## The WebLogic Workshop Development Process

This topic offers an overview of the different elements that make up an application in WebLogic Workshop.

## The WebLogic Workshop Development Environment

The WebLogic Workshop development environment provides the tools you need for designing, building, and testing web applications, web services, and Java controls. WebLogic Workshop's graphical Design view makes it easy to design your application by dragging and dropping controls and setting properties. Changes that you make in Design view are automatically reflected in your code, and changes that you make to your code in Source view are reflected in Design view.

WebLogic Workshop uses special Javadoc annotations to add functionality to Java classes. You modify these annotations when you set properties for a web service, Java control, page flow or other WebLogic Workshop entity. For more information on these annotations, see the WebLogic Workshop Annotation Reference.

By default WebLogic Server runs in development mode. In development mode you can use WebLogic Workshop to build and test applications. In development mode, WebLogic Workshop automatically deploys applications that you build to the server. When you are ready to put your application into production, you can switch your server to production mode, or deploy your application to another server.

## WebLogic Workshop Projects

Applications that you build in WebLogic Workshop are organized into projects. Projects, in turn, are organized in an application, which is a collection of related projects. For example, the SamplesApp application that ships with WebLogic Workshop contains several projects. These projects are a good place to start to familiarize yourself with WebLogic Workshop, as are the tutorials. For links to the tutorials, see WebLogic Workshop Tutorials.

You can create different types of projects in WebLogic Workshop. If you want to build a web service or a web application, you should create a web application project. The samples project is a web application project that contains a number of web services and Java Server Pages (JSPs). It can also contain any other supporting files, such as Java, HTML, and image files.

A control project is a special project for creating and packaging your own Java controls. Java controls are controls that you create to encapsulate business logic in reusable, distributable components. Once created, custom controls function just like the built-in WebLogic controls.

A third type of project, the JAR project, can contain a set of Java files that are packaged into a JAR file. The JAR project may contain a build script that specifies how the JAR is packaged.

WebLogic Workshop also offers a number of business process template projects that you can use to design business processes that integrate your enterprise applications. For more information, see Building Integration Applications.

## File Types

You may use a variety of files to create your application in WebLogic Workshop, some of which you may not yet be familiar with. The key file types are as follows:

- JWS file, or Java Web Service file. This file is a Java class that contains special annotations that alert WebLogic Server to treat the class as a web service. You can test a number of JWS files in the samples project.
- JSP file, or Java Server Pages file. JSP files in WebLogic Workshop are like any other JSP files, except that they can contain special logic to encapsulate Java controls.
- JCX file, or extensible Java control file. The JCX file type is new in this version of WebLogic Workshop. All control files included in WebLogic Workshop are JCX files. Custom controls that you create with WebLogic Workshop are also JCX files.
- WSDL, or Web Services Definition Language files. WSDL files publish the interface for web service to consumers of the web service. WebLogic Workshop can quickly generate WSDL files for your web services.
- XMLMAP files. XML map files describe how XML should be mapped to Java, and vice versa, for a web service.
- CTRL files, or control files. Controls created in previous versions of WebLogic Workshop are of type CTRL. CTRL files continue to be supported, so any CTRL files that you have built in the past will work in future versions.

## Java Controls

Java controls encapsulate business logic in a reusable, distributable way. You can use Java controls in web services and on JSPs. Controls are easily configured by setting properties.

WebLogic Workshop provides a number of built-in controls, which you can use to access enterprise resources and perform common tasks in your code. These controls include:

- The Timer control, for executing code on a specified interval
- The Database control, for accessing relational databases
- The Service control, for calling a web service from your application
- The EJB control, for accessing Enterprise JavaBeans
- The JMS control, for sending and receiving messages on a JMS topic or queue

To learn more about built-in controls, see Using WebLogic Built-In Controls.

You can also create your own controls for yourself or other developers to use. Depending on your needs, you can create a simple control that you can use as-is, or a more complex one with properties that can be set at design time.

To learn more about creating custom Java controls, see Building Custom Java Controls.

## Web Services

WebLogic Workshop makes it easy to build enterprise-class web services, whether you are an application developer with minimal knowledge of J2EE or a J2EE expert. WebLogic Workshop handles the J2EE implementation details for you, so that you can focus on building business logic into your web service. Because they are useful for connecting distributed systems within the enterprise, web services can provide an important backbone for your enterprise application. WebLogic Workshop ships with a number of sample web services; see Sample Web Services for more information. You can also learn about building web services quickly by taking the tutorial.

You can build asynchronous web services in WebLogic Workshop. Asynchronous web services are useful for modeling business processes because they can handle the long-running operations that are common in the enterprise. WebLogic Workshop provides a straightforward means to map XML to Java, so that your web service can meet the varied needs of clients without a change to its internal implementation. Web services built in WebLogic Workshop can use controls to connect to enterprise resources or incorporate business logic.

For more information on building web services, see Building Web Services.

## JSP Pages

You can create JSP pages to build a user interface for web application in WebLogic Workshop. WebLogic Workshop includes a graphical JSP designer, with drag-and-drop HTML elements for constructing the visual aspects of your page. You can also include Java controls on your JSP pages, using the custom <jcx:usebusinesscontrol> annotation. For example, you can use this annotation to include a Database control on your JSP page, and call its methods from within the JSP.

WebLogic Workshop includes the Apache Struts framework, for coordinating JSP pages to create more complex applications.

For more information on building JSP pages, see Developing Web Applications with JSP and Struts.

## Debugging and Testing

You can debug your applications in WebLogic Workshop using the integrated debugger. You can set breakpoints to halt code execution, step through code, and examine values. For more information, see Debugging Your Application.

You can test web services and JSP pages in Test View, a web interface for testing purposes.

Related Topics

None.