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 and provide a brief overview of 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 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 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 Platform Programmer's 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 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 with Workshop for Workshop for WebLogic Platform Programmer's 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 For more information, see Standards.	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 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:

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 using only the features as described in the following section.

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 1-2 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 (Worklist)
	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
	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

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.

BEA 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, WebLogic Integration uses Web services to integrate distributed systems inside and outside an organization and utilizes the BEA Workshop for WebLogic Platform framework to simplify application development.

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

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

For more information on the product components displayed in the proceeding figure, see the WebLogic Platform 9.2 documentation.

Overview

Introduction to WebLogic Server Process Edition

Key Features

Installation

Features

Components