3 Integrating OracleAS Adapters for VSAM with WebLogic

To deploy and integrate OracleAS Adapter for VSAM with Oracle Application Server Containers for J2EE (WebLogic), you must configure the J2CA 1.5 VSAM adapter.

This chapter includes the following topics:

Overview of Integrating OracleAS Adapter for VSAM with WebLogic

Oracle Application Server provides a complete Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) environment that runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) of the standard Java Development Kit (JDK). WebLogic is J2EE certified and provides all the J2EE specific containers, APIs, and services. WebLogic supports the J2CA 1.5 standard.

J2CA defines standard Java interfaces for simplifying the integration of applications with the EIS. The Oracle adapters are deployed as a resource adapter within the WebLogic container.

The contract between the WebLogic client application and the resource adapter is defined by the Common Client Interface (CCI). The contract between the WebLogic container and the resource adapter is defined by the service provider interface (SPI). The SPI API addresses the connection management, transaction management and the security management.

Connection management enables application components to connect to an EIS and leverage any connection pooling provided by the application server.

Transaction Management enables an application server to use a transaction manager to manage transactions across multiple resource managers. Security management provides authentication, authorization, and secure communication between the J2EE server and the EIS.

Lifecycle management contracts enable an application server to initialize a resource adapter instance during the deployment of the adapter or application server startup. In addition, it enables the application server to notify the resource adapter instance during server shutdown or undeployment of the adapter.

The lifecycle contract provides the mechanism for the application server to manage the lifecycle of the resource adapter instance.

Work management contracts enable the resource adapter to perform its logic by using threads dispatched by an application server, rather than creating threads on its own. The handshake is done through a Work instance submission. This makes the application server threads management more efficient, providing better control over their execution contexts (like security and transaction).

Configuring the VSAM Adapter

Deploy the Oracle Connect RAR into the WebLogic server.

You may create the appropriate connection factories for each VSAM Adapter.

This table describes the connection factory properties that are relevant for the VSAM Adapter. Do not change the values of any of the other properties.

Table 3-1 Connection Factory Properties

Property Description

location

Specifies the JNDI location where Oracle Application Server should bind the connection factory instance for application components.

eisName

Sets the name of the adapter to use. The adapter is defined in the Oracle Connect server using Oracle Studio, as described in Securing Access to Oracle Connect.

serverName

Sets the TCP/IP address or host name where the Oracle Connect daemon is running. The daemon runs on the computer specified at the beginning of Setting Up the IBM z/OS Platform in Oracle Studio.

For more information, see Appendix C, "Advanced Tuning of the Daemon" for details about the daemon.

workspace

Specifies to the name of a Oracle Connect server workspace to use. The default workspace is Navigator.

For more informatin, see "Workspaces" for details about workspaces.

portNumber

Specifies the TCP/IP port where the Oracle Connect daemon is running on the server. The default port is 2551.

userName

(optional)

Specifies a user who can access the Oracle Connect server. The user is defined in the Oracle Connect daemon configuration.

For more information, see "Security" and workspace "Security" for details about users allowed to access an Oracle Connect server.

password

(optional)

Specifies a valid password for the user.

firewallProtocol

(optional)

Specifies the firewall protocol used: either none or fixedNat (the Nat protocol using a fixed address for the daemon). The default is none.

connectTimeout

(optional)

Specifies the connection timeout in seconds. The default is 0, meaning that there is no connection timeout.

encryptionProtocol

(optional)

Specifies the name of encryption protocol to use. The default is null. The RC4 protocol is supported.

encryptionKeyName

(optional)

Specifies the name of the symmetric encryption key to use.

encryptionKeyValue

(optional)

Specifies the value of the symmetric encryption key to use.

fakeXa

(optional)

When set to true, the XA APIs are internally converted to local transaction APIs. Always set to true.


High Availability

The Oracle legacy adapters for OracleAS support High Availability using Oracle AS clusters with active-active and active-passive topologies.

In an active-active topology Oracle Application Server provides an active-active redundant model for all its components with OracleAS Clusters. In an OracleAS Cluster, two or more Oracle Application Server instances are configured to serve the same application workload. These instances can reside on the same computer or on different computers. The active instances may be front-ended by an external load balancer, which can redirect requests to any of the active instances, or by some other application-level configuration, such as address lists, to distribute the requests.

In an active-passive topology Oracle Application Server supports Active-passive model using OracleAS Cold Failover Clusters. In this case two or more application server instances are configured to serve the same application workload, but only one is active at any time.