WebLogic Server Process Edition Overview

Introduction to WebLogic Server Process Edition

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 WebLogic Server Process Edition, detail the WebLogic options available when you purchase a WebLogic Server Process Edition license, provide a brief overview of WebLogic Server Process Edition, and introduce the WebLogic Server Process Edition mode:

WebLogic Server Process Edition Key Features

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

Table 1-1 WebLogic Server Process Edition Key Features

Features

Benefits

Service Enable Existing Resources

Extensible Controls Architecture

For more information, see Working with Java Controls in the WebLogic Workshop Help.

Consistent mechanism for representing resources.

Over 30+ pre-built controls to seamlessly interact with Java and legacy resources.

One click to a Web service from any resource.

Leverage IT assets without requiring complex API-level programming.

Available uniformly to all BEA WebLogic Platform^TM 8.1 applications.

Package Java Controls as re-distributable JAR files, easily leveraged by any developer in any application.

Resource Connectivity

For more information, see Using Built-In Java Controls in the WebLogic Workshop Help and the Introduction to the BEA WebLogic Adapters.

Out-of-the-box connectivity to Databases, EJBs, JMS, Web services, MQ Series, .NET, Tuxedo, file systems, and e-mail.

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 in Building Integration Applications in the WebLogic Workshop Help.

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 Managing WebLogic Integration Solutions.

Allows you to monitor the status of end-to-end processes graphically and measure performance versus service level agreements.

View statistics on running processes; drill into individual details; terminate, delete, or suspend problematic process instances.

Allow time calculations according to a customized business calendar.

Generate reports of historical process information by accessing SQL-based repository e.g. average elapsed time over a month for a process and for each individual step in the process.

Build for Integration

Unified Development Environment and Run-Time Framework

For more information, see The WebLogic Workshop Development Environment in the WebLogic Workshop Help.

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 BEA 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 in the WebLogic Workshop Help.

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 in Building Integration Applications in the WebLogic Workshop Help.

Transform data between Java and XML using simple drag-and-drop mapping in an intuitive and comprehensive graphical interface.

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 both the existing industry standard (XSLT) and the latest, highest performing standard (XMLQuery) for transforming documents and XML messages.

Standards Support

For more information, see Standards.

Support latest standards including SOAP 1.2, WSDL 1.2, UDDI 2.0, and WS-Security.

XML productivity tools based on emerging, XML Beans, XML Schema, and XQuery standards.

Innovative use of annotated code is supported by several BEA partners and is in the process of being standardized via the Java Community Process via JSR 175, JSR 181, and JSR 207.

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.

Automatic migration to BPEL-J (BEA is a leading author for the BPEL-J specification).

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.

WebLogic Server Process Edition Installation

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

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

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

In the development environment, the features available in the WebLogic Workshop IDE are dependent on:

The WebLogic Platform components installed.
The type of domain in which the server is running.

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

To learn more about WebLogic Server Process Edition installation and licensing, see WebLogic Server Process Edition Support in Installing WebLogic Platform.

The WebLogic Server Process Edition Mode

The 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 WebLogic Server Process Edition production license. To ensure that the functionality available is consistent with the functionality supported by the production license, WebLogic Workshop now supports the WebLogic Server Process Edition mode of operation.

After starting WebLogic Workshop, you can set the mode by selecting WebLogic Integration -> WebLogic Server Process Edition from the Tools menu, as shown in the following figure.

Figure 1-2 WebLogic Server Process Edition Menu Selection

WebLogic Server Process Edition Menu Selection

If you are developing applications for a WebLogic Server Process Edition production environment, you must select the WebLogic Server Process Edition mode in WebLogic Workshop 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.

WebLogic Server Process Edition Features

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

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

Table 1-3 Feature Comparison Matrix

Category	Feature	WebLogic Server Process Edition	WebLogic Integration
Business Processes	Stateless process modeling and automation
	Stateful process modeling and automation
	Web application-based human interaction
	Task-based human interaction (Workflow)
	Business calendars
Data Transformation	XML and Java data transformation
	Non-XML data Transformation
	Format Builder for Non-XML data transformation
Application Integration	Application connectivity via iWay 5.5 Adapters
	Application connectivity via BEA WebLogic Adapters
	Application View Design Console
	Adapter development kit
	RDBMS adapter
Message Broker	Inter-process pub/sub
Message Broker	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 Integration	Trading partner management
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
	WLI JMS control
	Service Broker control
	Transformation control
	Process control
	MQ Series control
	Message Broker Publish control
	Message Broker Subscribe control
	Application View control
	Task Control
	Task Worker control
	TIBCO control
	Rosettanet control
	ebXML control
	Trading Partner Management control

WebLogic Server Process Edition Component

The WebLogic Platform contains numerous component products, as shown in the following figure. You can use a combination of these components, or just use an individual component, to build an application.

Figure 1-4 WebLogic Platform Component Products

WebLogic Platform Component Products

For more information on the product components displayed in the proceeding figure, see the WebLogic Platform 8.1 documentation.