BEA WebLogic Server Release Notes


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BEA WebLogic Server Release Version: 4.5.2
Date: June 2000

About BEA WebLogic Server 4.5.2

Getting Started

Year 2000 Compliance

Using the Documentation

Upgrading from Pre-4.5.1 Versions

The New Class Loader, Changes to CLASSPATH and Starting the Server

JMS Messages Upgrade Issues

EJB Upgrade Requirements

Microsoft SDK for Java Upgrade Issues

JDBC Upgrade Issues

Changes

International encoding in JSP, and Servlets

New Features

Java 2 version 1.2 Support

Swing libraries changes

Cloudscape database upgrade

EJB changes

Microsoft SDK for Java changes

WebLogic Server changes

Menu changes

Property-related changes

Deprecated APIs

Deprecated services

Platform changes

WebLogic code example changes

Jolt for WebLogic changes

WebLogic RMI/JNDI changes

WebLogic Enterprise Connectivity changes

WebLogic HTTP Servlets and JHTML changes

WebLogic JDBC, the native jdbcKona drivers, and dbKona changes

JMS changes

JSP changes

Netscape (NSAPI) and MS-IIS (ISAPI) plug-ins changes

Security changes

Documentation changes

Known Problems

Examples

EJBs

Tools and 3rd Party Containers

About BEA WebLogic Server 4.5.2

Resolved and known outstanding issues with the 4.5 releases are listed in this document. WebLogic Server release version 4.5.2 is composed of release version 4.5.1, all changes in the 4.5.1 service packs, and additional fixes to the product. There are some differences between the 4.5.1 release with service pack installed and the 4.5.2 release. These differences are documented at the 4.5.1 vs. 4.5.2 page.

WebLogic Server is an application server, a runtime environment that provides infrastructure services such as database access, transaction coordination, and component framework for distributed applications. WebLogic Server also provides administrative features such as configurable security, management and application deployment tools, and clustering to promote high availability and scalability.

WebLogic Server operates at the center of a multitier architecture. Business logic is concentrated in WebLogic Server, allowing client applications to concentrate on the presentation layer. Clients can be very light-weight, greatly simplifying application deployment. Complete enterprise applications can be built with nothing more than WebLogic Server and a web browser on the client.

WebLogic Server also manages access to database systems, TP monitors, and other shared resources on behalf of clients. It presents a consistent development environment that is independent from specific back-end services employed. For example, code to perform a database query is identical, whether the query actually executes on an Oracle, Sybase, Informix, or IBM DB2 database. Changing from one database vendor to another only requires changing the software layer that WebLogic Server uses to access the database.

WebLogic Server supports a variety of published application development standards that make it easy to develop or acquire software components that can be easily integrated into an enterprise application. WebLogic Server supports the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition, a collection of Java APIs that allow developers to build powerful, component-based applications.

Getting Started

This release introduces functionality that requires configuration and preparation.

For New Users

If you are a new user, please follow this installation plan:

Read these release notes.
Install the product, following the Installation Guide, included with the printed documentation accompanying this CD, or at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/install/install_overview.html.
Take the WebLogic Tour at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/tour/open.html.

For Current Users

Read these release notes.
Install the product, following the Installation Guide, included with the printed documentation accompanying this CD, or at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/install/install_overview.html.
If you have ever had a previous WebLogic distribution on your computer, and you have set the CLASSPATH in your Windows NT System Properties to include an earlier WebLogic release, the WebLogic Tour fails. Several seconds after pressing the "Start the WebLogic Tour" button, the window disappears with no error message. To work around this problem, remove the WebLogic classes from your CLASSPATH, or update them with the new WebLogic distribution's directories. Issue: 5231
We've removed the option of installing WebLogic as an NT service when using the InstallShield. Instead, you should follow the procedure described in Using WebLogic Server as an NT 4.0 service at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/admindocs/ntservice.html.
The performance pack is now turned on by default in the weblogic.properties file shipped with the InstallShield installation for Windows NT. It is commented out in weblogic.properties file included in the UNIX (.zip) file installation. A performance pack has been added for AIX 4.3. See Tuning the WebLogic Server, for details, at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/admindocs/tuning.html#perfpacks.

BEA is always ready to support and help you. For help, please contact weblogic-support@bea.com or call 1-408-570-8070. For more support information, please read the customer support page at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/techsupport/index.html.

Year 2000 Compliance

Since WebLogic Server is already Year 2000 compliant, there have been no issues or changes regarding this issue. For more information on Year 2000 compliance, see our Year 2000 Readiness Statement. This statement can be read online at http://www.weblogic.com/products/year2000.html.

Using the Documentation

All WebLogic documentation for this release is available:

On the enclosed CD in this release documentation. The search engine does not operate on the CD version of the documentation.
In .zip format and pdf formats at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/API_users_guide.html.
In html format, at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/resources.html.

In particular, see:

WebLogic platform support at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/platforms/index.html.
Installing WebLogic Server 4.5 at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/install/install_overview.html.

Upgrading from Pre-4.5.1 Versions

This section lists major upgrade issues. If you are upgrading from an earlier version of WebLogic Server please keep these points in mind. See later sections for information about other changes.

All changes listed are against WebLogic Server, version 4.5.0 or 4.5.1. If you are upgrading from a version earlier than 4.5.0, read the release notes for 4.5.0 at http://www.weblogic.com/docs/classdocs/release_notes450.html.

If you are using WebLogic 3.1.x, in addition to the 4.5.0 and 4.5.1 notes, read the release notes for the 4.0 release. Those notes contain details of what changed between 3.1.x and 4.0. You can view the release notes for 4.0 at http://www.weblogic.com/docs40/classdocs/release_notes.html

The New Class Loader, Changes to CLASSPATH and Starting the Server

Beginning with WebLogic Server release 4.5.1, you can deploy an EJB on a server that is already running; this is called "hot deployment." For information on hot deployment, see Using WebLogic Server hot deploy at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/techdeploy/hotdeploy.html. In order to implement hot deployment, WebLogic uses a new class loader. There are major changes in how you set your environment and start the WebLogic Server and how you build and deploy EJBs. You will need to change how you specify the classpath for the Server, where server and client code is located, and how you invoke the Server. Hot deployment, using the new class loader, is not supported under the Microsoft SDK for Java, though changes do affect how you start the server under jview. If you are using EJBs, see the section "EJB Upgrade Requirements".

The instructions for setting the CLASSPATH both for the Server and for client applications, and for starting the server have changed. See the Installation Guide at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/install/install_overview.html, and Setting up and Starting the WebLogic Server at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/install/startserver.html, for details on how to set the CLASSPATH correctly.

If you are running the WebLogic Server from the command line, follow the instructions contained in Setting up and Starting the WebLogic Server at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/install/startserver.html.

To make client-related distribution easier, we supply all of the third-party jars both as separate jar/zip files, in the subdirectory /weblogic/lib/unpacked_jars/ as well as a single .jar /weblogic/lib/weblogicaux.jar. Please note that there is no need to add both of these to the CLASSPATH. They are provided for convenience in deploying your client.

JMS Messages Upgrade Issues

Because of a change in the serialization format for JMS messages between WebLogic Servers version 4.5.0 and 4.5.1, all messages in the database of a server version 4.5.0 and 4.5.1 need to be upgraded for use in the server version 4.5.2.

BEA recommends that before you upgrade to version 4.5.2 that you process any outstanding persistent JMS messages. The remaining messages will be automatically upgraded when the version 4.5.2 server starts. Once upgraded, there is no process for reverting messages to the previous format.

JMS ObjectMessages stored in queues are not compatible between versions. Old messages will get automatically converted the first time the Server is started. Once converted, messages cannot be converted back to the older version.

EJB Upgrade Requirements

If you are an EJB user, you must do a clean build of all your stubs and skeletons with this release. You must delete old EJB classes and recompile with ejbc.

For information on using EJBs with the new class loader, see Troubleshooting your WebLogic EJB Application at http://www.weblogic.com/docs/techsupport/ejb.html.

Support for .ser files has been deprecated in the deployment of EJBs. You should use .jar files for your deployments instead. Only .jar files are supported for hot deployment. Even if you are running the Server with Microsoft's SDK for Java, you will need to use .jar files.

If you are using EJBs and the Microsoft SDK for Java, you will need to:

Download and install a Java SDK from Sun to provide access to a jar tool.
Add the Java SDK bin to your PATH and the classes.zip to your classpath in order for the jar tool to work.
Use the jar tool to package your EJBs into a .jar file for deployment as described in Building Enterprise JavaBean Examples at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/examples/ejb/building.html.
Add the EJB .jar files that are being deployed to the classpath of the WebLogic Server before you start the Server.
We have added notes on setting up EJBs with clustered servers. Please see, Using Enterprise JavaBeans in WebLogic Clusters at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/classdocs/API_cluster.html#usingejb.
If you are using the EJB examples, and you deploy an EJB, and then rebuild the example, you will not be able to redeploy the EJB unless you rename the .jar file.

Microsoft SDK for Java Upgrade Issues

Installation of the RMI classes, needed by the WebLogic Server and WebLogic COM, is an installation option when you use the InstallShield. These RMI classes are not included in the .zip file installation and are unsupported in the Microsoft JVM.

If you don't install with this option selected, you will not be able to start the Server using jview. You will need to reinstall the distribution, selecting the option, to get the correct classes. The classes can not be automatically installed because they might be incompatible if you are using a different Java JVM than Microsoft's.

Changes have also been made in how to start the Server using jview. We have added startup scripts for starting the WebLogic Server and the Console when running under the Microsoft SDK for Java.

Add c:\java \lib\classes.zip to the /cp option, where c:\java is the path to your JDK directory. For additional information, see the Install Guide at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/install/install_overview.html.

JDBC Upgrade Issues

If you are a jdbcKona/MSSQLServer4 or jdbcKona/Informix4 user, you must update your JDBC driver for use with this release.

If you have previously purchased one of the type 4 JDBC drivers from BEA or WebLogic (jdbcKona/Informix4 of jdbcKona/MSSQLServer4), you must upgrade these drivers to the current release for use with WebLogic Server 4.5.2. You can obtain updated drivers from the same location you obtained WebLogic Server.

If you will be using these type 4 drivers with WebLogic Server, you must specify the classpath differently. Please see:

Installing jdbcKona/Informix4 at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/techstart/install_jinf4.html
Installing jdbcKona/MSSQLServer4 at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/techstart/install_jmsq4.html

Changes

In addition to the items listed in the upgrade section, this section discusses additional changes in the 4.5.1 and 4.5.2 releases.

International encoding in JSP, and Servlets

International character set encoding (multibyte charsets) is now supported in servlets, including HTTP, JSP and JHTML. In order to properly read and transmit multibyte JSP files, the JSP servlet needs to know which charset converter to use for a particular file. There are two ways to specify this:

Specifying an 'encoding' initArg to the JSP servlet in the weblogic.properties file:
```
weblogic.httpd.register.*.jsp=\
weblogic.servlet.JSPServlet
weblogic.httpd.initArgs.*.jsp=\
pageCheckSeconds=60,\
packagePrefix=examples.jsp,\
compileCommand=c:/java/bin/javac.exe,\
workingDir=/weblogic/myserver/classfiles,\
verbose=true,\
encoding=SJIS
```
In this case, the encoding should specify a standard JDK charset converter. A list of standard JDK charsets is available at http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.1/docs/guide/intl/encoding.doc.html.
The second option is to specify a contentType JSP page directive. When the JSP servlet parser sees the contentType JSP page directive, it will start using the specified charset to read the page, as outlined in the JSP specification. The charset specified may be:
- an IANA name, as listed at ftp://venera.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/character-sets
- a JDK charset name, as listed at http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.1/docs/guide/intl/encoding.doc.html
  Since the IANA charset names may be different than the JDK charset names, we have introduced a way to alias the names. Specifying the property, weblogic.httpd.charsets.IANA_name=JDK_name in the weblogic.properties file will map an IANA name -- used in a JSP file -- to a JDK name.
  
  For example, since Internet Explorer 5 recognizes 'Shift-JS' as the 'SJIS'charset, put an alias for 'Shift-JIS' to the JDK charset name 'SJIS'in your weblogic.properties file as follows:
```
  weblogic.httpd.charsets.Shift-JS=SJIS
```
For HTTP servlets, you can use
```
ServletResponse.setContentType("text/html; charset=FooBar");
```
and the PrintWriter for that response will be initialized to the FooBar character set, as outlined in the Servlet 2.1 specification.

New Features

The following new features were added in releases 4.5.1 and 4.5.2:

WebLogic JMS is a new implementation of the JavaSoft version 1.0.1 Java Messaging Service (JMS) specification. See Using WebLogic JMS at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/classdocs/API_jms.html.
WebLogic JSP is a new implementation of the JavaSoft Java Server Pages (JSP) specification version 1.0. See Using WebLogic JSP at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/classdocs/API_jsp.html.
WebLogic HTTP Servlets now implement the javax.servlet.SingleThreadModel interface of the Java Servlet API v2.1. See Using WebLogic HTTP Servlets at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/classdocs/API_servlet.html.
The Apache plug-in for Solaris is new in this release.
A performance pack for HP-UX 11.0 is new in this release.
LDAP security realm now allows the WebLogic Server to authenticate users against, and retrieve groups from, an LDAP server. See Administering the WebLogic LDAP security realm at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/admindocs/ldap.html.
Windows NT security realm allows the WebLogic Server to authenticate users against, and retrieve groups from, a Windows NT security domain. See Administering the WebLogic Windows NT security realm at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/admindocs/ntrealm.html.
A change in release 4.5.2 allows you to use a VeriSign Global Server ID with WebLogic Server. Follow the instructions on the VeriSign web site to install the certificate in WebLogic Server.
WebLogic EJB includes enhancements for hot deployment, when you are deploying an EJB on a server that is already running. See Troubleshooting your WebLogic EJB application at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/techsupport/ejb.html#classloader.
Support for additional container-managed persistence (CMP) providers has been added:
- TOPLink users: If you would like to test, or purchase, the TOPLink product, please contact sales at the ObjectPeople (sales@objectpeople.com) for further information.
- ObjectStore users: If you a would like to test, or purchase, the ObjectStore EJB provider for WebLogic, please contact Kathy Barnes (kbarnes@exceloncorp.com) at Excelon for further information.

Java 2 version 1.2 Support

WebLogic Server is designed to work both under Java 1.1 and Java 2. BEA currently tests WebLogic Server under both environments. However, BEA recommends that customers only deploy on a version of Java that is certified for your specific hardware platform.

We have included both the 1.1.7 and 1.2 JREs in the Windows InstallShield distribution. This gives you flexibility in moving between environments when testing and starting the Server.

Please see both our Platform Support document at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/platforms/index.html, and Running WebLogic with the Java 2 SDK at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/techsupport/java12.html.

The following issues were addressed in the 4.5.1 release:

Issue: 5926 Weblogic Enterprise Connectivity is now supported when running the WebLogic Server 4.5.1 under Java 2 (SDK 1.2.1). New instructions on how to start WebLogic Server with Weblogic Enterprise Connectivity when using Java 2, can be read at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/admindocs/wleconnect.html#wlestart.

Swing libraries changes

The GUI products in this release use version 1.0.3 of the Swing GUI libraries.

You can compile and use your own clients with Swing 1.1.1, though you will probably need to load the libraries in the /lib/unpacked_jars directory rather than the weblogicaux.jar.

Cloudscape database upgrade

The evaluation copy of Cloudscape, the pure-Java relational database management system, which is included in your WebLogic distribution has been upgraded to version 3.0.1. This evaluation version is fully functional but has a license that will expire. To check the expiration date, put cloudscape.jar into your CLASSPATH and run the command:

java COM.cloudscape.tools.sysinfo

EJB changes

See the upgrade section for more information about EJB changes.

The following issues were addressed release 4.5.1:

Issue: 6569 Fixed an IllegalArgumentException when using Entity beans with file persistence.
Issue: 6570 Fixed a problem with an UnmarshalException thrown when trying to retrieve EJB meta data while running under Java 2.

Microsoft SDK for Java changes

Hot deployment is not supported under the Microsoft SDK for Java. See the upgrade issues section for more information about changes.

Synchronization on multi-processor, Windows NT machines can be relatively slow due to hardware bottlenecks and efforts to coordinate activities between contending threads. This can result in a decrease of overall performance. See Bug Id 4256394 on the Java Developer Connection's Bug Parade for more details.

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.1:

Issue: 5714 Fixed a problem with a license parsing error in non-US locales.
Issue: 5687 Fixed a problem where a PeerGoneException was thrown instead of a ConnectException when a connection to another Server was lost.

WebLogic Server changes

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.1:

We changed the distributed garbage collection server to always indicate that it is running by adding entries to the Server log file. A typical entry is:

Thu Aug 19 19:44:28 PDT 1999:<I> <DGCserver>

Freed 1086 objects in 30 ms, 24 exported object remain.

We have changed the messages of outgoing exceptions from the server to include a stack trace from the server. The stack trace is contained in the message, and begins with "Begin server side stack trace" and ends with "End server side stack trace".

If the Server is started with an incorrect classpath -- such as one used in previous versions of WebLogic Server -- an error message is written to the log and the Server does not start.

Issue: 5714 Fixed a problem with a license parsing error in non-US locales.
Issue: 5687 Fixed a problem where a PeerGoneException was thrown instead of a ConnectException when a connection to another Server was lost.

Menu changes

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.1:

We have improved the menus that are created when you install WebLogic Server on Windows NT using the InstallShield distribution.

There are new options for:

Choosing the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) used when the Server is started from Start Menu
Seeing the current settings used to start the WebLogic Server
Documentation about the utilities menu

In addition to the current options, which include:

Editing the weblogic.properties file
Starting a Server
Running the WebLogic Tour

Property-related changes

There a number of property-related changes involved in upgrading from an earlier version of WebLogic Server to 4.5.2. We highly recommend that you use the properties file included with this release. For details on all properties shown here, refer to Setting WebLogic Properties at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/admindocs/properties.html.

Deprecated properties

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.1:

Container-managed file persistence is deprecated.

The value of "file" has been deprecated for the EJB deployment descriptor property persistentStoreType. This property specifies the type of container-managed persistence. The valid value for this property is "jdbc".
We have removed the EJB container-managed file example and renamed the container-managed JDBC example "containerManaged" instead of "containerManagedJDBC".

New and changed properties

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.1:

The location of the classfiles that result from building the examples has been changed from /weblogic/classes to the directory /weblogic/myserver. Consequently, we have changed the values for these properties in the default weblogic.properties file:
- weblogic.ejb.deploy
- weblogic.httpd.servlet.classpath
We have turned on the dynamic reloading of servlets by default in the weblogic.properties file shipped with the distribution.

Deprecated APIs

JDBC driver libraries

The JDBC type 2 drivers jdbcKona/Sybase and jdbcKona/MSSQLServer are deprecated as of release 4.5.1.

JHTML

JHTMLis deprecated as of release 4.5.2. Though we will continue to support JHTML, there will be no further development and developers should switch to using JSP instead.

Deprecated services

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.1:

Legacy VisiBroker-WebLogic Bridge

Although this service is currently still supported, we are deprecating proprietary interfaces for use with CORBA in favor of the standard RMI/IIOP model. The CORBA-VisiBroker example has been deprecated and removed from this release. Note that access to WebLogic Events and WebLogic Remote services from a CORBA client is not supported under Java 2.

WebLogic Beans (T3Beans)

Although this service is currently still supported, we are deprecating the proprietary interfaces used with WebLogic Beans in favor of the standard Enterprise Java Bean model. The WebLogic Beans examples in examples/beant3 have been deprecated and removed from this release.

WebLogic Remote

Although this service is currently still supported, we are deprecating proprietary interfaces used with WebLogic Remote in favor of the standard RMI model. The WebLogic Remote examples have also been removed from this release.

WebLogic Utilities

The utility class weblogic.common.Utilities has been deprecated.

Platform changes

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.1:

Issue: 6357 We have added a FAQ and updated our Solaris platform information about a problem with some Solaris JDKs of a LicenseException caused by Java applications finding the wrong IP address for the host.
Issue: 5722 Fixed a weblogic.Console display problem where each line of the tree was one pixel high. This problem occurred only on Linux, AIX, and HP-UX.
Issue: 6511 Fixed a problem with setUID not working on Solaris 2.6 with Java 1.2.1.

Windows 95 and 98

We no longer support Windows 95 as a platform for WebLogic Server, and we have limited our Windows 98 support to "client only". See WebLogic Platform Support documentation for details of our Windows 98 support at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/platforms/index.html.

WebLogic code example changes

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.1:

Because of the class loader changes, we have changed how the examples shipped with the distribution are built and run. Instead of compiling examples into the /weblogic/classes directory, we now build them into the /weblogic/myserver directory, and direct the output into one of three directories:

/weblogic/myserver/clientclasses: client applications and classes
/weblogic/myserver/servletclasses: servlets
/weblogic/myserver: EJB .jar files

Instructions on building the examples and running the client applications are found in the examples documentation Guide to WebLogic Code Examples at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/examples/index.html.

There are a set of scripts supplied with the distribution to help you configure your development environment for running the examples. Modify the scripts as described in Setting Your Development Environment, at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/techstart/environment.html, and use them prior to building or running the examples.

Note: All the pre-built examples shipped with the distribution are built with a Java SDK. If you are using Microsoft SDK for Java, you will need to rebuild the examples before you run them, and in many cases (such as EJBs) where the example code is loaded at start-up, you will need to do this before you start the Server.

An example of a JNDI lookup has been added to the multihello example.

The following issue was addressed in release 4.5.1:

Issue: 6663 Fixed a problem with the PhoneBook1 applet example.

We have also removed examples that reference deprecated services, and updated examples that previously used deprecated classes.

The CORBA -VisiBroker example has been deprecated and removed from this release.
Although JBuilder can still be used with WebLogic Server, the JBuilder example has been deprecated and removed from this release because of dependencies on deprecated APIs.
These examples have been removed:
- InitialContextExample
- SimpleProviderClient
- SimpleProviderServer

Jolt for WebLogic changes

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.1:

The Jolt connection pools shown in the default weblogic.properties file are consolidated into a single pool that uses the public TUXEDO Server provided by BEA. You can use this pool for trying the Jolt examples (EJB and servlets), and modify it if you have a different TUXEDO Server that you would like to use.

WebLogic RMI/JNDI changes

If you use RMI, you must do a clean build of all your stubs and skeletons with this release. You must delete old RMI and EJB classes and recompile.

An example of a JNDI lookup has been added to the multihello example.

These examples have been removed:

InitialContextExample
SimpleProviderClient
SimpleProviderServer

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.1:

Issue: 6205 Fixed a problem with the WebLogic RMI compiler (weblogic.rmic) generating incorrect code for a remote interface implemented as an inner class.

WebLogic Enterprise Connectivity changes

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.1:

Issue: 5926 We support Weblogic Enterprise Connectivity when running the WebLogic Server 4.5.1 under Java 2 (SDK 1.2.1). For more information, see Using WebLogic Enterprise Connectivity at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/classdocs/API_wlec.html.
Issue: CR016690 Fixed a problem with starting a WebLogic Enterprise Connection Pool. A check is made for the domainid parameter at boot time; if the domain id of the remote domain does not match the domain id specified in the weblogic.properties file, an error is logged and the pool is not started.

WebLogic HTTP Servlets and JHTML changes

JHTML is deprecated as of 4.5.1. Although we will continue to support JHTML. There will be no further development and developers should switch to using JSP instead.

The following issues were addressed in release 4.52:

Issue: 9597 The restriction of the J2EE servlet specification that either ServletOutputStream, or PrintWriter may be used in a servlet and its included servlets, but not both, has been lifted. As a result, servlets that use ServletOutputStream may include servlets that use PrintWriter, and vice versa.

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.1:

Issue: 3332 Bad (syntactically incorrect) HTTP requests now return SC_BAD_REQUEST and close the connection.
If an invalid weblogic.httpd.documentRoot is set in the weblogic.properties file, an error is logged in the WebLogic Server log and every request using the documentRoot will be returned with a "404" error message.
Issue: 5979 Fixed a problem where cluster proxies did not take into consideration that a cookie name can change.
We have turned on the dynamic reloading of servlets by default in the weblogic.properties file shipped with the distribution.

WebLogic JDBC, the native jdbcKona drivers, and dbKona changes

Oracle 8 client libraries are now supported on Windows NT, Solaris, Reliant UNIX, SGI IRIX, Compaq Tru64 Unix, IBM AIX, and HPUX 11.0. See jdbcKona Platform Support at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/platforms/index.html#jdbc.

The jdbcKona/Oracle native libraries for Windows, Solaris, AIX, HPUX10, and HPUX11 are at "34" (for example, libweblogicoci34.sl or weblogicoci34.dll).

The jdbcKona/Sybase and jdbcKona/MSSQLServer libraries for Windows, Solaris, AIX, SGI, HPUX10, and HPUX11 are at "26" (for example, libweblogicsyb26.so or weblogicsyb26.dll). These libraries have been deprecated.

The .dlls for Microsoft SDK for Java follow the pattern "weblogic" + "ms" + DBMS + version.

The JDBC type 2 drivers jdbcKona/Sybase and jdbcKona/MSSQLServer are now deprecated due to threading limitations in the DbLib. Deprecated features remain for backwards compatibility only. They exist only for deployments that have not yet migrated to other solutions.

Specifically, these drivers have not been and will not be updated to match the latest DMBS features or platform developments nor have they been updated to run under a JDK 1.2 environment. While these drivers may work in many customer situations, some customers have had problems.

To connect to a Sybase installation, we recommend the jConnect driver freely available from Sybase at http://www.sybase.com/products/internet/jconnect/.

For Microsoft SQLServer, use the jdbcKona/MSSQLServer type 4 JDBC driver available from BEA. You can download an evaluation copy of the driver from the same location you downloaded WebLogic Server. Your sales representative can help you with questions about this driver. See the upgrade section for more changes.

Support for JDBC 2.0 and WebLogic multitier driver

You may use third-party JDBC 2.0 drivers with WebLogic JDBC and WebLogic Server. Such use requires that you run WebLogic Server or WebLogic JDBC under Java 2 (JDK 1.2.x). There are currently limitations regarding the use of Java 2 that you should consider when using JDBC 2.0 drivers. These limitations are discussed in the Platform Support page at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/platforms/index.html.

When you use a third-party JDBC 2.0 driver in a multitier configuration, all of the driver's calls and the returned data are transparently passed through the WebLogic multitier driver. This allows you to use any functionality available in that driver in a WebLogic multitier configuration. You will need to modify your code by changing the connection URL and driver name. For details, see Using Third-party JDBC 2.0 Drivers in a Multitier Configuration at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/classdocs/API_jdbct3.html#jdbc20.

JMS changes

We have added a DDL file (jms_db2.ddl) for IBM DB2. Currently this is only supported for DB2 on NT. (DDL files are located in weblogic/classes/jms/ddl.)

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.2:

Issue: 9792 Added a new property, weblogic.jms.scavengerSeconds, that configures the frequency (in seconds) at which the JMS table is scavenged. The default is 60 seconds. This property can be set in the weblogic.properties file to any number in the range of 10 to Integer.MAX_VALUE.
Issue: 7526 We now provide a method for specifying either JMS tablenames or a prefix (with database name) in JMS. In your weblogic.properties file, specify the property weblogic.jms.tableNamePrefix with the prefix you want to use. For example:
```
weblogic.jms.tableNamePrefix=master.dbo.
```
This makes JMS reference master.dbo.JMSMessages rather than simply JMSMessages. Note that the trailing dot is necessary and that the form of the prefix must be such that it generates a valid tablename.

This prefix could also be used to separate JMS tables used by two different WebLogic servers. For example, server A could use:
```
weblogic.jms.tableNamePrefix=A
```
and server B could use:
```
weblogic.jms.tableNamePrefix=B
```
Then, server A's JMS would reference AJMSMessages and server B's JMS would reference BJMSMessages.

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.1:

Issue: 6223 Fixed a problem with JMS that did not allow null destinations for topic/queue publishers, as destinations may be provided on a per-message basis.
Issue: 6300 Fixed a problem with queued messages that are consumed not being restored if the transaction was rolled back.
Issue: 6360 Fixed a problem with the example JMSDrawDemo not exiting if the connection failed.
Issue: 6377 Fixed incorrect usage messages shown for the JMS examples included in the distribution.
Issue: 6101 Fixed a problem with a transaction rollback not starting a new transaction.
Issue: 6088 Fixed a problem with the JMS webshare example (examples.jms.webshare).

JSP changes

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.2:

Issue: 9724 The method getPathInfo now reflects the name of the requested JSP as specified in the J2EE servlet specification.

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.1:

Issue: 5433 If you set the JSPServlet's initialization arguments in the weblogic.properties file to include verbose=true, debugging information will be printed to the browser in addition to the WebLogic Server log file. See Using WebLogic JSP at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/classdocs/API_jsp.html.
Issue: 6390 JSP now recognizes the <jsp:declaration> and <jsp:expression> tags.
Issue: 6391 JSP now correctly sets the buffer size when using
<page buffer="none">.
Fixed a problem with JSP recompiling a page unnecessarily when the Server started up.
The servlet stub is created with a name based on *.jsp so that Access Control Lists defined in the weblogic.properties file work correctly.

Netscape (NSAPI) and MS-IIS (ISAPI) plug-ins changes

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.2:

Issue: 7599 A new parameter, weblogic.httpd.postTimeoutSecs, can be used to set the maximum time the server will wait between data packets. This parameter needs to be set in the weblogic.properties file. For example, to time out after 25 seconds, you would set it as:
weblogic.httpd.postTimeoutSecs=25

The default value is 30 seconds. The maximum value is 120 seconds, and the minimum value is 10 seconds. If your connections are very slow, or your network is very congested, this property may timeout. It is more likely that this property will timeout when the client unexpectedly hangs but maintains the socket connection. You may increase it to temporarily relieve the problem, but it is highly recommended you look into the issue with your network or clients.

We introduced this property to guard against denial-of-service attacks where malicious clients would maintain many open sockets to the server, causing it to run out of file descriptors.
Issue: 9181 A new parameter, HungServerRecoverSecs, was introduced. The default value is 300 seconds. The acceptable range is 10 to 600 seconds. This parameter determines how long the plug-in waits for a server to respond before declaring it dead. See the documentation for more information on setting parameters in the NSAPI (http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/admindocs/nsapi.html) or ISAPI plug-ins (http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/admindocs/isapi.html).
Issue: 10493 New parameters were added to tune the dynamic updating mechanism of the cluster list. We do not recommend that you disable the dynamic updating of the cluster node list.
- DynamicServerList -- (ISAPI only) This parameter is "ON" by default. It takes a string argument, either "ON" or "OFF". If set to "OFF" the dynamic list will not be updated. This can cause two problems: new servers added to the cluster will not be recognized by the plug-in, and if a server goes down, the plug-in will continue to direct requests to it before failing over, which may result in a decrease in performance of the cluster.
- HungServerRecoverSecs -- A integer value that is the number of seconds the plug-in waits before declaring that an unresponsive server is dead. The default setting is 300. The minimum is 10 and the maximum is 600. Set this parameter to a large value. If it is less than the time it takes Servlets to respond, you will see unexpected results. When the plug-in declares a server dead, it fails over to the next server in its list.
- MaxSkips -- This parameter configures the number of times the plug-in will refrain from sending a request to a server that is not responding. The acceptable range is 5 to 1000, the default is 10. If the dynamic server list is turned off, you may want to set this parameter to a higher value, so that the plug-in does not send many requests to servers that are down (note: we recommend that you use the dynamic server list so that the plug-in can recognize that the server is down, and refrain from sending it any requests until the server is back up.
- Idempotent -- This is a URL-level flag with a value of "ON" or "OFF". By default it is "ON" so that if the servers do not respond within HungServerRecoverSecs, the plug-in will failover. If set to "OFF" the plug-in will not failover. It can be set differently for different URLs or Mime types.

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.1:

Issue: 6546 The ISAPI and NSAPI plugins for proxying from Microsoft and Netscape web servers now have a new optional parameter (ErrorPage=<URL>) that allows you to supply your own error page for requests that cannot be proxied to WebLogic Server. See Installing the WebLogic-to-Netscape-Enterprise-Server Bridge (NSAPI) at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/admindocs/nsapi.html and Installing the WebLogic-to-Microsoft-IIS Bridge (ISAPI) at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/admindocs/isapi.html for more information.
Issue: 4495 Two problems described in our WebLogic Security section have been fixed.

Security changes

The following issue was addressed in release 4.5.2:

Issue 8322: Fixed a problem with the RDBMS security example and dynamic recognition of changes to groups. In order to successfully utilize the fix pertaining to issue 8322, the following changes must be made:
- In the weblogic.properties file, make sure the following line exists (on one line, or with a continuing slash):
```
weblogic.security.realmClass=examples.security.defaultrealm.DefaultRealmExtender 
```
- In the weblogic.realm_ddl file, add "system" to the users table. The WebLogic server will not start without this entry in users table, and you will get the following error, java.lang.SecurityException: Authentication for user system denied in realm weblogic
- Add "everyone" group to the groupmembers table. The WebLogic server will be started with an ACL status error without this entry.
- In the weblogic.realm_properties file, the default value for updateInterval is 300. You can adjust it for a faster or slower database refresh.
- Finally, although database changes will show immediately on T3AdminRealm, you still need to wait for "updateInterval" seconds (in weblogic.realm_properties file) before a new user will be permitted.

The following issues were addressed in release 4.5.1:

Improved error messages when security certificates are rejected because they have expired or are not yet valid or have an invalid Certificate Authority signature.
Issue: 6083 Fixed problems with using the domestic-strength WebLogic Server version with exportable-strength browsers.
Issue: 6066 Fixed a problem where client certificate information was not being propagated through NSAPI.
Issue: 4495 Fixed a problem where the SSL port was lost when a browser connected to a Netscape or Microsoft server that proxied the request via WebLogic NSAPI or ISAPI to WebLogic Server. The HTTPS URL scheme was not propagated through NSAPI or ISAPI.
Issue: 5798 Fixed a problem where the LDAP Realm sometimes did not recognize a new user added in the LDAP server. The realm caches the result of looking up a non-existent user to avoid going to the LDAP server unnecessarily. The EJB that caches the result did not passivate reliably. This is fixed with a change to the bean's deployment descriptor.
Added support for the GTE CyberTrust Certificate Authority, http://www.cybertrust.com/cybertrust/index.html, to the certificate request generator servlet.
Issue: 6710 Fixed a problem with the security snoopproof example (examples.security.snoopproof).
Issue: 6230 Revised the weblogic.policy file shipped with the distribution. For details on modifying it for your installation, see Setting up and Starting WebLogic Server: Setting up the Java security manager for Java 2 at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/install/startserver.html#securitymanager.
Issue: 6950 Fixed a problem with the caching realm adding null entries to the cache.

Documentation changes

There is new documentation on WebLogic Clusters as of release 4.5.2:

Clustering Overview
http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/cluster/overview.html
Administering WebLogic Clusters
http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/cluster/setup.html
Cluster Quick Start
http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/cluster/clusterquick.html
Troubleshooting a cluster
http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/cluster/trouble.html
The WebLogic Cluster API
http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/cluster/api.html

As of release 4.5.1 there are specific directions for setting up and configuring WebLogic for JMS, JSP and EJB.

WebLogic JMS http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/admindocs/properties.html#jms.
Setting up WebLogic JSP http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/admindocs/properties.html#jsp.
Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/admindocs/properties.html#ejb.

The Installation Guide is now available in pdf and print formats. The print format is included in the product box. You may download a pdf version at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/API_users_guide.html, or view the online guide at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/install/install_overview.html.

We have added documentation for Using VisualCafé with WebLogic at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/classdocs/vcafe.html.

See Using WebLogic JDBC with Sybase PowerJ at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/classdocs/powerj.html.

Other documents have been updated as needed.

Known Problems

This section lists problems about which you should be aware.

Examples

Issue: 6935 COM: VBClient example. There is a problem with the VBClient example that may cause a com.ms.security.SecurityExceptionEx to be thrown when the client attempts to create a new instance of the EJB. This occurs because the RMI stub of the EJB home is not registered as a trusted class in the client environment. As a workaround, you can extract the AccountBeanHomeImpl_WLStub.class from the ejb_basic_beanManaged.jar file and add it to the client's CLASSPATH.
Issue: 6839 Sybase DBMS example. The example examples.jdbc.t3clietn.bigblog, which uses a Sybase DBMS, will not run correctly on the Solaris platform.

EJBs

Issue: 6573 Enterprise JavaBeans. If you build an example EJB with the supplied build scripts and deploy it, you cannot run the build script again and redeploy the bean from the same.jar without getting an error. You need to build the bean to a new .jar file and redeploy from the new file.
Issue: 2547 A multi-bean transaction of entity beans will fail because the JDBC drivers in a transaction with multiple resources do not support the two-phase commit protocol.
Issue: 6467 EJB Deployment wizard. If you use either a .ser or .txt file and generate the EJB container classes, there can be problems with classes not being found. The work-around is to generate an initial .ser using DDCreator, jar it with the compiled classes, and then open the .jar file from within the Wizard.
Issue: 7137 EJB Deployment wizard. There is a problem with using a temporary directory (Edit Options Temporary directory) whose path contains any spaces. You can not use a temporary directory such as c:/My Code.
Issue: 5187 If you attempt to hot deploy an EJB through the WebLogic Console and there is an IO problem (such as a file not found), an exception is thrown and the deployment unit will not be created.
Issue: 5591 The method new Instance() is not always called after ejbCreate().
Issue: 5607 A new deployment can wipe out an existing EJB deployment.
Issue: 5365 The EJB deployment utility program weblogic.deploy allows deployment of the same bean more than once.
Issue: 5888, 5890 Stateful session bean instances are not destroyed after an exception has been thrown.
Issue: 5889 The WebLogic EJB compiler ejbc has build problems under Java 2 (SDK 1.2.1) if the manifest file does not have a header, does not end with a blank line, and does not have a blank line before and after each entry.
Issue: 5997 Container-managed JDBC persistence uses an inappropriate stack trace.
Issue: 6004 The error message displayed if binding the same name twice is not clear.
Issue: 6005 Binding the same name more than once does not throw an exception when it should.

Tools and 3rd Party Containers

Issue: 6152 If you are using any of the 3rd party CMP providers or products with the WebLogic Server or any EJB-related tools (ejbc, DDCreator, ComplianceChecker, or EJB Deployment Wizard), you will need to specify the property weblogic.home when you start the Weblogic Server or the WebLogic tool, as shown in this example for Windows NT:
```
 $java... -Dweblogic.home=c:\weblogic... weblogic.Server 
```

where weblogic.home is the root directory of your WebLogic installation. In general, that's the same directory as specified by the property weblogic.system.home, which sets the directory where the Server finds the global weblogic.properties file for startup. As you can locate your weblogic.properties files outside the WebLogic installation, you need to define the weblogic.home property so that products from 3rd party vendors can find the WebLogic installation.

HTTP servlets

Issue: 6656 encodeRedirectURL() does not throw an IllegalArgumentException if an argument is a relative URL and cannot be resolved to an absolute path, as is required by the Servlet 2.1 specification.
Issue: 6926 The method javax.servlet.ServletContext.getResourceAsStream() does not comply with the Servlet 2.1 specification.
Issue: 7002 The method HttpSession.getValueNames()returns null if there are no parameters in the session, whereas the servlet specification states that it should return an empty String[].
Issue: 5403 There is a known issue using session persistence when running the server under Java 2 v1.2.1. The java verifier throws an exception:

Exception raised:

    java.lang.VerifyError: (class:

    weblogic/servlet/internal/session/ClusteredSessionPSJDBC,

    method: findAllKeys signature: ()Ljava/util/Enumeration;)

Use JDK 1.1.7
Specify the -noverify command-line option when starting the Server under Java 2 v1.2.1

JMS

Issue: 6676 JMS messages 1MB or greater in size and sent at a frequency of 1 second or less can cause the JMS client to hang.

Security

Issue: 5783 JNDI and LDAP security realm. There is a known problem with the LDAPSearch example with connections failing when connecting through a WebLogic Server to an LDAP server. Currently, the examples works only with client connections directly to an LDAP server.

JSP

Issue: 6240 JSP. When requesting a JSP page, your request should match the case formatting of the JSP file exactly. There are known problems if you use case mis-matches in this release.

RMI

Issue: 4996 RMI: Cluster. Setting either homeCallRouterClassName or statelessCallRouterClassName to non-existent classes causes an AssertionError.

Platform

Issue: 7125 Solaris. To work around a bug in the "java" ksh wrapper script for Solaris SDK 1.2.2, put -native as the first option, before -classic: $ java -native -classic -version... We do not currently support running WebLogic Server with HotSpot. If HotSpot is installed, the -classic flag is required to turn off HotSpot. If HotSpot is not installed, the -classic flag is not required but does no harm. Contrary to the JDK 1.2.2 documentation, THREADS_FLAG is ignored when you use -classic.

WebLogic Server

Issue: 7127 The server will occasionally print erroneous "SocketException: bad file number" messages in the log file. These messages can be ignored.
Issue: 6117 If you start the server with weblogic.cluster.enable=true but without a clustering license, the server will quit with a NullPointerException.
Issue 37423 On COMPAQ Unix, the default buffer size is 9K and WebLogic Server sometimes send fragments of size 32K. This causes an IOException. Although this has been found to occur on COMPAQ Unix, other platforms may also experience similar problems. To avoid difficulties, increase the sending as well as receiving side buffer space. On COMPAQ Unix these parameters are called udp_sendspace and udp_recvspace. To find the pertinent configurable parameters on other platforms, please consult your platform's documentation.

WebLogic Tour

Issue: 5231 If you have set the CLASSPATH in your Windows NT System Properties to include an earlier WebLogic release, the WebLogic Tour fails. Several seconds after pressing the "Start the WebLogic Tour" button, the window disappears with no error message. To work around this problem, remove the WebLogic classes from your CLASSPATH, or update them with the new WebLogic distribution's directories.
Issues: 1841 and 4973 The WebLogic Tour loads an HTML page (weblogic/bigtel/tour.html) into your default browser. On some browsers, the page may not load at all or may cause a browser error message. We recommend that you close your browser before you start the tour so that the WebLogic Tour can launch a new browser. You may still see a browser message telling you that that page did not load properly, but when you click OK, or refresh the page, the browser correctly loads the page.
Issue: 1841 "About" files in the WebLogic Server Start menu. When using Netscape as your default browser, HTML files do not always load properly in a running browser when selected from the Windows Start menu. As a workaround, you can double-click the file in the Windows Explorer or open the file using the File/Open Page command of the browser.
Issue: 10660 You may experience intermittent applet failures when viewing the WebLogic Tour using Netscape Browser. If this occurs, close all instances of the browser and restart the Tour.

ZAC

Issue: 5755 Accepting null or empty when creating a shortcut icon on the bootstrap generator page can result in a NullPointerException and stack trace on the ZAC client. This does not cause a problem in practice and is a result of a Swing threading issue.

Third-party software

4.5.2 -- Cloudscape evaluation version 3.0.1

4.5.1 -- Cloudscape evaluation version 2.0.1

If you are using the evaluation version of Cloudscape bundled with this release of WebLogic, and you are starting the server from the command line, you must also add weblogic/eval/cloudscape/lib/cloudscape.jar to the Java system classpath with -classpath option. Both the JMS and EJB examples use the evaluation Cloudscape database. For details, see Using the Cloudscape database with WebLogic at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/techsupport/cloudscape.html and Setting up and Starting WebLogic Server at http://www.weblogic.com/docs45/install/startserver.html.

Last updated 5/24/2000