Server applications and Tuxedo services to interoperate.
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Adapters for integrating enterprise applications into WebLogic Platform |
BEA WebLogic Adapters 8.1 online documentation, available at the following location, a set of online manuals for all the BEA adapters for enterprise application integration.
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BEA Liquid Data for WebLogic online documentation, available at the following location, a set of online manuals that describe the product overview, the Liquid Data Avitek sample, administration, building queries and data views, and more.
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Your feedback on the WebLogic Platform documentation is important to us. Send us e-mail at docsupport@bea.com if you have questions or comments. Your comments will be reviewed directly by the BEA professionals who create and update the WebLogic Platform documentation.
In your e-mail message, please indicate which release of the WebLogic Platform documentation you are using.
If you have any questions about this version of WebLogic Platform, or if you have problems installing and running WebLogic Platform, contact BEA Customer Support through BEA eSupport at support.bea.com. You can also contact Customer Support by using the contact information provided on the BEA Customer Support card, which is included in the product package.
When contacting Customer Support, be prepared to provide the following information:
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