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BEA WebLogic Server 5.1 Release Notes: Previous topic | Next topic | Contents

Changes in BEA WebLogic Server 5.1

In addition to the items listed in the Upgrade section, this section discusses additional changes made since the 4.5.1 release. Changes have been made in the following areas:

- WebLogic Server Changes

- Standard Compliance Support

- Java Naming and Directory Interface Changes (JNDI 1.2)

- Remote Method Invocation (RMI) over IIOP

- Security Changes

- JDBC Changes

- Simple Network Management Protocol Support

- Third Party Products-Related Changes

- Platform Support Changes

- Jolt for WebLogic Changes

- WebLogic Enterprise Connectivity Changes

- Example Changes

- Tour Changes

- Documentation Changes

WebLogic Server Changes

For changes that apply to Java 2 Enterprise Edition features, see the Standard Compliance Support of this document.

Starting WebLogic Server

The following issues have been addressed in this release:

- If you start the server with weblogic.cluster.enable=true, but without a clustering license, the server will no longer quit with a NullPointerException.

- Issue 9036. The Java 1.1.7 JRE can be used with this release of WebLogic Server.

- Issue 6843. The setEnv.sh shell script requires a Bourne shell or another shell that is compatible with the Bourne shell, and must run on a UNIX platform. The script is not supported on Windows NT, even with UNIX shells such as MKS ksh or Cygwin bash. On Windows, use the setEnv.cmd command script or modify the setEnv.sh script to work with the shell you prefer.

NSAPI Plugin

The following issue has been addressed in this release:

- Issue 7398. Memory leak with NSAPI plugin was fixed.

CLASSLOADER

The following issue has been addressed in this release:

- Issue 7343. We have removed some harmless, but potentially confusing stack traces related to loading certain classes, stubs in particular.

UTILITIES

The following issue has been addressed in this release:

- Issue 6579. The output of the -verbose command has changed slightly from JDK 1.1 to JDK 1.2 , and no longer breaks.

HTTP Extended Log Format Support

The HTTP extended log file format provides finer control over the HTTP log information recorded. This release supports extended log format. For more information see Setting up HTTP server log files.

CGI Support

This release provides support for CGI scripts. For more information, see Using legacy CGI.

Apache Support

This release incorporates support for the Apache Web Server. For more information, see Installing the Apache-WebLogic plug-in .

WebLogic Server Tools and Wizards

Console

The following issues have been addressed in this release:

- Issue 8400. WebLogic Server no longer hangs, looping indefinitely when trying to run a stateless EJB after undeploying and redeploying in the Console.

- Issue 8168. Reload Servlet in the Console no longer throws a NullPointerException in the server stack and ReflectInvocationTargetException in Client Stack trace.

- Issue 8167. The Console no longer hangs and throws an ObjectNotFoundException when you click on a loaded servlet.

- Issue 7951. The Console has a new URL pattern field for registering a new Servlet 2.2 file.

- Issue 7921. The Console now uses the document root. In cases where a servlet classpath is in a different directory, the servlet classpath can be read using the XML file context-param or from the property in the weblogic.properties file.

- Issue 7440. The EJB Console now works when using primary key classes on containter-managed persistence beans that do not directly define hashCode and equals.

- The WebLogic Console now successfully starts WebLogic Server when running with Microsoft SDK for Java. The workaround used in previous releases is no longer necessary.

- The Console now supports EJB 1.1. deployment.

EJB DeployerTool Changes

The following issue has been addressed in this release:

- Issue 9645. Problems running the weblogic.EJBDeployerTool in an X/Motif environment have been fixed. Select Jar File no longer has problems and the workaround is no longer necessary.

- Issue 9569. There is no longer a restriction on EJBs that can be in a single deployment unit. The restriction was that you could not have two EJBs in a single deployment unit with the same bean implementation class. Otherwise the generated files for these beans would have naming conflicts. The naming conflicts are now resolved.

- Issue 9313. The java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError exception no longer occurs.

ZAC Changes

The following issue has been addressed in this release:

- Resolved an issue when specifying the default installation directory in the ZAC installer. When specifying the directory using Windows backslash (\) directory separators, these may appear escaped as "\\" in the installer.

Extensible Markup Language (XML)

The document Using XML with WebLogic Serverhas been added and describes how XML interfaces with the other WebLogic Server services. New XML code examples are also included in your distribution.

Properties Changes

New and changed properties

- Issue 1067. A new property, weblogic.httpd.errorPage.HTTP.errorNumber=URL, allows you to specify a URL or page (relative to the document root) for a given HTTP error number.

- A new property, weblogic.httpd.logFileFormat, ="extended" or "common"> allows you to choose the log file format. The property can be set to "extended" or "common"

- A new property, weblogic.httpd.webApp.context=WebAppLocation sets the context for a Web Application.

- The property weblogic.httpd.indexDirectories=false has changed. The default, which used to be true, is now false. When false, it forbids browsers from viewing the contents of a directory if they only specify the directory in the URL, and returns error 403 File Forbidden.

- A new Java system property, weblogic.classloader.verbose, has been added to turn on verbose classloading.

- A new property, weblogic.httpd.postTimeoutSecs, is introduced in this release.

- The property -Dweblogic.system.disableWeblogicClassPath=true will cause the server to load classes from the Java classpath (static loading). The default is false. If an attempt is made to start the server with WebLogic classes in the Java classpath and this property is not set, the following message is displayed:

      Cannot start server because weblogic.class.path is enabled and the Weblogic classes are not in the weblogic.class.path.

  You should either alter weblogic.class.path to include the WebLogic classes or set -Dweblogic.system.disableWeblogicClassPath=true in the command line to allow classes to load from the Java classpath.

  Note: Starting WebLogic Server with the static classloader disables EJB hot deployment.

- The weblogic.security.ciphersuites property allows you to specify the ciphersuites that are available when negotiating SSL connections.

- If you use an alternative security realm, the new CachingRealm offers several new properties you can use to tune caching of user, group, and ACL lookup results. See Administering the WebLogic CachingRealm to learn about these new properties.

- The new weblogic.security.urlAclFile property gives the name of a policy file that contains extended ACLs for URLs. See Controlling Access on URLsfor more information about this new feature.

- In addition to the existing weblogic.security.clientRootCA property, three additional properties allow you to specify root certificates for up to four Certificate Authorities whose certificates are to be accepted. The new properties are:

  - weblogic.security.clientRootCA2

  - weblogic.security.clientRootCA3

  - weblogic.security.clientRootCA4

The following issues have been addressed in this release:

- Issue 8458. During HTTP basic authentication, a dialog box pops up in the browser for authentication purposes. There is a field for "Authentication Realm" which displays "WebLogic Server" by default. You can change "WebLogic Server" to your own system name by setting the new name in the property weblogic.httpd.authRealmName.

- Issue 4670. The property weblogic.system.startupFailureIsFatal.fail=boolean has changed. It is false by default. If set to true, WebLogic Server will not start if the specified startup class or classes throws exceptions. The word "fail" is the virtual name of the startup class or classes, which are registered like this:

      weblogic.system.startupClass.fail=class1,class2,...

Deprecated APIs

JDBC Drivers

The following drivers have been deprecated in this release:

- jdbcKona/Sybase

- jdbcKona/MSSQLServer

Platform Support Changes

The following issue has been addressed in this release:

- Issue 9513. Starting WebLogic Server using Microsoft SDK for Java requires you to specify the classpath differently. All classes should be specified using the CLASSPATH environment variable. Do not specify classes with the /cp option. You must also pass the following property on the Java command line:

      /d:weblogic.system.disableWeblogicClassPath=true

- Issue 7528. Bug ID 4134584 in Sun's Bug Parade describes a bug in JDK 1.1.7 on Windows NT and Solaris. This bug will occasionally cause the WebLogic Server JVM to crash with the error "*** panic: 16-bit string hash table overflow". Because of this error, we recommend that you use JDK 1.2 on Windows NT and Solaris.

- Issue 7125 Solaris. You no longer have to work around a bug in the Java ksh wrapper script for Solaris SDK 1.2.2. The workaround was to place -native as the first option, before -classic.

Standard Compliance Support

The following new features supporting Sun Microsystems' Java 2, Enterprise Edition have been added:

- EJB Changes

- Java Database Connectivity Changes (JDBC 2.0)

- Java Server Pages Changes (JSP 1.1)

- Servlet Changes

EJB Changes

EJB 1.1

WebLogic Server now supports the EJB 1.1 specification. Existing EJBs based on the EJB 1.0 specification must be upgraded to run with WebLogic Server 5.1. See Upgrading EJBs to WebLogic Server Version 5.1for instructions.

WebLogic Server 5.1 introduces two XML files for defining EJB deployment properties. If you edit or create these files outside of the WebLogic Server utilities (DDConverter, DeployerTool), make sure that the files comply with their associated Document Type Definitions (DTDs). The DTDs for WebLogic Server deployment files are at these locations:

- http://www.bea.com/servers/wls510/dtd/weblogic-ejb-jar.dtd

- http://www.bea.com/servers/wls510/dtd/weblogic-rdbms-persistence.dtd

  Note: Most browsers do not display the contents of files having the .dtd extension. To view the DTD file contents in your browser, save the links as text files and view them with a text editor.

For complete information on the new EJB implementation, see BEA WebLogic Server Enterprise JavaBeans.

The following issues have been addressed in this release:

- Issue 7813. A multithreaded client accessing an entity bean with findByPrimaryKey(Non-Existent-Pk) no longer fails.

- Issue 6004. The error message that is displayed when binding the same name twice is clearer.

- Issue 5888 and 5890. Stateful session bean instances are not destroyed after an exception has been thrown.

- Issue 5607. A new deployment no longer wipes out an existing EJB deployment.

- Issue 5591. The method new Instance() is now called after ejbCreate().

- If you build an example EJB with the supplied build scripts and deploy it, you can now run the build script again and redeploy the bean from the same .jar without getting an error.

- The server no longer throws a NullPointerException when the transactionAttribute of a stateless session bean's ejbCreate() method is marked either TX_REQUIRED or TX_REQUIRES_NEW and ejbCreate() throws an exception.

- The EJB deployment utility program weblogic.deploy now allows deployment of the same bean more than once.

- Binding the same name more than once does not throw an exception.

Java Database Connectivity Changes (JDBC 2.0)

jdbcKona JDBC drivers renamed

The following JDBC drivers have new names:

####

Old Name | New Name
--- | ---
jdbcKona/Oracle | BEA WebLogic jDriver for Oracle
jdbcKona/MSSQLServer4 | BEA WebLogic jDriver for Microsoft SQL Server
jdbcKona/Informix4 | BEA WebLogic jDriver for Informix

DataSource

A DataSource object provides a way to obtain a JDBC connection from a connection pool using a JNDI lookup. For details, see Using a DataSource object to get a JDBC connection

JDBC/RMI and Clustered JDBC

A new JDBC/RMI driver has been added to WebLogic Server. This is a three-tier driver that operates with WebLogic Server using a DataSource object. When this driver is used in a cluster of WebLogic Servers, it can be configured to provide Clustered JDBC. Clustered JDBC provides failover and load balancing for JDBC connections. For more information, see Using WebLogic JDBC/RMI and WebLogic Clustered JDBC

JTS driver

The following issues have been resolved in this release:

Issue 6232. Problems were fixed with JTS synchronization during timeout handling and rollback problems with JTS/JDBC on multiple servers. Stricter illegal-state checking was also introduced.

Issue 7999. The JTS driver now creates an explicit T3Client to pass to the t3 driver. This ensures correct propagation of security information through JTS/JDBC driver. It also improves performance by caching T3Clients internally.

jdbcKona/Oracle

The jdbcKona/Oracle driver has been updated to incorporate some of the features available in Oracle 8, such as Blobs and Clobs, and also for new features available in the JDBC 2.0 specification. Using JDBC 2.0 requires that you run your driver with a JDK 1.2.x JVM.

jDriver for Oracle available for the HP-UX 11 platform.

WebLogic jDriver for Oracle (formerly called jdbcKona/Oracle) is now available for the HP-UX 11 platform for Oracle client versions 8.0.4 and 8.1.5. For more information, see Installing WebLogic jDriver for Oracle

For information on using new Oracle 8 and JDBC 2.0 features, see the Developer Guides Using WebLogic jDriver for Oracle.

Java Message Service

Support for Fully Qualified Table Names

A new property, weblogic.jms.tableNamePrefix, allows you to specify a prefix to add to the database table names when WebLogic Server accesses the JMS tables in a DBMS. This is useful for DBMSs that require fully qualified names when accessing tables. This property can also be used to host multiple sets of JMS tables within the same DBMS. For additional information, see Using WebLogic JMS .

JMS Issues Resolved in this Release

The following issues have been addressed in this release:

- Issue 9396. Using DEFAULT_PRIORITY no longer causes an exception.

- Issue 7547. Expired queue messages are now properly cleaned from the JMS tables.

- Issue 7386. A problem with construction of JMS QueueRequestor was fixed. Previously an NPE would sometimes be thrown.

- Issue 6676. JMS messages 1MB or greater in size and sent at a frequency of 1 second or less no longer cause the JMS client to hang.

- The example documentation has been updated to explicitly point out all properties that must be set. The transaction timeout has also been fixed by only starting the transaction if the message received is an instance of MapMessage.

Java Naming and Directory Interface Changes (JNDI 1.2)

WebLogic Server now supports the JNDI 1.2 specification.

Java Server Pages Changes (JSP 1.1)

WebLogic Server supports the JSP 1.1 specification.

The following issues have been addressed in this release:

- Issue 9673. The JSP Servlet initialization argument packagePrefix is now supported. Using this argument will no longer cause JSP to break, throwing a ClassNotFoundException when requesting the JSP page. There is no need to remove the packagePrefix argument from your existing weblogic.properties file.

- Issue 9457. The JSP example EJBeanManagedClient has been fixed. The workaround is no longer necessary.

- Issue 9260. When a bean is used for more than one time, that is, it has no class attribute, the usebean tag can now be split over multiple lines without causing a an exception.

- Issue 8728. Previously generated JSP servlets are now compatible with the new implementation.

- Issue 8325. Fixed a problem with pre-compilation of JSPs at boot time. This is provided for web applications, and is turned on with a WebLogic-specific context parameter specified in the WAR's web.xml file. For example:

      <!-- whether to compile all JSP's on startup -->
      <context-param>
      <param-name>wl-jsp-precompile</param-name> <param-value>true</param-value>
      </context-param>

  Additionally, all of the initParams to the JSPServlet (compileCommand, encoding, keepgenerated, etc.) can be specified via similar context params that all start with wl-jsp-*. These are illustrated in examples that have a web.xml file.

- Issue 7902. JSP Compiler running in the server no longer fails to pass the directory name to the Java compiler when there are spaces in the directory name.

- Issue 7661. A java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException is no longer thrown when compiling JSP files that have a section between two include tags that is exactly 1024 characters.

- Issue 7587. You can now use the flush attribute of jsp:include. Although the specicification mandates the flush attribute, it is still optional in the WebLogic JSP implementation.

- Issue 6240. When requesting a JSP page, your request should match the case formatting of the JSP file exactly. The known problems for this issue have been resolved in this release.

Remote Method Invocation Changes

Remote Method Invocation (RMI) over IIOP

WebLogic RMI over IIOP extends the RMI programming model by providing the ability for clients to access RMI remote objects using the Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP). This exposes RMI remote objects to a new class of client, the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) client. CORBA clients can be written in a variety of languages including C++, SmallTalk, and Java. For additional information, see Using WebLogic RMI over IIOP .

Note: RMI over IIOP is currently offered only with version 1.3 JDKs.

Additional classpath requirements have been added for running the WebLogic RMI and EJB compilers with the -idl option. For additional information, see the Generate the IDL file section of Using RMI over IIOP

RMI Issues Resolved in this Release

The following issues have been addressed in this release:

- Issue 7591. Unreferenced is now called appropriately.

- RMI Cluster. Setting either homeCallRouterClassName or statelessCallRouterClassName to a non-existent class no longer causes an AssertionError.

Servlet Changes

Servlet 2.2

This release introduces support for the HTTP Servlet 2.2 specification, including the deployment of multiple Web Applications and multiple servlet contexts. All features of the Servlet 2.2 specification are supported, with the following exceptions:

- It is now recommended that HTTP servlets do not implicitly close or flush the servlet response. Following this convention will improve performance since persistent HTTP 1.1 connections can be used automatically by the server.

Servlet Issues Resolved in this release

The following issues have been addressed in this release:

- Issue 9720. Under Solaris JDK 1.1, running jsp/SessionServlet.jsp no longer throws ClassCastException when storing a session value.

- Issue 9424. A problem previously occurred with the <jsp-file> element instead of the <servlet-class> element in a <servlet> element of a web.xml descriptor. The server previously threw a NullPointerException such as: "<E> <ServletContext-cookie> Servlet failed with RuntimeException." This problem has been fixed.

- Issue 9138. The name of the variable JDK_HOME has changed to JAVA_HOME. This variable no longer causes a problem.

- Issue 8326. The <welcome-file-list> element from the web.xml deployment descriptor is no longer ignored in this release.

- Issue 7657. The 0 bytes read problem in HTTP tunneling is now fixed. For more information, see Using WebLogic HTTP Servlets .

- Issue 7193. An issue where the query string data was handled inconsistently when running servlets with the ServerSideIncludeServlet is fixed.

- Issue 7002. The method HttpSession.getValueNames()no longer returns null if there are no parameters in the session. This method is now in agreement with the servlet specification which states that it should return an empty String[].

- Issue 6926. The method javax.servlet.ServletContext.getResourceAsStream()now complies with the Servlet 2.1 specification.

- Issue 5601. A problem with the Performance Pack occasionally killing the HTTPJVMSocket at inappropriate times has been fixed.

JDBC Changes

For information on using new Oracle 8 and JDBC 2.0 features, see Using WebLogic jDriver for Oracle.

jDriver for Oracle available for the HP-UX 11 platform.

WebLogic jDriver for Oracle (formerly called jdbcKona/Oracle) is now available for the HP-UX 11 platform for Oracle client versions 8.0.4 and 8.1.5. For more information, see Installing WebLogic jDriver for Oracle

The procedure for using Oracle Blobs and Clobs requires that you cast the Blob or Clob object to weblogic.jdbc20.common.OracleClob or weblogic.jdbc20.common.OracleBlob.

The following issue has been addressed in this release:

- Issue 8437. (jDriver for Oracle on the Solaris platform only) There was a duplicate copy of libweblogicoci36.so in the directory weblogic/lib/solaris. If this directory was included in your ld_library_path, it no longer causes an incorrect version of the jdbcKona/Oracle driver to be loaded. For details on setting your ld_library_path, see

jConnect Driver for Sybase now bundled with WebLogic Server

- The jConnect type 4 JDBC driver for Sybase is now bundled with WebLogic Server. For information on using this driver, see Using the Sybase jConnect Driver.

Security Changes

Many improvements have been made to WebLogic Server 5.1 security. Here is a summary of the important new security features.

WebLogic Security Realms and New CachingRealm

The WebLogic Server security realm architecture has been redesigned to make pluggable realms easier to develop, deploy, and manage. A new CachingRealm delegates to an alternative realm that extends AbstractListableRealm or AbstractManageableRealm. If the custom realm does not find a result for a lookup, CachingRealm falls back to the weblogic.properties file. CachingRealm also provides configurable caching to improve the realm's performance.

The NTRealmand LDAPRealm (for Netscape Directory Server and Microsoft Site Server) have been revised to extend the new AbstractListableRealm. LDAPRealm no longer uses EJBs for its caching, so it is now possible to use LDAPRealm with WebLogic Express.

A new UnixRealm (supported on Solaris, HP-UX 11.0, and Linux for this release) provides UNIX authentication for WebLogic Server clients. Authorization uses ACLs in the weblogic.properties file. UnixRealm depends upon a small setroot binary, wlauth, to process authentication requests from WebLogic Server. The wlauth program uses PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) on operating systems that have it, or the standard password authentication libraries on other platforms.

The RDBMSRealm example has been thoroughly revised. It is now a fully-supported alternative realm for WebLogic Server, as well as a model for developing custom realms. As part of the revision, the rdbmsrealm.CachingRealm class and the defaultrealm example are gone, replaced by CachingRealm. An option to encrypt passwords in the database has been added. The utils.Schema utility is now used to initialize the realm's tables in the database in place of code in RDBMSRealm from previous releases.

A DelegatingRealm example shows how you can delegate authentication and authorization requests to multiple security realms. You configure DelegatingRealm to delegate specific realm methods to one or more realm classes, which are tried in the sequence you specify. You could use this feature to allow WebLogic Server access to multiple external realms, or use it to implement a failover for your primary security realm.

The SnoopProof realm example has been removed for security reasons. We recommend that you do not migrate forward any applications that you may have built using this example.

The weblogic.security.acl.Security class has a new doAsPrivileged()method that can be used to temporarily switch to a different WebLogic user and run some server-side code. doAsPrivileged() is called with a UserInfo containing the login information of the new User and a class that implements either the weblogic.security.acl.PrivilegedAction interface or the weblogic.security.acl.PrivilegedExceptionAction interface. Both of interfaces define a run() method that returns an Object. Use PrivilegedAction only for code that does not throw any checked exceptions; otherwise, use PriviledgedExceptionAction.

When you call doAsPrivileged(), WebLogic Server attempts to authenticate the UserInfo. If the realm returns an authenticated User, the new User is pushed onto the thread and the run() method is called. When run() returns, the new User is popped from the thread, restoring the original User. If the UserInfo cannot be authenticated, a SecurityException is thrown.

A new Auditing interface has been added. Implement this interface to receive and process notifications of security events such as authentication requests, failed or successful authorization attempts, and receipt of invalid certificates. Your class can filter the events and send messages wherever you choose. The LogAuditProvider example writes audit messages in the WebLogic Properties file.

A new weblogic.security.net.ConnectionFilter interface has been added to allow you to accept or reject WebLogic Server client connections based on the client's origin and protocol. After a client connects, and before any work is performed on behalf of the client, WebLogic Server passes the client's IP number and port, protocol (HTTP, HTTPS, T3, T3S, IIOP), and WebLogic Server port number to your ConnectionFilter implementation. By examining this information, you can choose to allow the connection to continue or throw a FilterException to terminate the connection. The SimpleConnectionFilter example shows how to use this interface. It reads a "rules" configuration file and constructs an efficient rules engine to filter connection requests.

Access Control Lists

A new weblogic.security.urlAclFile lets you create a policy file that guards access on files with much finer control than is possible with the weblogic.properties file. In the policy file, you grant or deny users and groups permissions on files and directories, using a policy file syntax patterned after the Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS). WebLogic Server tests the permissions specified in the policy file before granting access to a resource.

See Controlling access on URLs for details.

WebLogic SSL

Note: The SSL 56-bit license is included in this release. In order to get a 128-bit SSL license, please contact sales@bea.com.

New weblogic.security.clientRootCA properties have been added so that you can specify up to four certificate authorities to use for two-way authentication. The last three properties are new in this release:

      weblogic.security.clientRootCA=CACert1
      weblogic.security.clientRootCA2=CACert2
      weblogic.security.clientRootCA3=CACert3
      weblogic.security.clientRootCA4=CACert4

To authenticate successfully, a client must present a certificate signed by one of the specified certificate authorities.

A new weblogic.security.ciphersuites property allows you to specify the ciphersuites that may be offered on SSL connections. WebLogic Server and the client negotiate the ciphersuite to use when establishing a connection, selecting the most secure suite available to both.

The Acl example has a new client program, AltClient.java, which demonstrates how to get a secure SSL connection with JNDI using two-way authentication.

A new CertAuthenticator interface has been added. By implementing this interface and setting the weblogic.security.realm.certAuthenticator property in the weblogic.properties file, you can map the client certificate presented during two-way SSL authentication to a WebLogic Server user. The new SimpleCertAuthenticator example demonstrations how to implement this interface. It maps the name from the email address in the Certificate to a WebLogic Server user.

Simple Network Management Protocol Support

WebLogic Server now provides an SNMP link to SNMP-compliant management systems. Integrating WebLogic Server with SNMP allows you to effectively manage all of your large-scale applications using the SNMP-compliant network management tool of your choice. Since most management platforms support SNMP today, the WebLogic Server SNMP Agent can be integrated into virtually every management framework. Examples of such systems include:

- HP OpenView

- IBM Tivoli, NetView

- Sun Domain/SunNet/Site Manager

- CA Unicenter

SNMP manageability of WebLogic Server provides the following benefits:

- Enables you to move towards a single management console and thus provide integrated systems management of WebLogic Server based applications.

- Connects WebLogic Server to popular management systems such as HP OpenView, Sun SunNet Manager, and IBM NetView. This makes managing WebLogic Server more effective by providing a whole-system perspective instead of piecemeal solutions.

- Preserves your standard-based, compliant (SNMP-capable) management frameworks.

- Enables you to benefit from the experience of the large community of SNMP users.

The WebLogic Server agent will enable you to remotely monitor the status of your server or server cluster. It will report statistics including the availability of your server, the number of connections, and the average queue length.

For more information on WebLogic Server SNMP, see:

- WebLogic Server SNMP Agent

- BEA Manager 2.0, found at the BEA Documentation website

Third Party Products-Related Changes

For more information see Using WebLogic Server with third party software

Visual Age

For information on using Visual Age with WebLogic Server, see Using the Integration Kit for Visual Age.

VisualCafe/Webgain Studio

For information on using VisualCafe with WebLogic Server, see Using VisualCafé Enterprise Suite with WebLogic.

Third Party-Related Issues Resolved in this Release

If you are using any third party containers or vendor products with the WebLogic Server, or any EJB-related tools (ejbc, DDCreator, ComplianceChecker, or EJB DeployerTool), you will need to specify the property weblogic.home when you start the Weblogic Server or the WebLogic tool, as shown in this example for Windows NT:

    $java ... -Dweblogic.home=c:\weblogic... weblogic.Server

where weblogic.home is the root directory of your WebLogic installation. This is usually the same directory specified by the property weblogic.system.home, which sets the directory where WebLogic Server finds the global weblogic.properties file. If you locate your weblogic.properties files outside of the WebLogic installation, you need to redefine the weblogic.home property so that products from third party vendors can find the WebLogic installation.

The following issue has been addressed in this release:

- Issue 7128. Problem fixed with startWebLogicJview.cmd not putting cloudscape.jar into the CLASSPATH.

Jolt for WebLogic Changes

Jolt has been updated to support WebLogic Server 5.1.

For this release we have updated the Jolt documents and added direct links to the Jolt User's Guide.

With BEA Jolt for WebLogic, you can enable BEA Tuxedo services for the Web, using WebLogic Server as the front end HTTP and application server. Jolt is a Java-based client API that manages requests to BEA Tuxedo services via a Jolt Service Listener (JSL) running on the Tuxedo server. The Jolt API is embedded within the WebLogic API, and is accessible from a servlet or any other WebLogic application.

Because Jolt for WebLogic is an extension to the Jolt Java class library, the Jolt Java client class library can be used in HTTP servlets running in WebLogic Server. Jolt for WebLogic also uses Java HTTP servlets to provide an interface between HTML browser clients and BEA Tuxedo services.

Key features of the Jolt for WebLogic architecture include:

- Enabling the use of Java HTTP servlets to provide a dynamic HTML front-end for Tuxedo applications

- Providing session pooling to use Tuxedo resources efficiently

- Supporting transactions

- Integrating session pool management into the WebLogic Console.

The new documentation also includes sections on how to use the examples provided with your distribution of WebLogic Server.

WebLogic Enterprise Connectivity Changes

New features for version 5.1:

- Support for EJBs and RMI Objects: Enables WLS clients to invoke EJBs and RMI objects in WLE domains. Software and documentation include a new JSP-to-EJB example.

- Support for Security Context Propagation: Enables WLS clients to propagate security context information through a trusted IIOP connection pool to WLE.

- Support for SSL: Enables WLS clients to establish an SSL session for an IIOP connection pool to WLE.

- Runtime Reinitialization: Enables WLS users to reinitialize an IIOP connection pool at runtime without restarting WLS.

Example Changes

For late-breaking examples and additional help with creating your applications, see our new Additional Examples page.

The following issues have been addressed in this release:

- Issue 9886. On Solaris, running the examples.jms.topic.TopicSend example client no longer produces a NullPointerException on WebLogic Server.

- Issue 9885. The jms.drawdemo example no longer throws a server side ClassCastException.

- Issue 9878. A NullPointerException is no longer thrown when running JMS PoolReceive example.

- Issue 9874. The ejb.basic.beanManaged example no longer throws a SecurityException.

- Issue 9832. The examples/ejb/basic/statelessSession bean example no longer throws a ProcessingErrorException.

- Issue 9875. The examples.jolt.ejb.bankapp.Client no longer throws examples.jolt.ejb.bankapp.TransactionErrorException.

- Issue 9769. Case sensitivity no longer causes a problem when running the jsp/tagext/sql example. You must change the attribute names from poolName to poolname and from fromQuery to fromquery.

- Issue 9720. The jsp/SessionServlet.jsp no longer throws a ClassCastException when storing a session value.

- Issue 9449. The JSP tagextcounter example has been fixed. It now uses a temporary working directory determined by the servlet context.

- Issues 8981 and 4668. The utils.Schema utility no longer attempts to execute blank lines at the end of a DDL file, causing an SQLException to be thrown.

- Issue 8473. The Jolt EJBean example, example.jolt.ejb.bankapp, has been fixed. The previous error concerned how the bean properties are extracted from JNDI.

- Issue 6839. The example examples.jdbc.t3client.bigblob, which uses a Sybase DBMS, now runs correctly on the Solaris platform.

- Incompatibilities with the browser JVMs and examples that use applets have been fixed. The examples will now work properly if you are running the server using JDK 1.2 or later. To deploy applets from a server running with JDK 1.2, you should install the Java Plug-in ).

- In examples.xml.http, an error in the traderesult.dtd has been fixed so that the client application longer produces the following error:

      [Error] :3:-1: Attribute "numShares" is not declared for element

New Examples

The following examples have been added in this release:

- Examples for using XML with WebLogic Server.

- New examples for web applications using cookies.

- Java plug-in versions of example applet html pages.

- Examples for using Java Plugin v1.1.3 and Java Plugin v1.2 from HTML and JSP files.

- The example jolt_ejb_bankapp.jar has been converted for use with EJB 1.1.

- New examples For JDBC DataSource and Oracle Blobs and Clobs.

- Examples for using the new security custom realms architecture, security auditing, certificate authentication, and network connection filtering features.

- The examples that accompany Introduction to WebLogic Serverhave been included in the distribution. The EJB is upgraded to EJB 1.1 and the JDBC Java client example uses the new JDBC DataSource.

- New JSP-to-EJB example for WebLogic Enterprise Connectivity.

Deprecated Examples

- These examples have been removed:

  - jndi.LDAPSearch

  - security.carealm

  - weblogic.html.FormServlet

  - Utilities.sendMail

  - event.stocks.MailStockInfo

  - servlets.MailServlet

  - WLSerializable

  - WLObjectOutput

  - WLObjectInput

  - InitialContextExample

  - SimpleProviderClient

  - SimpleProviderServer

  - SnoopProof realm

  - defaultrealm

  - ejb_sequence_oracle.jar

  - The EJB "sequence" example is not included in this version of WebLogic Server.

Tour Changes

The tour has been fixed for this release. It is available from the Windows Start Menu.

Documentation Changes

New Documentation Features

- New design templates have been applied to all documentation on our web site.

- New PDF documents are available on our PDF page . You will need a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader to view and print these files. You can go directly to the Adobe web site or use the link provided from the PDF page.

- For late-breaking examples and additional help creating your applications, see our new Additional Examples page.

- The Frames version of the documentation is no longer distributed.

New Documentation

- Documentation for Using WebLogic Server Clusters has been improved for this release.

- Documentation and examples have been added for Writing a Web Application and Web Application (WAR) examples .

- For this release we have updated the Jolt documentation, which includes direct links to the Jolt User's Guide.

- For this release we have updated the JSP documentation, Using WebLogic JSP.

Installation

The following Installation documentation has been updated for this release:

- The Overview of Installing WebLogic Server 5.1

- Introduction to WebLogic Server .

- Testing Connections

- Installing WebLogic to Netscape Plugin.

- Installing WebLogic jDriver for Oracle .

JDBC

The following JDBC documentation has been updated for this release:

WebLogic JDBC OptionsAn overview of WebLogic JDBC drivers and related information. These documents include links to information on using the WebLogic jDrivers, 3rd party information, and more.

- Using the Sybase jConnect driver.

  Sybase's jConnect driver is now bundled with WebLogic Server.

- Using the Oracle Thin Driver with WebLogic Server.

  How to use Oracle's thin JDBC driver with WebLogic Server

- Javadocs for WebLogic JDBC extensions are not available with this release.

Security

A new index to the WebLogic Server Security Guides has been included with this release .

Another new document to help with locking down a WebLogic Server deployment has been added. See Securing a WebLogic Server Deployment .

Wireless Application Protocol

Documentation has been added for the new WAP feature of WebLogic Server, Using Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) with WebLogic Server .

Other documents have been updated as needed.

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