Tutorial: Getting Started with BEA Workshop for WebLogic Platform

BEA Workshop for WebLogic Platform (Workshop for WebLogic) is a set of plug-ins to the Eclipse IDE platform that allows you to quickly and easily create enterprise applications (SOA, J2EE) for deployment on BEA WebLogic Server.

Note: This tutorial requests that you create a new workspace; if you already have a workspace open, switching workspaces will restart the IDE. Before beginning, you might want to launch help in standalone mode to avoid an interruption the restart could cause, then locate this topic in the new browser. See Using Help in a Standalone Mode for more information.

This tutorial provides an introduction to using Workshop for WebLogic including:

Understanding the basics, including the screen layout, editors, views, tools, menus and indicators
Setting up the framework of projects, folders and files to contain a J2EE application
Creating a simple "Hello, world!" application
Starting a WebLogic Server
Testing your application by running it on the WebLogic Server

If you have used Eclipse with other plug-ins or with the Java Development Tools (JDT) plug-in, you will find this material very familiar.

Background Information

This tutorial assumes a good working knowledge of Java and object-oriented programming as well as a basic understanding of web applications.

The Eclipse IDE Environment

Workshop for WebLogic is built on the Eclipse IDE framework. Eclipse is an open source initiative that is widely supported in industry. As a result, many of the standard features of Workshop for WebLogic are described in the Eclipse documentation, available at http://eclipse.org. Familiarity with Eclipse is not required for this tutorial, but basic Eclipse knowledge is helpful.

Programming Tools and Frameworks

Workshop for WebLogic makes extensive use of Java 5 annotations. You can learn more about annotations at http://java.sun.com.

This tutorial does not assume expertise in J2EE. However if you are unfamiliar with J2EE, more information is available at http://java.sun.com.

Workshop for WebLogic integrates the Beehive open source framework, a project of the Apache Software Foundation (http://beehive.apache.org). Beehive provides tools for creating page flows (JSP files linked to a Java controller for maintaining user state information) and controls (an object model for standardized simplified access to resources and encapsulated business logic). A local copy of the Apache Beehive documentation is included with your Workshop for WebLogic installation.

Tutorial Overview

To demonstrate the features of Workshop for WebLogic, this tutorial will walk you through the process of creating and running a simple "Hello, world!" application. At each point, the tutorial will discuss the features of the Workshop for WebLogic interface and show you how to access other resources that will help you learn more about Workshop for WebLogic. This tutorial is geared to all levels of users, so users with previous experience of Eclipse may want to skim this material and then proceed directly to the more specific tutorials, listed in Related Topics below.

Steps in this Tutorial

Exploring the Features of Workshop for WebLogic

Setting Up a New Enterprise Application

Creating a Web Application and Testing it on a Server

Modifying the Page Flow and Testing your Changes