1 Introduction and Roadmap

This chapter describes the contents and organization of this guide—Programming JMS for Oracle WebLogic Server.

Document Scope and Audience

This document is a resource for software developers who want to develop and configure applications that include WebLogic Server Java Message Service (JMS). It also contains information that is useful for business analysts and system architects who are evaluating WebLogic Server or considering the use of WebLogic Server JMS for a particular application

The topics in this document are relevant during the design and development phases of a software project. The document also includes topics that are useful in solving application problems that are discovered during test and pre-production phases of a project.

This document does not address production phase administration, monitoring, or performance tuning JMS topics. For links to WebLogic Server documentation and resources for these topics, see Related Documentation.

It is assumed that the reader is familiar with Java EE and JMS concepts. This document emphasizes the value-added features provided by WebLogic Server JMS and key information about how to use WebLogic Server features and facilities to get a JMS application up and running.

Guide to this Document

Related Documentation

This document contains JMS-specific design and development information.

For comprehensive guidelines for developing, deploying, and monitoring WebLogic Server applications, see the following documents:

Samples and Tutorials for the JMS Developer

In addition to this document, Oracle provides a variety of code samples and tutorials for JMS developers. The examples and tutorials illustrate WebLogic Server JMS in action, and provide practical instructions on how to perform key JMS development tasks.

Oracle recommends that you run some or all of the JMS examples before developing your own JMS applications.

Avitek Medical Records Application (MedRec) and Tutorials

MedRec is an end-to-end sample Java EE application shipped with WebLogic Server that simulates an independent, centralized medical record management system. The MedRec application provides a framework for patients, doctors, and administrators to manage patient data using a variety of different clients.

MedRec demonstrates WebLogic Server and Java EE features, and highlights Oracle-recommended best practices. MedRec is included in the WebLogic Server distribution, and can be accessed from the Start menu on Windows machines. For Linux and other platforms, you can start MedRec from the WL_HOME\samples\domains\medrec directory, where WL_HOME is the top-level installation directory for WebLogic Platform.

MedRec includes a service tier comprised primarily of Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) that work together to process requests from web applications, web services, and workflow applications, and future client applications. The application includes message-driven, stateless session, stateful session, and entity EJBs.

New and Changed JMS Features In This Release

This release includes the following new and changed features:

  • Weighted Distributed Destinations are deprecated in WebLogic Server 10.3.4.0. Oracle recommends using Uniform Distributed Destinations.

  • Advanced WebLogic JMS publish and subscribe (pub/sub) concepts and functionality of Uniform Distributed Topics (UDTs) necessary to design high availability applications. See Developing Advanced Pub/Sub Applications.

  • The JMSDestinationAvailabilityHelper API provides a means for getting notifications when destinations become available or unavailable. These APIs are for advanced use cases only. Use this helper only when standard approaches for solving WebLogic distributed consumer problems have been exhausted. See "Using the JMS Destination Availability Helper APIs with Distributed Queues" in Programming JMS for Oracle WebLogic Server.

For a comprehensive listing of the new WebLogic Server features introduced in this release, see What's New in Oracle WebLogic Server.