1. Administering Oracle Fusion Middleware
  2. Deploying Applications
  3. Understanding the Deployment Process

9 Understanding the Deployment Process

Before you deploy Oracle Fusion Middleware applications, such as Java EE applications, you should understand the deployment process, such as designing and developing applications and deploying those applications to Managed Servers.

Parent topic: Deploying Applications

What Is a Deployer?

A user in the role of deployer is responsible for deploying applications, such as Java EE applications, and ADF applications, to WebLogic Server instances or clusters.

A user who is functioning as a deployer should be granted the Oracle WebLogic Server deployer security role. The deployer security role allows deployment operations, as well as viewing the server configuration and changing startup and shutdown classes. To grant this role to a user, from Fusion Middleware Control:

  1. From the WebLogic Domain menu, select Security, then Users and Groups.

    The Users and Groups page is displayed.

  2. If you do not have such a user, click Create.

    The Create a User page is displayed.

  3. Enter a name for the user and a password. Confirm the password.

  4. Click Create.

  5. On the Users and Groups page, select the user.

  6. On the Settings for User page, select Deployers from the Available pane and move it to the Chosen pane.

  7. Click Save.

Parent topic: Understanding the Deployment Process

General Procedures for Moving from Application Design to Production Deployment

You design and test your application with the integrated Oracle WebLogic Server. Then, you can deploy the application to a Managed Server. You can move from application design and development to deployment in a production environment.

Parent topic: Understanding the Deployment Process

Designing and Developing an Application

In many cases, developers use Oracle JDeveloper to create their applications. Oracle JDeveloper is an integrated development environment (IDE) for building service-oriented applications using the latest industry standards for Java, XML, Web services, portlets, and SQL. JDeveloper supports the complete software development life cycle, with integrated features for modeling, coding, debugging, testing, profiling, tuning, and deploying applications.

In this environment, you use the integrated Oracle WebLogic Server, which is packaged with Oracle JDeveloper for testing your applications.

For information about developing your applications, see:

Parent topic: General Procedures for Moving from Application Design to Production Deployment

Deploying an Application to Managed Servers

After you have designed and tested your application with the integrated Oracle WebLogic Server, you can deploy the application to a Managed Server instance. For example, you may have installed Oracle WebLogic Server and configured a domain, including a Managed Server, in your production environment and you want to deploy the application to that Managed Server.

The following books provide specific information about deploying the different types of applications:

This section provides an outline of the major steps involved when you migrate your application from the integrated Oracle WebLogic Server to an environment separate from the development environment. Those general steps are:

  1. Package the application:

  2. Set up your environment. This includes:

  3. If your application uses a database, set up the JDBC data sources.

    For more information about setting up the JDBC data sources, see:

  4. For Oracle SOA Suite, create connection factories and connection pooling. See Creating Connection Factories and Connection Pooling in Developing SOA Applications with Oracle SOA Suite.

  5. Create a connection to the target Managed Server.

    From Oracle JDeveloper, you can deploy your applications to Managed Server instances that reside outside JDeveloper. To do this, you must first create a connection to the server instance to which you want to deploy your application.

    For more information about creating connections, see:

  6. For Oracle SOA Suite, create a SOA-MDS connection, if the SOA composite application shares metadata with other composites. See Creating a SOA-MDS Connection in Developing SOA Applications with Oracle SOA Suite.

  7. Create a configuration plan or deployment plan, which contains information about environment-specific values, such as JDBC connection strings or host names of various servers. See:

  8. Migrate application security, such as credentials, identities, and policies. See:

  9. Create a deployment profile. A deployment profile packages or archives a custom ADF, WebCenter Portal, or SOA application and associated files so that the application can be deployed to an Oracle WebLogic Server Managed Server instance. Deployment profiles are created at the project and application level.

    For more information about deployment profiles, see:

  10. Migrate Oracle JDeveloper extensions for Oracle SOA Suite. Table 9-1 shows the extensions and where they are documented:

    Table 9-1 Oracle JDeveloper Extensions

    Component Extension See:

    Oracle SOA Suite

    SOA extensions

    Enabling Oracle JDeveloper Extensions in Installing Oracle JDeveloper

    Oracle WebCenter Portal

    WebCenter Portal extensions

    Creating and Provisioning a WebLogic Managed Server Instance in Developing for Oracle WebCenter Portal

  11. Deploy the application to a Managed Server.

    See:

Parent topic: General Procedures for Moving from Application Design to Production Deployment

Automating the Migration of an Application to Other Environments

You can automate the migration of an application by using WLST or ant scripts. This makes it easier to deploy your application to multiple environments or Managed Servers and to deploy updated versions of the application.

For more information about using scripts to migrate an application to other environments, see:

Parent topic: General Procedures for Moving from Application Design to Production Deployment

Diagnosing Typical Deployment Problems

If you encounter problems when you deploy an application, you can diagnose those problems and correct them.

The following describes some of the typical problems that you may encounter when you deploy an application to a Managed Server:

In addition, see Troubleshooting Common Deployment Errors in Developing SOA Applications with Oracle SOA Suite for information about troubleshooting SOA applications.

Parent topic: Understanding the Deployment Process