What’s New in WebLogic Server 9.2

Welcome to BEA WebLogic Server 9.2. The following sections describe new and changed functionality in this WebLogic Server™ release.

Security

Support for Custom XACML Roles and Policies

If you need to create security roles or policies that are more complex than can be created with the WebLogic Server Administration Console, or if you are required to express your security roles and policies in a standard language, you can create roles and policies in an XML document and then use WebLogic Scripting Tool to add them to your security realm. Note the following requirements:

Your roles and policies must be expressed in eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) 2.0.
If your XACML document describes authorization policies, your security realm must use either the WebLogic Server XACML Authorization Provider or another provider that implements the weblogic.management.security.authorization.PolicyStoreMBean interface.
If your XACML document describes role assignments, your security realm must use either the WebLogic Server XACML Role Mapping Provider or another provider that implements the weblogic.management.security.authorization.PolicyStoreMBean interface.

For information about creating XACML roles policies and adding them to your realm, see Using XACML Documents to Secure WebLogic Resources in Securing WebLogic Server Resource with Roles and Policies.

Customizable Security Roles and Policies for WebLogic Server MBeans

To secure the WebLogic Server MBeans that are registered in an MBean server, WebLogic Server provides a default set of security roles and policies. Prior to WebLogic Server 9.2, you could not modify the default policies for WebLogic Server MBeans. As of this release, you can use the WebLogic Server Administration Console to change the default access permissions. For example, you can create roles for specific applications and allow only specific roles to access the MBean instances that are associated with specific applications. See Create JMX Policies in the Administration Console Online Help.

You can also create custom roles and policies based on XACML 2.0 and use WebLogic Scripting Tool to add them to your security realm. See Support for Custom XACML Roles and Policies.

WebLogic Server Security for Custom MBeans

If you register custom MBeans in a WebLogic Server MBean server, you can use roles and policies along with the WebLogic Security Service to protect your MBeans. Note the following restrictions:

Your MBean object name must include a “Type=value” key property.
You must describe your roles and policies in an XACML 2.0 document and then use the WebLogic Scripting Tool to add the data to your realm.
If your XACML document describes authorization policies, your security realm must use either the WebLogic Server XACML Authorization Provider or another provider that implements the weblogic.management.security.authorization.PolicyStoreMBean interface.
If your XACML document describes role assignments, your security realm must use either the WebLogic Server XACML Role Mapping Provider or another provider that implements the weblogic.management.security.authorization.PolicyStoreMBean interface.

For information about creating XACML roles policies and adding them to your realm, see Creating Roles and Policies for Custom MBeans in Securing WebLogic Server Resource with Roles and Policies.

Bulk Access Versions of Authorization, Adjudication, and Role Mapping Providers

WebLogic Server includes bulk access versions of the following Authorization, Adjudication, and Role Mapping provider SSPI interfaces:

BulkAuthorizationProvider
BulkAccessDecision
BulkAdjudicationProvider
BulkAdjudicator
BulkRoleProvider
BulkRoleMapper

The bulk access SSPI interfaces allow Authorization, Adjudication, and Role Mapping providers to receive multiple decision requests in one call rather than through multiple calls, typically in a 'for' loop. This feature enables provider implementations to take advantage of internal performance optimizations, such as detecting that many passed-in Resource objects are protected by the same policy and will generate the same decision result.

Policy and Role Consumer SSPI

WebLogic Server implements a policy consumer for JMX (MBean) default policies and WebService annotations, and a role consumer for WebService annotations. This release of WebLogic Server includes an SSPI that Authorization and Role Mapping providers can use to obtain the policy and role collections.

The PolicyConsumer and RoleConsumer SSPI is optional; only those Authorization and Role Mapping providers that implement the SSPI are called to consume a policy or role collection.

The SSPI supports both the delivery of initial policy and role collections and the delivery of updated policy and role collections.

If you want your custom Authorization provider to support the delivery of policy collections, you must implement three interfaces:

weblogic.security.providers.spi.PolicyConsumerFactory
weblogic.security.providers.spi.PolicyConsumer
weblogic.security.providers.spi.PolicyCollectionHandler

If you want your custom Role Mapping provider to support the delivery of role collections, you must implement three interfaces:

weblogic.security.providers.spi.RoleConsumerFactory
weblogic.security.providers.spi.RoleConsumer
weblogic.security.providers.spi.RoleCollectionHandler

See the Policy Consumer and Role Consumer sections in Developing WebLogic Security Providers for additional information.

Administration Console Extensions

Prior to this release, you could use Administration Console extensions to import a set of third-party JSP tag libraries by specifying a pathname to the tag library file. For example,
<%@ taglib uri="/WEB-INF/beehive-netui-tags-template.tld" prefix="beehive-template" %>

As of this release, Administration Console extensions that use these third-party JSP tag libraries from the WebLogic Server installation must use predefined, absolute URIs to specify the tag libraries. For example:
<%@ taglib uri="http://beehive.apache.org/netui/tags-template-1.0" prefix="beehive-template" %>

The Administration Console web.xml file maps these URIs to tag libraries within the WebLogic Server installation. This mapping facility enables BEA to reorganize its installation directory without requiring you to change your JSPs.

Any Administration Console extensions that use the old pathname syntax to import Apache Struts, Apache Beehive, or the JSTL tag libraries must update all pathnames to the new URIs.

The URI for the WebLogic Server Console Extension tag library (console-html.tld) remains unchanged: /WEB-INF/console-html.tld.

JDBC and JTA

Dynamic Multi Data Sources

This feature allows environments such as Oracle real application clusters (RAC) installations to add and remove RAC nodes and the corresponding data sources without having to untarget and redeploy the Multi Data Source. See Multi Data Source Features in Configuring and Managing WebLogic JDBC.

LLR Support for Transaction Recovery Service Migration

This feature allows the Logging Last Resource (LLR) transaction optimization to use transaction recovery service migration after a failover. See Failover Considerations for LLR in Programming WebLogic JTA.

Improved Data Source Controls

A new data source control enables you to start individual instances of a data source manually from the Administration Console. See Starting a Data Source in Configuring and Managing WebLogic JDBC.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Support

The BEA WebLogic Type 4 JDBC MS SQL Server driver supports Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database management system. See SQL Server Database Version Support in Type 4 JDBC Drivers.

Diagnostics

The WebLogic Diagnostics Framework (WLDF) and the WLDF Console Extension both have new features.

WebLogic Diagnostic Framework

A new standard application-scoped monitor, HttpSessionDebug, enables you to inspect an HTTP session object.

WebLogic Diagnostic Framework Console Extension

Custom Metrics. You can define custom metrics on an MBean type. Once defined, a custom metric attribute for an MBean instance can be graphed just like other attributes. See Working with Metrics Charts and Graphs in Using the WebLogic Diagnostic Framework Console Extension.
Cut, Copy, and Paste. You can cut, copy, and paste graphs and charts. This gives you more flexibility in how you organize graphs and charts and allows you to copy and move graphs and charts from one view to another. See Working with All Charts and Graphs in Using the WebLogic Diagnostic Framework Console Extension.
Updated Visual and Interaction Design. The WLDF Console Extension has new icons, plus various improvements to the visual tools, such as additional functionality available in the context menus.
Additional Global Property Settings. On the Global Properties tab, you can now set a default viewport size (the time interval displayed in a chart) and a default zoom percentage for zooming in or out of a chart (thereby changing the viewport size). See Working with All Charts and Graphs in Using the WebLogic Diagnostic Framework Console Extension.

Messaging

WebLogic Server 9.2 includes the following improvements in WebLogic Server JMS, Messaging Bridge, and the Store-and-Forward service:

Client-Side Store-and-Forward for Reliable JMS Messaging

The WebLogic Store-and-Forward (SAF) service introduced in release 9.0 enables WebLogic Server to reliably deliver JMS messages between server-side JMS applications distributed across WebLogic Server clusters, domains, and server instances. In release 9.2, the JMS SAF Client provides a store-and-forward mechanism whereby standalone JMS clients can reliably send messages to server-side JMS destinations, even when a JMS client cannot temporarily reach a destination (for example, due to a network connection failure). While disconnected from the server, messages sent by a JMS SAF client are stored locally on the client and are forwarded to server-side JMS destinations when the client reconnects.

Automatic Failover for JMS Message Consumers

If a server or network failure occurs, some JMS client objects will transparently fail over to use another server instance, if one is available. In release 9.1 or later, WebLogic JMS message producer applications automatically attempt to reconnect to an available server instance without any manual configuration or changes to existing client code. For release 9.2, you can use the Administration Console or WebLogic JMS APIs to configure WebLogic JMS message consumer applications to automatically reconnect to an available server instance.

Unit-of-Work Message Groups

WebLogic Server 9.0 introduced the Message Unit-of-Order feature, which groups messages by delivering messages within the unit one at a time. However, many applications need an even more restricted notion of a group. Therefore, release 9.2 introduces the Unit-of-Work feature, which enables applications to send JMS messages, identifying some of them as a group and allowing the consumer to process them as such. For example, an application can designate a set of messages that need to be delivered to a single client without interruption, so that the messages can be processed as a unit.

WebLogic Store Administration Utility

The WebLogic Store administration utility allows you to troubleshoot a WebLogic Store or to extract its data. The most common use cases for store administration are compacting a file store to reduce its size and dumping the contents of a file store or JDBC store to an XML file for troubleshooting purposes. This utility can be run from a Java command line or from WLST.

Improved Non-Persistent Messaging Performance with One-Way Message Sends

You may greatly improve the performance of typical non-persistent messaging by using one-way message sends. By enabling the “One-Way Send Mode” option on your connection factory, its associated producers can send messages without internally waiting for a response from the target destination’s host JMS server. You can choose to allow queue senders and topic publishers to do one-way sends, or limit this capability to topic publishers only. You can also configure a one-way window size to determine when a two-way message is required to regulate producers before they can continue making additional one-way sends.

JMS Delivery Count Message Property

JMSXDeliveryCount is a system generated property that specifies the number of message delivery attempts, where the first attempt is 1, the second is 2, and so on. WebLogic Server makes a best effort to persist the delivery count, so that the delivery count does not reset back to one after a server reboot. See Message Property Fields in Programming WebLogic JMS.

Deprecation of Messaging Bridge Adapter for WebLogic Server 5.1

BEA WebLogic Server 5.1 is retired and is no longer supported. In this release, the Messaging Bridge adapter used to interoperate with WebLogic Server 5.1 is deprecated and will be removed in the next major release. See WebLogic Server 5.1 End-of-Life Announcement in Supported Configurations.

Web Services

Web Services include new and changed features, as described in the following sections:

Implementation of the WS-SecureConversations Specification

Version 9.2 of WebLogic Web Services includes an implementation of the Web Services Secure Conversation Language (WS-SecureConversations, February 2005) specification.

The WS-Security 1.0 specification, implemented as of WebLogic Server 8.1, provides the basic mechanisms on top of which secure messaging semantics can be defined for multiple message exchanges. The WS-SecureConversation specification defines extensions to allow security context establishment and sharing, and session key derivation. Potentially more efficient keys or new key material can be exchanged, thereby increasing the overall performance and security of the subsequent exchanges.

Callbacks

Callbacks notify a client of your Web Service that some event has occurred. For example, you can notify a client when the results of that client's request are ready, or when the client’s request cannot be fulfilled.

SOAP 1.2 Support

WebLogic Web Services now support SOAP 1.2, in addition to SOAP 1.1. Use the @weblogic.jws.Binding JWS annotation to specify that you want the SOAP messages of your Web Service to use SOAP 1.2.

Web Services Invocation Using Multiple Transports

You can enable your Web Service to be invoked using a variety of transports (HTTP, HTTPS, or JMS) by specifying multiple @WLXXXTransport annotations in your JWS file or <WLXXXTransport> child elements of the jwsc Ant task. Prior to WebLogic Server 9.2, you could specify only one transport per Web Service.

Streaming SOAP Attachments

Using the new @weblogic.jws.StreamAttachments JWS annotation, you can now specify that a Web Service use a streaming API when reading inbound SOAP messages that include attachments, rather than the default behavior in which the service reads the entire message into memory. This feature increases the performance of Web Services with particularly large SOAP messages.

Configurable Server Addresses in the Dynamic WSDL

Using the Administration Console, you can now configure the server address (protocol and host information) that WebLogic Server publishes in the dynamic WSDL of a deployed Web Service. The server address is the first part of the URL pointed to by the <address> element of a particular Web Service port in the WSDL, such as http://myhost:7101.

Web Services Testing Feature in Administration Console

You can now use the Web Services Test Client, included in the WebLogic Administration Console, to test your Web Service without writing any client code.

WSSecurityInfo API for Viewing Security-Related SOAP Headers

Version 9.2 of WebLogic Web Services includes a new API, WSSecurityInfo, which enables you to view the security headers of the SOAP messages. This information includes the parts of the SOAP message that were digitally signed or encrypted, and the username/password that were presented.

JWS Annotation Additions and Changes

@weblogic.jws.Binding
@weblogic.jws.Callback
@weblogic.jws.CallbackMethod
@weblogic.jws.CallbackService
@weblogic.jws.ReliabilityErrorHandler
@weblogic.jws.StreamAttachments
@weblogic.jws.Types
@weblogic.jws.WildcardBinding
@weblogic.jws.WildcardBindings
@weblogic.jws.security.CallbackRolesAllowed
@weblogic.jws.soap.SOAPBinding

The existing @weblogic.jws.Transactional JWS annotation has a new attribute called timeout. The existing @weblogic.jws.WLJmsTransport annotation has a new attribute called connectionFactory.

Web Services Ant Task Changes

The WebLogic Web Services Ant tasks have been updated, mostly to support the upgrade of 8.1 WebLogic Workshop Web Services, as described in the following sections.

jwsc

The jwsc Ant task, used to compile a JWS file into a deployable Web Service, has changed as follows:

The jwsc task generates and packages a JWS file into a Web application WAR file. The only exception occurs if your JWS file explicitly implements javax.ejb.SessionBean; in this case the Ant task generates and packages the Web Service in an EJB JAR file. Prior to WebLogic Server 9.2, the jwsc Ant sometimes generated an EJB when processing certain types of JWS files.
You can now use the standard Ant <FileSet> task to include additional files in the generated Web Service module.
The jwsc Ant task has the following new child elements:

<module>—Groups two or more JWS files (specified with the <jws> element) into a single module, such as the Web application WAR file. If you do not group the <jws> elements under a <module>, then jwsc generates a separate Web application WAR file for each JWS file.
<clientgen>—Generates the client-side JAX-RPC stubs for any Web Service that is being invoked in the JWS file that the jwsc Ant task is compiling.
<jwsfileset>—Specifies one or more directories in which jwsc searches for JWS files to compile.
<descriptor>—Specifies an existing web.xml or weblogic.xml file to which the jwsc Ant task adds information, in place of the Ant task generating a new file.

The main jwsc Ant task has the following new attributes:

dotNetStyle
keepTempFiles

clientgen

You can now use the standard <sysproperty> child element of the java Ant task to specify properties required by the Web Service for which you are generating client-side artifacts.
The clientgen Ant task has the following new attributes:

destFile
failonerror
includeGlobalTypes

wsdlc

explode
srcPortName
srcServiceName

Miscellaneous Web Services Changes and Additions

The namespaces used in the WS-Policy files for reliable messaging have changed in this release. Additionally, the order in which the reliable messaging assertions are listed in the files is important; in previous releases it was not. For the correct order of assertions, namespace declarations, and examples, see Web Service Reliable Messaging Policy Assertion Reference in Programming Web Services for WebLogic Server.
WebLogic Web Services now support collection data types, such as java.util.Collection and java.util.List, as operation parameters or return values. The Apache XMLBeans (in package org.apache.xmlbeans) data type is also supported. For the full list of supported data types, see Data Types in Programming Web Services for WebLogic Server.
Production redeployment is now fully supported for WebLogic Web Services. In Programming Web Services for WebLogic Server, see Client Considerations When Redeploying a Web Service for Web Services-specific information and Updating Applications in a Production Environment for general information about production redeployment.
In the Administration Console, monitoring pages can periodically poll the monitored resource and refresh the data displayed on the page. You can start or stop polling a resource by clicking a Refresh icon. To see an example, view the Server: Monitoring: Performance page.
The jwsc and wsdlc Ant tasks now support both the <xsd:any> and <xsd:anyType> XML Schema data types.
The new @weblogic.jws.ReliabilityErrorHandler annotation enables you to add error handling to your reliable Web Service.
The WebserviceTimestampMBean has a new property: Clock Skew.

Deprecated Web Services Features

The @weblogic.jws.WLHttpsTransport annotation and the <WLHttpsTransport> element of the jwsc Ant task.

Instead, you should use the @weblogic.jws.WLHttpTransport annotation or <WLHttpTransport> element because they now support both the HTTP and HTTPS protocols. If you want client applications to access the Web Service using only the HTTPS protocol, then you must also specify the @weblogic.jws.security.UserDataConstraint JWS annotation in your JWS file.

The Clock Precision and Lax Precision properties of the WebserviceTimestampMBean have been deprecated. Use the new Clock Skew property instead.
The weblogic.webservice.async.KernelFeederImpl.ExecuteTask interface has been removed from WebLogic Server.
The srcBindingName attribute of the wsdlc Ant task. Use srcServiceName or srcPortName instead.
The following classes and methods in the weblogic.xml.crypto.wss and weblogic.xml.crypto.wss.provider packages:

weblogic.xml.crypto.wss.SecurityTokenContextHandler class
java.lang.Object getCredential() method of weblogic.xml.crypto.wss.provider.SecurityToken
java.security.Key getSecretKey() method of weblogic.xml.crypto.wss.provider.SecurityToken
java.security.PrivateKey getPrivateKey() method of weblogic.xml.crypto.wss.provider.SecurityToken
java.security.PublicKey getPublicKey() method of weblogic.xml.crypto.wss.provider.SecurityToken
void setId(java.lang.String) method of weblogic.xml.crypto.wss.provider.SecurityToken

Deployment

Production redeployment is now fully supported for Web Services, both stateless and stateful services that use more advanced features such as conversations and reliable messaging. See Updating Applications in a Production Environment in Deploying Applications to WebLogic Server.
You can specify a grace period (in seconds) for processing of RMI client requests when retiring or gracefully shutting down an application. The work manager of a server instance accepts and schedules RMI calls until the grace period expires without a receiving new RMI client request. See Graceful Shut Down of RMI Client Request Processing in Deploying Applications to WebLogic Server.

Filtering Classloader

The WebLogic FilteringClassLoader enables users to configure deployment descriptors to explicitly specify packages that are always loaded from the application, rather than being loaded using the system classloader. See Using a Filtering Class Loader in Developing Applications with WebLogic Server.

Migration and Clustering

The following features related to migration and clustering were added in this release:

Server Migration

This release provides server migration support for HP-UX platform configurations.

Automatic Singleton Service Migration

Automatic singleton service migration allows the automatic health monitoring and migration of singleton services. A singleton service is a user-defined service operating within a cluster that is available on only one server at any given time.

When a migratable service fails or become unavailable for any reason (for example, because of a bug in the service code, server failure, or network failure), it is deactivated at its current location and activated on a new server.

Independent Support for Leasing in a Cluster

A database is no longer required to store leasing information that is used during server migration. For more information, see Server Migration in Using WebLogic Server Clusters.

Job Scheduler

The Job Scheduler functionality is an implementation of the commonj.timer API that can be used within a clustered environment. Job Schedulers allow cluster-wide timers to be aware of the other JVMs containing each server within the cluster and is therefor able to perform load balancing and failover. For information on using the Job Scheduler, see Using the Timer API Within a Cluster in The Timer and Work Manager API (CommonJ).

Web Applications, Servlets, and JSPs

Web applications, servlets, and JSPs include new and changed features, as described in the following sections:

WebApp Libraries

Just as standard shared J2EE applications can be deployed to WebLogic Server as application-libraries, a standard Web application can be deployed to WebLogic Server as a webapp-library so that other Web applications can refer to these libraries. For information on referencing these WebApp libraries with your Web applications, see Using WebApp Libraries with Web Applications in Developing Applications with WebLogic Server.

JSF and JSTL Libraries

Three JSF (JavaServer™ Faces) and JSTL (JSP™ Standard Tag Library) packages are bundled with WebLogic Server as WebApp libraries. These libraries can be referenced by standard Web applications that use JSF or JSTL functionality.

MyFaces JSF library – http://myfaces.apache.org
Sun JSF RI library – https://javaserverfaces.dev.java.net
JSTL library – http://jakarta.apache.org/taglibs/doc/standard-doc/intro.html

Using Two-Way SSL with Generic Proxy Servlets

When using generic proxy servlets, you can define the KeyStore initialization parameters to use two-way SSL with your own identity certificate and key. For more information, refer to the following documents:

Proxying Requests to Another Web Server in Programming WebLogic HTTP Servlets
Configuring Proxy Plug-Ins in Application Development Guide
Setting Up a Proxy to a Secondary Web Server in Using Web Server Plug-Ins with WebLogic Server

Servlet Authentication Fallback Mechanism

The Servlet 2.4 specification allows you to define the authentication method (BASIC, FORM, and so on) to be used in a Web application. WebLogic Server 9.2 provides an auth-method security module that allows you to define multiple authentication methods (as a comma separated list), so the container can provide a fallback mechanism. Authentication will be attempted in the order the values are defined in the auth-method list.

Future Response Model for HTTP Servlets

In general, WebLogic Server processes incoming HTTP requests and the response is returned immediately to the client. Such connections are handled synchronously by the same thread; however, some HTTP requests may require longer processing time. Handling these requests synchronously causes the thread to be held, waiting until the request is processed and the response sent. To avoid this scenario, WebLogic Server provides two classes that handle HTTP requests asynchronously by de-coupling the response from the thread that handles the incoming request.

Limiting Number of Concurrent Requests for a Session

The weblogic.http.session.maxConcurrentRequest property has been added to limit the number of concurrent requests for a session. If the number of concurrent requests for a given session exceeds the specified value, the servlet container will start rejecting requests. By default, this property is set to -1, which indicates the servlet container does not impose any restrictions.

Deprecated Servlet Features

The docHome parameter for FileServlet has been deprecated. Use virtual directories as an alternative.

Spring Framework Support

WebLogic Server supports the deployment and use of applications that use the following two versions of the Spring Framework:

WebLogic Tuxedo Connector

WebLogic Tuxedo Connector includes new and changed features, as described in the following sections:

Dynamic Configuration Support for WTC Queuing Bridge

The Tuxedo Queuing Bridge is a part of the WebLogic Tuxedo Connector that provides a bi-directional JMS interface for your WebLogic Server applications to communicate to Tuxedo application environments. The transfer of messaging between the environments consists of JMS- based messages containing text, Byte, or XML data streams used to invoke services on behalf of the client application.

Dynamic configuration is now supported. If WTC is activated and the Tuxedo Queuing Bridge is deactivated, the following additions and modifications are possible.

Add WTC Queuing Bridge if there is no WTC Queuing Bridge configuration
Modify WTC Queuing Bridge
Delete WTC Queuing Bridge
Add WTC Redirections
Modify WTC Redirections
Delete WTC Redirections

WTC Performance Enhancements

WTC performance enhancements are provided through FML buffer handling to improve tpcall performance for non-transactional calls.
One-phase optimization improves WTC transaction performance.

weblogic.apache Classes

The weblogic.apache.xerces.* classes have been deprecated since WebLogic Server
release 9.1. Since WebLogic Server release 9.2, all classes in all weblogic.apache.* packages are deprecated.

Instead of using these proprietary BEA classes, use the equivalent org.apache.* classes, which you can download from


http://xerces.apache.org/xerces-j/

. These classes are also included in the JDK in the com.sun.org.apache.* packages.

Standard	Version
J2EE	1.4, 1.3
JDKs	5.0 (aka 1.5), 1.4 (clients only)
J2EE Enterprise Web Services	1.1 (JSR-921)
Web Services Metadata for the Java Platform	1.0 (JSR-181)
J2EE EJB	2.1, 2.0, and 1.1
J2EE JMS	1.1, 1.0.2b
J2EE JDBC (with third-party drivers)	3.0
MS SQL jDriver	1.0
Oracle OCI jDriver	1.0 and some 2.0 features (batching)
J2EE JNDI	1.2
OTS/JTA	1.2 and 1.0.1b
J2EE Servlet	2.4, 2.3, and 2.2
J2EE JSP	2.0, 1.2, and 1.1
RMI/IIOP	1.0
JMX	1.2, 1.0
JavaMail	1.2
JAAS	1.0 Full
J2EE CA	1.5, 1.0
JCE	1.4
Java RMI	1.0
JAX-P	1.2, 1.1
JAX-RPC	1.1, 1.0
JAX-R	1.0
SOAP Attachments for Java (SAAJ)	1.2

Release Notes