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Introduction to WebLogic Server and WebLogic Express

# Introduction to BEA WebLogic Server and BEA WebLogic Express

The following sections provide a brief overview of BEA WebLogic Server® features and describe how you can use them to create enterprise-ready solutions:

- The WebLogic Server Solution
- BEA WebLogic ExpressTM
- Programming Models
- High Availability
- System Administration
- Diagnostic Framework
- Security
- BEA JRockit JVM
- Client Options
- Upgrade
- Integration with Other Systems
- Integration with Web Servers
- Next Steps

# The WebLogic Server Solution

BEA WebLogic Server 9.1 is a scalable, enterprise-ready Java Two Enterprise Edition (J2EE) application server. The WebLogic Server infrastructure supports the deployment of many types of distributed applications and is an ideal foundation for building applications based on Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). SOA is a design methodology aimed at maximizing the reuse of application services.

The WebLogic Server 9.1 complete implementation of The Sun Microsystems J2EE 1.4 specification provides a standard set of APIs for creating distributed Java applications that can access a wide variety of services, such as databases, messaging services, and connections to external enterprise systems. End-user clients access these applications using Web browser clients or Java clients. See Programming Models.

In addition to the J2EE implementation, WebLogic Server enables enterprises to deploy mission-critical applications in a robust, secure, highly available, and scalable environment. These features allow enterprises to configure clusters of WebLogic Server instances to distribute load, and provide extra capacity in case of hardware or other failures. New diagnostic tools allow system administrators to monitor and tune the performance of deployed applications and the WebLogic Server environment itself. You can also configure WebLogic Server to monitor and tune application throughput automatically without human intervention. Extensive security features protect access to services, keep enterprise data secure, and prevent malicious attacks.

# BEA WebLogic ExpressTM

BEA WebLogic Express is a powerful and cost-effective Servlet engine. Use WebLogic Express to quickly develop and launch dynamic Web sites and basic Web applications. See BEA WebLogic Express.

# Programming Models

WebLogic Server provides complete support for the J2EE 1.4 specification. For more information, see the following WebLogic Server programming guides:

- Web Applications provide the basic J2EE mechanism for deployment of dynamic Web pages based on the J2EE standards of Servlets and Java ServerPages (JSP). Web Applications are also used to serve static Web content such as HTML pages and image files.
- Web Services provide a shared set of functions that are available to other systems on a network and can used as a component of distributed Web-based applications.
- XML capabilities include data exchange, and a means to store content independent of its presentation, and more.
- Java Messaging Service (JMS) enables applications to communicate with one another through the exchange of messages. A message is a request, report, and/or event that contains information needed to coordinate communication between different applications.
- Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) provides pooled access to DBMS resources.
- Resource Adapters provide connectivity to legacy and other external enterprise systems.
- Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) provide Java objects to encapsulate data and business logic.
- Remote Method Invocation (RMI) is the Java standard for distributed object computing, allowing applications to invoke methods on a remote objects locally.
- Beehive is an open-source J2EE programming framework designed to make the most difficult J2EE programming tasks easier by using Java metadata annotations.
- Security APIs allow you to integrate authentication and authorization into your J2EE applications. You can also use the Security Provider APIs to create your own custom security providers.
- WebLogic Tuxedo Connectivity (WTC) provides interoperability between WebLogic Server applications and BEA Tuxedo services. WTC allows WebLogic Server clients to invoke Tuxedo services and Tuxedo clients to invoke EJBs in response to a service request.
- Overview of WebLogic Server Application Development describes developer tools and best practices for coding WebLogic Server applications.
- For additional programming topics, see the Developing Applications on BEA WebLogic Server® 9.1 topic page.

# High Availability

The following WebLogic Server features and tools support the deployment of highly-available and scalable applications:

- WebLogic Server clusters provide scalability and reliability for your applications by distributing the work load among multiple instances of WebLogic Server. Incoming requests can be routed to a WebLogic Server instance in the cluster based on the volume of work being processed. In case of hardware or other failures, session state is available to other cluster nodes that can resume the work of the failed node. In addition, you can implement clusters so that services may be hosted on a single machine with options to migrate the service to another node in the event of failure.

In addition to replicating HTTP session state across servers within a cluster, WebLogic Server can also replicate HTTP session state across multiple clusters, thereby expanding availability and fault tolerance in multiple geographic regions, power grids, and Internet service providers.

- Work Managers prioritize work based on rules you define and by monitoring actual runtime performance statistics. This information is then used to optimize the performance of your application. Work Mangers may be applied globally to a WebLogic Server domain or to a specific application component.
- Overload protection gives WebLogic Server the ability to detect, avoid, and recover from overload conditions.
- Network channels facilitates the effective use of network resources by segregating network traffic into channels based on the type of traffic.
- WebLogic Server persistent store is a built-in, high-performance storage solution for WebLogic Server subsystems and services that require persistence. For example, it can store persistent JMS messages or temporarily store messages sent using the Store-and-Forward feature. The persistent store supports persistence to a file-based store or to a JDBC-enabled database.
- Store-and-forward services enables WebLogic Server to deliver messages reliably between applications that are distributed across WebLogic Server instances. If the message destination is not available at the moment the messages are sent, either because of network problems or system failures, then the messages are saved on a local server instance, and are forwarded to the remote destination once it becomes available.
- Enterprise-ready deployment tools facilitate deployment and migration of applications from the development phase to a production environment.
- Production redeployment enables enterprises to deploy a new version of their application without interrupting work in progress on the older version.

# System Administration

System administration of a WebLogic Server environment includes tasks such as creating WebLogic Server domains; deploying applications, migrating domains from development environments to production environments; monitoring and configuring the performance of the WebLogic Server domain; and diagnosing and troubleshooting problems. WebLogic Server provides many tools for System Administrators to help with these tasks, including a browser-based Administration Console, the WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST), a scripting language for automation of WebLogic system administration tasks based on Jython, SNMP, the Configuration Wizard, and command-line utilities. See Choosing the Appropriate Technology for Your Administrative Tasks and Summary of System Administration Tools and APIs.

Because WebLogic Server's management system is based on J2EE and other standards, it integrates well with tools used to manage other enterprise software and hardware components. In addition, WebLogic Server implements the J2EE Java Management Extension (JMX) specification, which allows programmatic access to the WebLogic Server management system. Using this API you can create your own administration utilities or automate frequent tasks using Java classes.

# Diagnostic Framework

The WebLogic Diagnostic Service is a monitoring and diagnostic service that enables you to create, collect, analyze, archive, and access diagnostic data generated by a running server and its deployed applications. This data provides insight into the runtime performance of WebLogic Server instances and deployed applications and enables you to isolate and diagnose faults and performance bottlenecks.

# Security

The WebLogic Server security architecture provides a comprehensive, flexible security infrastructure designed to address the security challenges of making applications available on the Web. WebLogic security can be used standalone to secure WebLogic Server applications or as part of an enterprise-wide, security management system that represents a best-in-breed security management solution. See Overview of the WebLogic Security Service.

# BEA JRockit JVM

The BEA JRockit JVM is a high performance JVM optimized for Intel architectures and developed to ensure reliability, scalability, manageability, and flexibility for Java applications. BEA JRockit JVM optimizes performance of your Java applications on either the Windows or Linux operating system platforms with either 32-bit or 64-bit architectures. BEA JRockit JVM is included with your WebLogic Server installation. See BEA JRockit JVM.

# Client Options

In addition to support for browser-based Web application clients, WebLogic Server also supports a variety of client types for creating rich GUI applications or simple command line utilities. These client types include: RMI-IIOP, T3, J2SE clients, J2EE thin clients, CORBA/IDL clients, and C++ clients that communicate with BEA Tuxedo. See Programming Stand-Alone Clients.

# Upgrade

Tools and documentation are provided to help you migrate applications implemented on earlier versions of WebLogic Server to the WebLogic Server 9.1 environment. See Upgrading WebLogic Application Environments.

# Integration with Other Systems

WebLogic Server provides a variety of tools to integrate your applications with disparate systems. These tools include Web Services, Resource Adapters, the Messaging Bridge, and RMI.

# Integration with Web Servers

Plug-ins are provided with your WebLogic Server installation that allow WebLogic Server to operate with Web servers from Apache, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems. Typically, these Web servers serve static HTML content while requests for dynamic Web content such as JSPs are directed to the WebLogic Server environment. See Using Web Server Plug-Ins with WebLogic Server.

# Next Steps

This section describes additional resources for learning about WebLogic Server.

## WebLogic Server Documentation

A complete set of documentation is available on BEA's e-docs Web site. This documentation includes programming guides, API references, Javadocs, tutorials, system administrator documentation, and general overviews of WebLogic Server technologies. See WebLogic Server 9.1 Documentation.

## WebLogic Server API Examples and Sample Application

Code examples demonstrating J2EE APIs and other WebLogic Server features are provided with your WebLogic Server installation. To work with these examples, select the default installation options when installing WebLogic Server, or select the WebLogic Server examples during advanced installation. To access the code examples, start the WebLogic Server Examples domain using the WebLogic Examples Server entry in the Windows Start menu, or launch the `startWebLogicEx.cmd` or `startWebLogicEx.sh` script in following directory within your WebLogic Server installation: `/weblogic91/samples/domains/wl_server`. As they become available, you can also download additional examples.

In addition, a complete sample application also provided with your WebLogic Server installation. Avitek Medical Records (or MedRec) is a WebLogic Server sample application suite that concisely demonstrates all aspects of the J2EE platform. MedRec is designed as an educational tool for all levels of J2EE developers. It showcases the use of each J2EE component, and illustrates best practice design patterns for component interaction and client development. MedRec also illustrates best practices for developing applications on WebLogic Server.

To launch the Medical Records Application, select Start Medical Records Server from the Windows Start menu or run the `startWebLogic.sh` script from the following directory within your WebLogic Server installation: `/weblogic91/samples/domains/medrec`.

## BEA dev2dev Web site

BEA dev2dev is a Web site designed "by developers, for developers" and contains articles, white papers, code examples, newsgroups, blogs and other resources to help you learn more about WebLogic Server.