This section describes important compatibility information that you should consider before upgrading to WebLogic Server 10.3.1.
Also see "WebLogic Server Compatibility" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Information Roadmap for Oracle WebLogic Server.
Compatibility considerations are provided in the following categories:
As of WebLogic Server 9.0, WebLogic Server uses the Java Management Extensions (JMX) 1.2 implementation that is included in JDK 5.0. Prior to 9.0, WebLogic Server used its own JMX implementation based on the JMX 1.0 specification.
The JMX 1.2 reference implementation introduces serialization incompatibilities. Despite these incompatibilities in the reference implementation, JMX clients created for WebLogic Server 8.1 can be used with 9.2 and 10.3.1 as follows:
If your JMX client accesses only WebLogic Server MBeans and uses only weblogic.management.MBeanHome, it can be run in a WebLogic Server 9.2, 10.0, or 10.3.1 instance without being upgraded.
A JMX client in which WebLogic Server 8.1 classes are used can interact with 9.2, 10.0, or 10.3.1 JMX agents if all of the following are true:
The client accesses only WebLogic Server MBeans.
The client uses only weblogic.management.MBeanHome; it does not use the JDK MBeanServer interface.
The WebLogic Server classes are from 8.1 SP4 or 7.0 SP6 with any appropriate patches applied.
If the standard JMX MBeanServer interface is used in your JMX client, either to interact with WebLogic Server MBeans or to create and access custom MBeans, you must include the following JDK startup option for the WebLogic Server 9.2, 10.0, or 10.3.1 instance: -Djmx.serial.form=1.0.
This startup option causes the JVM to use JMX 1.0 class descriptions when it is serializing objects. The option is required when JMX 1.0 clients communicate with JMX 1.2 agents using the standard JDK classes.
If your JMX client interacts with security provider MBeans, see Security MBeans.
Oracle recommends that you update your JMX clients to be compliant with WebLogic Server 10.3.1. Prior to 9.0, WebLogic Server supported a typed API layer over its JMX layer. It was possible for your JMX application classes to import type-safe interfaces for WebLogic Server MBeans, retrieve a reference to the MBeans through the weblogic.management.MBeanHome interface, and invoke the MBean methods directly.
As of 9.0, the MBeanHome interface is deprecated. Instead of using this API-like programming model, all JMX applications should use the standard JMX programming model, in which clients use the javax.management.MBeanServerConnection interface to discover MBeans, attributes, and attribute types at runtime. In this JMX model, clients interact indirectly with MBeans through the MBeanServerConnection interface.
If any of your classes import the type-safe interfaces (available under weblogic.management), Oracle recommends that you update them to use the standard JMX programming model. For more information, see "Understanding WebLogic Server MBeans" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Custom Management Utilities With JMX for Oracle WebLogic Server.
Configuration attributes are classified as dynamic or non-dynamic.
Changes to dynamic configuration attributes are available as soon as they are activated, without restarting the affected server or system resource. These changes are made available to the server and runtime hierarchies once they are activated.
Changes to non-dynamic configuration attributes are not immediately available. When a non-dynamic configuration attribute is changed, the server or system resource must be restarted to make the change effective.
WebLogic Server 9.0 introduced a change management process to provide a secure, predictable means for applying configuration changes in a domain. A batch change mechanism changes the way dynamic changes are applied when they are mixed with non-dynamic changes. Specifically, when a configured server or system resource is affected by a change to a non-dynamic attribute, no other changes (even dynamic changes) will take effect, in current or future batches, until after the server or system resource is restarted. In this case, Oracle recommends that you restart the entity as soon as possible after the batch change is completed to ensure the system is in a consistent state and to allow future changes to be accepted.
You should test your configuration scripts to determine whether a non-dynamic change has been applied, and if so, restart the server. To determine whether a change is non-dynamic and requires a server restart:
Prior to activating a change you can:
View the change listed in the Change Center in the Administration Console, as described in "Dynamic and Non-Dynamic Changes" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Introduction to Oracle WebLogic Server.
Use the following WLST commands: isRestartRequired or showChanges. For more information, see Oracle Fusion Middleware WebLogic Scripting Tool Command Reference.
After you activate a change you can:
Review the server log to identify whether the change is categorized as non-dynamic.
Check the value of the RestartRequired or PendingRestartSystemResources attribute that is associated with the changed object, if applicable.
To determine which security attributes are dynamic or non-dynamic, see "Security Configuration MBeans" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Securing Oracle WebLogic Server.
For more information, see "Managing Configuration Changes" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Understanding Domain Configuration for Oracle WebLogic Server.
Namespace URIs and schema locations that contained www.bea.com have been changed in WebLogic Server 10.3.1 to refer to xmlns.oracle.com. In addition, the WebLogic Server version numbers (920, 90) have been removed.
See the Oracle WebLogic Server Schema home at http://www.oracle.com/technology/weblogic/index.html. Also see "XML Deployment Descriptors" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Applications for Oracle WebLogic Server.
As of WebLogic Server 9.0, the number of JDBC resource types was reduced to simplify JDBC configuration and to reduce the likelihood of configuration errors. Now, instead of configuring a JDBC connection pool and then configuring a data source or tx data source to point to the connection pool and bind to the JNDI tree, you can configure a data source that encompasses a connection pool. For more information about simplified JDBC resource configuration introduced in WebLogic Server 9.0, see "Simplified JDBC Resource Configuration" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuring and Managing JDBC for Oracle WebLogic Server, available at http://e-docs.bea.com/wls/docs90/jdbc_admin/jdbc_intro.html#simple_res_config.
The WebLogic Upgrade Wizard automatically converts JDBC data sources, connection pools, MultiPools, and data source factories to their new counterparts in WebLogic Server 10.3.1, as described in the following sections:
Note:
Each upgraded JDBC module contains an internal properties section. WebLogic Server uses internal properties to manage the data sources for backward compatibility. Also, some legacy attributes are preserved as properties in the Properties attribute of the JDBC data source file. Do not manually edit any internal properties.For information about JDBC features, methods, interfaces, and MBeans that were deprecated as of WebLogic Server 9.0, see "Deprecated JDBC Features, Methods, Interfaces, and MBeans" in the Release Notes, available at http://e-docs.bea.com/wls/docs90/notes/new.html#deprecated_jdbc_features.
The Upgrade Wizard converts legacy JDBC data source/connection pool pairs to two data source system resource modules, one for the data source and one for the connection pool:
The data source that replaces the existing data source or tx data source defines the data source parameters and refers to the second data source for its connection pool and related attributes.
The data source that replaces the connection pool contains the JDBC driver parameters, the connection pool parameters, and the XA parameters.
Note:
Only data sources that are converted as part of a domain upgrade can refer to another data source for its connection pool. In all other cases, each data source contains its own pool of database connections.During an upgrade, the Upgrade Wizard sets the GlobalTransactionsProtocol parameter for a data source based on the type of data source being converted (tx or non-tx) and the type of driver used in the related connection pool, as noted in Table B-1.
Table B-1 Parameter Settings for Global Transaction Protocol Parameter Setting
| Legacy Data Source Type | Driver Type | Emulate Two-Phase Commit | GlobalTransactionProtocol |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Tx Data Source |
XA |
N/A |
TwoPhaseCommit |
|
Tx Data Source |
Non-XA |
False |
|
|
Tx Data Source |
Non-XA |
True |
|
|
Data Source |
Non-XA |
N/A |
None |
Footnote 1 Depending on your environment, you may want to consider using the LoggingLastResource (LLR) transaction protocol in place of the EmulateTwoPhaseCommit protocol for transaction processing because of its performance benefits. For more information see "Understanding the Logging Last Resource Transaction Option" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuring and Managing JDBC for Oracle WebLogic Server.
The Upgrade Wizard converts a MultiPool to a multi-data source, which is another instance of a data source object that provides load balancing and/or failover between data sources.
Data source factories are deprecated as of WebLogic Server 9.0 and are included for backward compatibility only. No conversion of data source factories is required.
The following sections describe changes to JDBC support:
For details about new JDBC features, see "JDBC" in Oracle Fusion Middleware What's New in Oracle WebLogic Server.
As of 10.3, WebLogic Server is compliant with the JDBC 4.0 specification, with the following enhancements and exceptions:
SQLXML is fully supported on the server side. On the RMI client side, SQLXML is partially supported. You cannot use the getSource and setResult APIs on the client side.
WebLogic Server JDBC supports standard Wrapper Pattern functionality and extends the functionality on the server side. The JDBC standard requires support for the Wrapper operation on the interface. WebLogic Server supports the Wrapper operation on both the interface and on the concrete class on the server side.
WebLogic Server enhances statement pool management as follows.
For the Statement interface:
Call isPoolable() always returns false
Call setPoolable() does not change the poolable state.
For the PreparedStatement and CallableStatement interfaces:
Call isPoolable() returns the current poolable state, the default value is true
Call setPoolable() modifies the poolable state.
For the PreparedStatement or CallableStatement interface, the following occurs when you call the close() method:
If the current poolable state is false, PreparedStatement or CallableStatement will be closed.
If the current poolable state is true, PreparedStatement or CallableStatement reverts to the statement cache.
Updated third-party JDBC drivers:
Oracle Thin driver updated from 10g to 11g
Pointbase database server and driver updated from 5.1 to 5.7
The following JDBC drivers are deprecated:
WebLogic Type 4 JDBC driver for Oracle
This driver was deprecated in WebLogic Server 10.3. It will be removed in the next release of WebLogic Server. Instead of this deprecated driver, you should use the Oracle Thin Driver that is also provided with WebLogic Server. For details about the Oracle Thin Driver, see "Using Third-Party JDBC Drivers with WebLogic Server" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Type 4 JDBC Drivers for Oracle WebLogic Server.
The Sybase Jconnect 5.5 and 6.0 drivers 5.5 and 6.0 have been removed in 10.3.1 due to an Oracle security policy regarding default installation of code samples. You can download the driver from Sybase or you can use the Oracle-branded JDBC driver for Sybase that is packaged with WebLogic Server.
The WebLogic Type 4 JDBC drivers included with WebLogic Server are provided from DataDirect. As of 10.3, the drivers were updated to DataDirect Version 3.7. For information about changes to these drivers, including to support JDBC 4.0, see "Updated WebLogic Type 4 JDBC Drivers" in the WebLogic Server 10.3 Release Notes.
WebLogic Server 10.3.1 includes support for Oracle 11g and 11g RAC (Real Application Clusters). Support for connecting data sources and multi data sources to services running on Oracle RAC nodes has also been added in this release.
See "Using WebLogic Server with Oracle RAC" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuring and Managing JDBC for Oracle WebLogic Server.
The JDBC subsystem uses the new system-wide WebLogic Diagnostic Service for centralized debugging access and logging.
See Oracle Fusion Middleware Using the Diagnostic Framework Console Extension for Oracle WebLogic Server.
As of WebLogic Server 9.0, JMS configurations are stored as modules, defined by XML documents that conform to the new weblogic-jmsmd.xsd schema. With modular deployment of JMS resources, you can promote your application and the JMS configuration from one environment to another. For example, you can promote your application and the required JMS configuration from a testing environment to a production environment, without opening an EAR file and without extensive manual JMS re-configuration.
For more information, see:
"New and Changed JMS Features in This Release" in Configuring and Managing WebLogic JMS (published for WebLogic Server 9.0, available at http://e-docs.bea.com/wls/docs90/jms_admin/intro.html#WhatsNewJMS).
"Understanding JMS Resource Configuration" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuring and Managing JMS for Oracle WebLogic Server.
"Deploying JDBC, JMS, and WLDF Application Modules" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Deploying Applications to Oracle WebLogic Server.
The WebLogic Upgrade Wizard automatically converts pre-9.0 JMS resources to a JMS Interop module file named interop-jms.xml, which is copied to the domain's config\jms directory. For more information, see "JMS Interop Modules" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuring and Managing JMS for Oracle WebLogic Server.
Please note the following JMS configuration changes:
When generating new JMS resources, you must define all attributes in the JMS module (that is, not using the pre-9.0 configuration file).
The Allow Persistent Downgrade option enables you to specify whether JMS clients receive an exception when they send persistent messages to a destination targeted to a JMS server that does not have a persistent store configured. This option is provided for backward compatibility with previous releases.
By default, the option is set to false specifying that clients will receive an exception when they send persistent messages to a JMS server for which no store is configured. When the option is set to true, persistent messages are downgraded to non-persistent, but, the send operations are allowed to continue. This parameter is effective only when the Store Enabled parameter is disabled (that is, when it is set to false).
For more information, see "AllowsPersistentDowngrade" in "JMSServerBean" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Oracle WebLogic Server MBean Reference.
A Temporary Template is created, by default, for JMS Servers. In previous releases, no default template was provided. You can also configure a temporary template, using the JMS server's Temporary Template attribute.
You can control whether the JMS Server can host a temporary destination by setting the Hosts Temporary Destinations attribute. In previous releases, a JMS Server was enabled to host temporary destinations if and only if the TemporaryTemplate attribute was set.
JMS templates specified for distributed destinations are no longer supported as of WebLogic Server 9.0, and they will be ignored. As of WebLogic Server 9.0, this functionality is replaced by uniform distributed destinations. For more information, see "Creating Uniform Distributed Destinations" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuring and Managing JMS for Oracle WebLogic Server.
The AllowCloseInOnMessage attribute for JMS Connection Factories is enabled by default. For more information, see "ClientParamsBean" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Oracle WebLogic Server MBean Reference.
The getExpirationLoggingPolicy attribute in the DeliveryFailureParamsBean has been deprecated. Oracle recommends that you update your applications to use the Message Life Cycle Logging feature described in "Message Life Cycle Logging" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuring and Managing JMS for Oracle WebLogic Server. It should also be noted that the getExpirationLoggingPolicy attribute now removes any leading and trailing white space that may have been embedded in an application.
As of WebLogic Server 9.0, the format of the JMS message ID has changed. Oracle will continue to support the pre-9.0 format for existing consumers, producers, and servers. For example, existing JMS consumers may continue to view messages in the pre-9.0 format, even when received from a new JMS producer and JMS server.
The message paging feature for freeing up virtual memory during peak message load situations is always enabled on JMS servers. Additionally, administrators no longer need to create a dedicated message paging store since paged out messages can be stored in a directory on your file system. However, for the best performance you should specify that messages be paged to a directory other than the one used by the JMS server's persistent store.
See "Paging Out Messages To Free Up Memory" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Performance and Tuning for Oracle WebLogic Server.
Oracle recommends using Work Manager concepts to manage threads, as execute queues are no longer the default method used as of WebLogic Server 9.0. You define the rules and constraints for your application by defining a Work Manager and applying it either globally to a WebLogic Server domain or specifically to an application component. For more information, see "Using Work Managers to Optimize Scheduled Work" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuring Server Environments for Oracle WebLogic Server.
In WebLogic Server 8.1, processing was performed in multiple execute queues. If you had been using execute queues to improve performance in 8.1, you may continue to use them after you upgrade your application domains. Oracle provides a use81-style-execute-queues flag that enables you to disable the self-tuning execute pool and provide backward compatibility for upgraded applications to continue to use user-defined execute queues. For information about enabling the backward compatibility flag, and configuring and monitoring execute queues, see "How to Enable the WebLogic 8.1 Thread Pool Model" in WebLogic Server Oracle Fusion Middleware Performance and Tuning for Oracle WebLogic Server.
The following sections describe JTA feature changes:
In WebLogic Server 10.3.1, the behavior of the resource registration name for XA data source configurations has changed. In previous releases, the JTA registration name was simply the name of the data source. Now, the registration name is a combination of data source name and domain.
For more information, see "Registering an XAResource to Participate in Transactions" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Programming JTA for Oracle WebLogic Server.
All JTA domain configuration options are persisted from the legacy configuration file. The only changes are at the server level. As of WebLogic Server 9.0, the Transaction Manager uses the default WebLogic persistent store to store transaction log records. During the upgrade, the Upgrade Wizard copies transaction log records to the default store. The transaction log file prefix from the existing server configuration is used only to locate the transaction log (.tlog) files during an upgrade; it is not preserved after the upgrade.
If the entire domain resides on a single machine, the Upgrade Wizard handles the upgrade (and copies transaction log records to the default store) for all Managed Servers during the initial domain upgrade. If Managed Servers reside on separate machines, you must upgrade each Managed Server individually, as described in Upgrade Your Application Environment.
Please note the following:
When an explicit upgrade is performed (see Upgrading a Domain), transaction recovery does not run during the upgrade process, but it starts running when you start the server(s).
When an implicit upgrade is performed, as described in Appendix F, "Upgrading a Domain at Administration Server Startup (Implicit Mode)." transaction recovery runs during the server boot process.
If you have put your transaction log files in network storage in preparation for Transaction Recovery Service migration, the log file location is not preserved after the upgrade. In this release, the WebLogic Server Transaction Manager uses the WebLogic default persistent store to store transaction log files. You can achieve the same result by moving the location of the WebLogic default persistent store to a network location. Note that you must manually copy the DAT file from the default location of the current default store to the new location of the default store.
If transactions will span multiple domains, you must configure your domain to enable inter-domain transactions. For more information, see "Configuring Domains for Inter-Domain Transactions" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Programming JTA for Oracle WebLogic Server.
In this release, you can leverage the features of Oracle TopLink with your EJB 3.0 applications. Oracle TopLink is an advanced, object-persistence and object-transformation framework that provides development tools and run-time capabilities that reduce development and maintenance efforts, and increase enterprise application functionality. For more information, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle TopLink.
Note:
Oracle Kodo is deprecated as of WebLogic Server 10.3.1.As of WebLogic Server 10.3.1, the notion of the BEA Home directory is replaced by Oracle Fusion Middleware Home directory, or simply Middleware Home. The default path of this directory is <drive:>Oracle/Middleware. This change has the following impact on WebLogic Server:
A new environment variable is introduced in several WebLogic scripts in 10.3.1 to represent the Middleware Home directory: MW_HOME. The directory to which this variable is set generally is the same as BEA_HOME, which is also still used in WebLogic Server scripts.
By default, the WebLogic Server installation program selects <drive:>Oracle/Middleware as the root product installation directory. However, if a directory containing an existing WebLogic Server installation is detected, that directory is selected instead by default.
The WebLogic Server 10.3.1 documentation now uses the term Middleware Home directory, instead of BEA Home. However, this revision is functionally only a change in terminology and does not imply that any WebLogic software, custom domains, or applications must be moved, or that any existing environment variables that represent those locations must be changed.
This change does not affect any existing WebLogic Server installations, custom domains, applications, or scripts on your machine. You may continue to use the BEA_HOME environment variable as before.
The following sections identify changes to security.
The Windows NT Authentication provider is deprecated as of WebLogic Server 10.0. Use one or more of the other supported Authentication providers instead.
As of 9.1, WebLogic Server includes two new security providers, the XACML Authorization provider and the XACML Role Mapping provider. Previous releases of WebLogic Server used an authorization provider and a role mapping provider based on a proprietary security policy language. These XACML security providers support the eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) 2.0 standard from OASIS. These providers can import, export, persist, and execute policy expressed using all standard XACML 2.0 functions, attributes, and schema elements.
WebLogic domains created using WebLogic Server 9.1 and later include the XACML providers by default. The new XACML providers are fully compatible with policies and roles created using the WebLogic Authorization provider (DefaultAuthorizer) and WebLogic Role Mapping provider (DefaultRoleMapper). Existing WebLogic domains that you upgrade to 10.3.1 will continue to use the authorization and role mapping providers currently specified, such as third-party partner providers or the original WebLogic Authorization and Role Mapping providers. If you wish, you can migrate existing domains from using WebLogic Server proprietary providers to the XACML providers, including performing bulk imports of existing policies. For more information, see "Security" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Information Roadmap for Oracle WebLogic Server.
For SAML 1.1 support, new versions of the SAML Credential Mapping provider and SAML Identity Assertion provider were added in WebLogic Server 9.2. The SAML Credential Mapping V1 provider and SAML Identity Assertion V1 provider are deprecated; you should use the V2 versions of the SAML Credential Mapping and SAML Identity Assertion providers.
Although the version number of the providers has been incremented to V2, the new SAML security providers implement the SAML 1.1 standard, as did the V1 providers.
Note:
For web single sign-on, the SAML 1.1 providers described in this section are not compatible with a WebLogic Server instance that has been configured with SAML 2.0 services.For SAML 2.0 support, the SAML 2.0 Credential Mapping provider and SAML 2.0 Identity Assertion provider were added in WebLogic Server 10.3. These new providers can be used, respectively, to generate and consume SAML 2.0 assertions in the following use cases:
SAML 2.0 Web Single Sign-On (SSO) Profile
WS-Security SAML Token Profile version 1.1
For SAML 2.0 Web SSO, the assertions generated by the SAML 2.0 Credential Mapping provider may be consumed only by the SAML 2.0 Identity Assertion provider. They are not compatible with SAML 1.1 assertions.
SAML Token Profile 1.1 is supported by WebLogic Server Web Services as of Release 10.3. This feature includes support for SAML 2.0 and SAML 1.1 assertions, and is backwards compatible with SAML Token Profile 1.0 SAML tokens are configured for a Web Service through use of the appropriate WS-SecurityPolicy assertions.
Note:
SAML Token Profile 1.1 is supported only through WS-SecurityPolicy. The earlier "WLS 9.2 Security Policy" supports SAML Token Profile 1.0/SAML 1.1 only.Two new LDAP authentication providers have been added to WebLogic Server—the Oracle Internet Directory Authentication Provider and the Oracle Virtual Directory Authentication Provider. These authentication providers can store users and groups in, and read users and groups from, the Oracle Internet Directory and Oracle Virtual Directory LDAP servers, respectively.
For information about configuring and using these new security providers, see "Configuring LDAP Authentication Providers" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Securing Oracle WebLogic Server.
WebLogic Server 10.3 added the option of using an external RDBMS as a datastore that is used by the following security providers:
XACML Authorization provider
XACML Role Mapping provider
The following providers for SAML 1.1:
SAML Identity Assertion provider V2
SAML Credential Mapping provider V2
The following providers for SAML 2.0:
SAML 2.0 Identity Assertion provider
SAML 2.0 Credential Mapping provider
WebLogic Credential Mapping provider
PKI Credential Mapping provider
Certificate Registry
This datastore, called the RDBMS security store, is strongly recommended for the use of SAML 2.0 services in two or more WebLogic Server instances in that domain, such as in a cluster. When the RDBMS security store is configured in a domain, an instance of any of the preceding security providers that has been created in the security realm automatically uses only the RDBMS security store as a datastore, and not the embedded LDAP server. WebLogic security providers configured in the domain that are not among those in the preceding list continue to use their respective default stores; for example, the WebLogic Authentication provider continues to use the embedded LDAP server.
In order to use the RDBMS security store, the preferred approach is first to create a domain in which the external RDBMS server is configured. Prior to booting the domain, you create the tables in the datastore that are required by the RDBMS security store. The WebLogic Server installation directory contains a set of SQL scripts that create these tables for each supported database.
If you have an existing domain in which you want to use the RDBMS security store, you should create the new domain, then migrate your security realm to it. Oracle does not recommend "retrofitting" the RDBMS security store to an existing domain. For more information, see "Managing the RDBMS Security Store" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Securing Oracle WebLogic Server.
The Password Validation provider was added in WebLogic Server 10.3. This provider can be configured with one of the following authentication providers to enforce a set of configurable password composition rules:
WebLogic Authentication provider
SQL Authenticator provider
LDAP Authentication provider
Active Directory Authentication provider
iPlanet Authentication provider
Novell Authentication provider
Open LDAP Authentication provider
When a password is created or modified using an authentication provider that has been configured with the Password Validation provider, the password is automatically validated against a set of composition rules. The password composition rules are configurable and can govern the minimum length of passwords, minimum number of alphabetic or numeric characters that are required, the number of non-alphanumeric characters that are required, and more.
Table B-2 lists the changes to security MBeans as of WebLogic Server 9.0.
Table B-2 Changes to Security MBeans as of WebLogic Server 9.0
| Type of Security MBean | Description |
|---|---|
|
All security MBeans |
In WebLogic Server 8.1, when you updated a security MBean attribute, the values were available to the security configuration and management hierarchy immediately, and to the security runtime hierarchy following a server reboot. As of WebLogic Server 9.0, whether a security MBean attribute change is effective and available to the configuration, management, and runtime hierarchies immediately or upon server reboot is controlled by setting that attribute as dynamic or non-dynamic. For more information, see Dynamic Configuration Management. |
|
|
For security provider MBeans (only):
|
|
All custom security provider MBeans |
|
To prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data such as passwords, some attributes in configuration MBeans are encrypted. The attributes persist their values in the domain configuration files as an encrypted string. For further security, the in-memory value is stored in the form of an encrypted byte array to help reduce the risk of the password being snooped from memory.
In pre-9.0 releases, you could edit the config.xml file to specify an encrypted attribute, such as a password, in clear-text or encrypted format. In this case, when booted, the WebLogic Server will encrypt the information the next time it writes to the file.
As of WebLogic Server 9.0, when operating in production mode, the password of an encrypted attribute must be encrypted in the configuration files. In development mode, the password of an encrypted attribute can be either encrypted or clear-text.
You can use the weblogic.security.Encrypt command-line utility to encrypt the passwords, as follows:
java weblogic.security.Encrypt
You are prompted to enter a password, and the command returns the encrypted version. Then, copy the encrypted password returned into the appropriate file.
This utility is not just used for passwords in the configuration files. It can also be used to encrypt passwords in descriptor files (for example, a JDBC or JMS descriptor) and in deployment plans. For more information, see "encrypt" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Command Reference for Oracle WebLogic Server.
By default, when an instance of WebLogic Server 10.3.1 responds to an HTTP request, its HTTP response header does not include the WebLogic Server name and version number. This behavior is different from releases prior to WebLogic Server 9.0.
To have the name and version number included in the HTTP response header when responding to an HTTP request, enable the Send Server Header attribute for the WebLogic Server instance in the Administration Console. The attribute is located on the Server > ServerName > Protocols > HTTP tab under the Advanced Options section. Note that enabling this feature may creates a security risk if a possible attacker knows about a vulnerability in the specified version of WebLogic Server.
For more information about ensuring security, see "Securing the WebLogic Security Service" in "Ensuring the Security of Your Production Environment" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Securing a Production Environment for Oracle WebLogic Server.
In pre-9.0 releases of WebLogic Server, anonymous access to MBeanHome was enabled by default. With the security enhancements delivered as of WebLogic Server 9.0, anonymous access to MBeanHome is no longer allowed.
Although doing so is not recommended, you can re-enable anonymous access by specifying the following flag when starting the server:
-Dweblogic.management.anonymousAdminLookupEnabled
As of WebLogic Server 9.0, message-level security in Web Services was enhanced to use the standards-based Web Services Policy Framework (WS-Policy). WS-Policy provides a flexible and extensible grammar for expressing the capabilities, requirements, and general characteristics of entities in an XML Web Services-based system. For more information about WS-Policy, see "Using WS-SecurityPolicy 1.2 Policy Files" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Security and Administrator's Guide for Web Services.
In 8.1, the implementation was based on an OASIS implementation of the Web Services Security (WSS) standard. This implementation is supported for backward compatibility, but is deprecated as of 9.0. For more information, see http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=wss.
WebLogic Server 8.1 Web Services can be run in 10.3.1, although the 8.1 Web Services run-time engine has been deprecated as of 9.0.
No web service upgrade is required going from 9.2 to 10.0, or from 10.0 to either 10.3 or 10.3.1.
The WebLogic Server 7.0 Web Services need to be upgraded to at least 8.1 in order to run in 10.3.1. For more information, see "Upgrading WebLogic Web Services" in Programming WebLogic Web Services, available at http://e-docs.bea.com/wls/docs81/webserv/migrate.html.
Oracle strongly recommends that you upgrade, to 10.3.1, all of your 8.1 Web Services, including any 7.0 Web Services that have been upgraded to 8.1:
For information about upgrading your existing 8.1 Web Services to 10.3.1, see "Upgrading WebLogic Web Services From Previous Releases to 10g Release 3" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Getting Started With JAX-RPC Web Services for Oracle WebLogic Server.
Note:
See also Message-Level Security in Web Services.The following new features have been added in WebLogic Server 10.3.1:
New development tools — Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse (OEPE)
Integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control
Support for Oracle WebLogic Services Manager (WSM) security policies
Support for WS-SecureConversation 1.3 on JAX-WS and MTOM with WS-Security on JAX-WS
For more information, see "Web Services" in Oracle Fusion Middleware What's New in Oracle WebLogic Server.
The following sections provide important compatibility information for Web applications, JSPs, and Servlets in WebLogic Server 10.3.1:
For a list of Web application features that are deprecated or are not supported as of WebLogic Server 10.3.1, see the following topics in "What's New in Oracle WebLogic Server":
"Deprecated Functionality in This Release" for WebLogic Server 10.3.1
For WebLogic Server versions 9.2 and later, client requests that use HTTP BASIC authentication must pass WebLogic Server authentication, even if access control is not enabled on the target resource.
The setting of the Security Configuration MBean flag "enforce-valid-basic-auth-credentials" determines this behavior. (The DomainMBean can return the new Security Configuration MBean for the domain.) It specifies whether or not the system should allow requests with invalid HTTP BASIC authentication credentials to access unsecured resources.
Note:
The Security Configuration MBean provides domain-wide security configuration information. Theenforce-valid-basic-auth-credentials flag effects the entire domain.The enforce-valid-basic-auth-credentials flag is true by default, and WebLogic Server authentication is performed. If authentication fails, the request is rejected. WebLogic Server must therefore have knowledge of the user and password.
See "Understanding BASIC Authentication with Unsecured Resources" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Programming Security for Oracle WebLogic Server for complete information.
For WebLogic Server 10.3.1, backward compatibility for WebLogic Server 9.2 or earlier is supported via the backward-compatible element within the jsp-descriptor element, as described in this section and in "jsp-descriptor" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Web Applications, Servlets, and JSPs for Oracle WebLogic Server.
JSP 2.1 is supported as of WebLogic Server 10.0. Depending on the version of the Web application (version 2.4 or 2.5) and the setting of the backward-compatible element, Weblogic Server 10.3.1 also supports JSP 2.0.
See "Backwards Compatibility Flags" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Web Applications, Servlets, and JSPs for Oracle WebLogic Server for important information about the buffer suffix setting and implicit servlet 2.5 package imports.
JSP 2.0 was supported as of WebLogic Server 9.0, and continues to be supported as described in Backwards Compatibility Flags. Please note the following changes to the JSP behavior as required in support of JSP 2.0:
If a JSP does not participate in a session (or if the session in which a JSP participates is invalid), an IllegalStateException is thrown when the following command is executed:
PageContext.getAttribute(name, PageContext.SESSION_SCOPE)
If you are not concerned about this type of error, you can catch and ignore it.
JspWriterImpl now replaces \n with System.getProperty("line.separator") for each printline function. This replacement causes problems with JSPs that:
Contain multiple page directives that appear on new lines. For example:
<%@ page import="com.foo.bar.*" %> <%@ page import="com.foo.xyz.*" %> ...
Generate output in XML format.
Generate an XML declaration following the page directives.
Are served by Windows systems. In this case, \r\n is output for each page directive.
Are viewed using Internet Explorer.
When viewed in Internet Explorer, each page directive outputs an empty \r\n and the XML declaration (<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>) appears after every new line. Internet Explorer displays an error message indicating that it cannot locate the declaration and that the page cannot be viewed, even though it can be compiled.
To work around any issues caused by changes to JspWriterImpl, you can perform one or both of the following tasks:
Define the XML declaration at the top of the page.
Group the page directives into a single declaration, for example:
<%@ page import="com.foo.bar.*, com.foo.baz.*" contentType="text/html" pageEncoding="UTF-8" errorPage="Error.jsp" %>
The JSP <param name> tag no longer allows run-time expression values. For example:
<jsp:param name="<%= AdminActions.RETURN_LINK %>" value="<%= returnlink %>" />
You can continue to support this feature by disabling the Do not set backwards compatibility flags upgrade option during the domain upgrade, as described in Table 5-1, "Procedure for Upgrading a WebLogic Domain", or enabling the backwardCompatible flag in the weblogic.xml file, as follows:
<jsp-descriptor> <jsp-param> <param-name>backwardCompatible</param-name> <param-value>true</param-value> </jsp-param> </jsp-descriptor>
As of the Servlet 2.3 Specification from Sun Microsystems, which is downloadable at http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/download.html#specs, the following syntax is used to define mappings:
A servlet path string that contains only the / (forward slash) character indicates the default servlet of the application. The servlet path resolves to the request URI minus the context path; in this case, the path resolves to null.
A String that begins with an * (asterisk) specifies an extension mapping.
These changes introduce a change in behavior with the following HttpServletRequest methods:
getPathInfo
getServletPath
To better illustrate the change in behavior, consider a request /abc/def.html that resolves to ServletA:
If / maps to ServletA, then servletPath="abc/def.html" and pathInfo=null.
If /* maps to ServletA, then servletPath="" and pathInfo="abc/def.html".
To ensure that the path info returned is non-null, replace all occurrences of the / (forward slash) servlet mapping string with /*.
Please note the following changes to XML support as of WebLogic Server 9.0:
The default XML parser is the XML parser shipped with the Sun Java 2 JDK. The previous default XML parser, the Apache Xerces parser (weblogic.apache.xerces.*), is deprecated as of 9.0.
You can modify the XML parser that is used by default using the Administration Console. For information about configuring the XML parser, see "Difference In Default Parsers Between Versions 8.1 and 9.0 of WebLogic Server" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Programming XML for Oracle WebLogic Server.
As of 9.0, WebLogic Server supports Streaming API for XML (StAX), a standard specification from the Java Community Process that provides an easy and intuitive means of parsing and generating XML documents. StAX gives you more control over XML parsing than the WebLogic XML Streaming API, which is deprecated as of 9.0. For information about using StAX, see "Using the Streaming API for XML (StAX)" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Programming XML for Oracle WebLogic Server.
You can no longer parse XML documents from within a servlet using the setAttribute and getAttribute methods without some preliminary setup. Specifically, as of 9.0, you must configure a WebLogic Server servlet filter called weblogic.servlet.XMLParsingHelper (deployed, by default, on all WebLogic Server instances) as part of your Web application. For more information, see "Parsing XML Documents in a Servlet" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Programming XML for Oracle WebLogic Server.
As of 9.0, the XMLBean implementation in WebLogic Server has been moved from an internal library (com.bea.xml) to the Apache open source project (org.apache.xmlbeans).
If you used XMLBeans in your WebLogic Server 8.1 applications, you must perform the following steps:
Update the package name used by XMLBeans from com.bea.xml to org.apache.xmlbeans.
Recompile your XMLBean schemas to update the schema metadata (.xsb) files and generated code.
As of 9.0, the XMLQuery (XQuery) implementation conforms to the following specifications:
XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model—W3C Working Draft 23 July 2004 available from the W3C Web site at http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-xpath-datamodel-20040723.
XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language—W3C Working Draft 23 July 2004 available from the W3C Web site at http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-xquery-20040723.
In WebLogic Server 8.1, the XQuery implementation conformed to XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators—W3C Working Draft 16 August 2002, available from the W3C Web site at http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-xquery-operators-20020816. The 2002 XQuery implementation is deprecated as of 9.0.
In most cases, simple XQuery and XPath operations in pre-9.0 code will behave the same in 10.0. To ensure that the XQuery and XPath operations produce the expected results, you can review and/or update the existing XMLObject.selectPath() and XMLObject.execQuery() method calls using one of the following methods:
To guarantee 8.1-style behavior, update the existing method calls to include a new parameter that specifies that the 2002 XQuery engine will be used instead of the new 2004 XQuery engine. For example:
import org.apache.xmlbeans.impl.store.Path;
XmlObject xo = ?
xo.selectPath(".//c", (new XmlOptions()).put(Path._forceXqr12002ForXpathXQuery));
Note:
The 2002 XQuery engine is deprecated as of WebLogic Server 9.0, and is available for backward compatibility. It is only used if you specify this parameter. Otherwise, the 2004 XQuery engine is used, by default.To guarantee conformance with the 2004 XQuery engine, review your pre-9.0 scripts to identify any changes that may be required with the syntax and/or semantics of the XQuery strings that are passed to the method calls and update methods accordingly.
As of 9.0, the behavior of XMLCursor.moveXML() has changed. In 8.1, a cursor that was inside a moved fragment remained on the original document. As of 9.0, cursors move with fragments.
Due to changes with the MBean hierarchy, Oracle does not guarantee that pre-9.2 configuration and administration scripts (such as WLST, wlconfig, weblogic.Admin, Ant, and so on) will run in 10.3.1. Oracle recommends that you update your scripts to take advantage of the new features provided as of WebLogic Server 10.3.1. For more information about new features and changes in the MBean hierarchy, see the following topics:
For WebLogic Server 10.3.1, see "What's New in WebLogic Server".
For WebLogic Server 10.3, see "What's New in WebLogic Server".
For additional information about upgrading your application infrastructure and the scripting tools that have been deprecated, see Step 1: Upgrade Your Application Infrastructure.
This section describes changes in the use of deployment descriptors in a WebLogic Server environment, as of release 9.0:
Deployment descriptor validation is more strict as of the 9.0 release of the EJBGen and ejbc tools. For example, an error is returned if a cmr-field is defined in @ejbgen:relation, but there are no methods tagged with @ejbgen:cmr-field in the Bean class.
Note:
ejbc is deprecated as of WebLogic Server 9.0; you should use appc instead. For more information, see "appc Reference" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Programming WebLogic Enterprise JavaBeans for Oracle WebLogic Server.In pre-9.0 versions of WebLogic Server, applications that define multiple modules, as illustrated in the following excerpt from a configuration file, are deployed successfully regardless of whether a META-INF\application.xml deployment descriptor is defined as part of the application:
<Application Deployed="true" Name="SessionBeanLifeCycleBean" Path="C:\bea\weblogic70\tools\deployment\ejb" TwoPhase="false"> <EJBComponent Name="CMFinderTestBean" Targets="myserver" URI="CMFinderTestBean.jar"/> <EJBComponent Name="SessionBeanLifeCycleBean" Targets="myserver" URI="SessionBeanLifeCycleBean.jar"/> </Application>
As of 9.0, the META-INF\application.xml deployment descriptor is required if a deployed application defines multiple modules. If this type of deployment descriptor is not provided, the upgrade fails with an error similar to the following:
[J2EE Deployment SPI:260089]Unable to determine type of application at path 'C:\bea\weblogic70\tools\deployment\ejb' and upgrade will not succeed.
When upgrading a domain, make sure that the deployed applications adhere to the proper Java EE application format. For example, if required by the application, make sure that the applications define the META-INF\application.xml and/or META-INF\weblogic-application.xml deployment descriptors.
For more information about the deployment descriptors, see "Enterprise Application Deployment Descriptor Elements" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Applications for Oracle WebLogic Server.
So that your applications can take advantage of the features in the current Java EE specification and release of WebLogic Server, Oracle recommends that you upgrade deployment descriptors when you upgrade applications to a new release of WebLogic Server. For more information, see "Upgrading Deployment Descriptors From Previous Releases of J2EE and WebLogic Server" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Applications for Oracle WebLogic Server.
As of 9.0, application-scoped startup and shutdown classes were deprecated in WebLogic Server, in favor of applications that respond to application lifecycle events. Oracle recommends that you update your application environment to use the lifecycle events in place of application-scoped and domain-level startup and shutdown classes. For more information, see "Programming Application Life Cycle Events" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Applications for Oracle WebLogic Server.
The following sections describe changes to the Administration Console:
WebLogic Server 10.3 introduced new options that were added for configuring Console behavior, including the ability to do the following:
Lock a domain configuration so you can make changes to the configuration while preventing other accounts from making changes during your edit session
Specify whether to deploy internal applications such as the Administration Console, UDDI, and the UDDI Explorer on demand (upon first access) instead of during server startup
Locate any WebLogic Server Configuration MBean that contains the string specified in its name, using a new search feature added to the banner toolbar region
Use additional capabilities for automatically migrating failed servers and services from one server to another
Deploy and control Service Component Architecture (SCA) deployments
Inspect Spring applications
For more information, see "What's New in WebLogic Server" in the WebLogic Server 10.3 Release Notes.
In WebLogic Server version 9.0, the Administration Console was built on the WebLogic Portal Framework, which makes it more open and more readily extensible. The architecture necessitated new procedures for extending the Administration Console. WebLogic Administration Console extensions built for releases of WebLogic Server prior to 9.0 will not function with the new Console infrastructure.
WebLogic Server 10.3.1 adds the following features:
A sample Look and Feel is provided, which you can modify to create a custom Look and Feel for the Administration Console.
Online help can be created and associated with console extensions.
For more information about extending the Administration Console, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Extending the Administration Console for Oracle WebLogic Server.
Version 9.2 of WebLogic Server introduced the following changes to console extensions:
Prior to this release, Administration Console extensions could 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 10.0, Administration Console extensions that use these third-party JSP tag libraries from the WebLogic Server installation must use pre-defined, 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's web.xml file maps these URIs to tag libraries within the WebLogic Server installation. This mapping facility enables Oracle 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 path names to the new URIs.
The URI for the WebLogic Server Console Extension tag library (console-html.tld) remains unchanged: /WEB-INF/console-html.tld.
For more information, see "JSP Templates and Tag Libraries" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Extending the Administration Console for Oracle WebLogic Server.
By convention, portal include files (.pinc) files are now called portal book files (.book).
WebLogic Portal requires that any explicit Skeleton URI references be fully qualified relative to the webapp. However, the documentation and some of the console extension examples have sometimes used relative references to these skeletons. Consider the following incorrect example:
<netuix:singleLevelMenu markupType="Menu" markupName="singleLevelMenu" skeletonUri="singlelevelmenu_children2.jsp"/>
This example should have been correctly specified as:
<netuix:singleLevelMenu markupType="Menu" markupName="singleLevelMenu" skeletonUri="/framework/skeletons/default/singlelevelmenu_children2.jsp"/>
For this release, relative skeleton URI references will continue to work. However, any console extensions that you have written should be updated to use fully qualified skeleton URIs, as these relative references may no longer function correctly in a future release.
Table B-3 lists the configuration settings for resource adapters that are deprecated or no longer supported. For more information about new features and changes, see "What's New in WebLogic Server".
Table B-3 Deprecated or Unsupported Resource Adapter Configuration Settings
| This element ... | As of WebLogic Server 9.0 ... |
|---|---|
|
Link-Ref Mechanism |
This element has been deprecated and replaced by the new Java EE libraries feature. For more information about Java EE libraries, see "Creating Shared J2EE Libraries and Optional Packages" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Applications for Oracle WebLogic Server. The Link-Ref mechanism is still supported in this release for resource adapters developed under the J2CA 1.0 Specification. For more information about using the Link-Ref mechanism with 1.0 resource adapters, see "(Deprecated) Configuring the Link-Ref Mechanism" in "Configuring the weblogic-ra.xml File" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Programming Resource Adapters for Oracle WebLogic Server. |
<shrink-period-minutes> |
This element has been deprecated and replaced by The |
<connection-maxidle-time> |
This element has been deprecated and is replaced by The |
<security-principal-map> |
This element is no longer supported; the security principal map is configured using the Administration Console. You should remove the |
<connection-cleanup-frequency> |
This element is no longer supported and is ignored during deployment. |
<connection-duration-time> |
This element is no longer supported and is ignored during deployment. |
WLEC was deprecated in WebLogic Server 8.1. WLEC users should move applications to the WebLogic Tuxedo Connector, as described in Oracle Fusion Middleware Tuxedo Connector Migration Guide for WLEC to Oracle WebLogic Server.
The "SNMPAgentMBean" MBean "MibDataRefreshInterval" and "ServerStatusCheckIntervalFactor" attributes were deprecated in WebLogic Server 10.0 and are ignored.
The configuration flags in Table B-4 are available to support backward compatibility when you upgrade a domain. By default, these flags are set to support backward compatibility, unless you disable them by selecting the Do not set backwards compatibility flags option during an upgrade, as described in Upgrading a Domain in Graphical Mode.
Table B-4 Backward Compatibility Flags
| Category | Backward Compatibility Flag | For more information, see ... |
|---|---|---|
|
Security |
|
|
|
Web Application |
|
Information about deprecated functionality for WebLogic Server 10.3.1 can be found on My Oracle Support at https://metalink.oracle.com. For information about functionality deprecated in WebLogic Server 10.3, see "Deprecated Functionality (WebLogic Server 10.3)" in Oracle Fusion Middleware What's New in Oracle WebLogic Server.