Oracle WebLogic Server has been the most innovative and important application server in the market since its conception in 1995. In release 12c, which brings support for Java EE 6 platform and JDK 7, it provides developers and administrators several new and powerful functionalities along with long-awaited improvements to existing features.
With this book you will learn some of the basic WebLogic Server concepts such as domains, managed servers and node managers, and dive into more practical topics such as how to expose and consume web services and how to use and protect JMS queues, exploring Java EE 6 APIs and features such as context dependency injection (CDI), EJB 3.1, JPA 2.1, and others. This is done through an incremental development of a business case, building up a sample application with very detailed steps and screenshots, so readers can follow and apply them to real-world solutions.
Chapter 1, Overview of WebLogic Server 12c and Related Technologies, presents an overview of the latest Java Development Kit (JDK) 7 and Java EE 6 technologies, along with an introduction to the most relevant features of Oracle WebLogic 12c. It also positions WebLogic Server 12c in the Oracle Cloud Application Foundation (CAF) architecture.
Chapter 2, Setting Up the Environment, explains how to install and configure Oracle WebLogic Server and an IDE (Eclipse OEPE), setting them up to be able to develop and run the sample applications we will build throughout the book. We also set up a database (MySQL) and an LDAP Server (OpenLDAP).
Chapter 3, Java EE Basics – Persistence, Query, and Presentation, defines the business case used as a background to the technical features and implementation details that will be covered throughout the remaining chapters, giving an overview of some of the basic features of Java EE and WebLogic Server—how to create and use an optional package, the creation of a web application and a persistence layer project, including how to deploy and do sanity checks on them.
Chapter 4, Creating RESTful Services with JAX-RS, shows how to create and expose an Enterprise JavaBean as a RESTful web service through the usage of JAX-RS annotations, representing the business entities as JSON or XML instances leveraging JAXB parsing.
Chapter 5, Singleton Bean, Validations, and SOAP Web Services, explains the concepts of the validation framework, showing how to use the built-in rules and how to create custom validations. The chapter demonstrates how to persist an entity to the database and the transactional aspects involved in this operation. There is also the development of a JAX-WS service and an example of a Java EE singleton bean.
Chapter 6, Using Events, Interceptors, and Logging Service, shows how to use Java EE interceptors by creating a logging annotation that can be attached to classes or methods, how to publish and observe events by using CDI, how to create and use asynchronous methods on an EJB, and details about the logging services available in WebLogic Server.
Chapter 7, Remote Access with JMS, explains the different modes of remote connection presented by WebLogic Server, creating a standalone Java application to post messages to a JMS Queue and then enhancements to avoid problems when the server is down by keeping the message local using the SAF client.
Chapter 8, Adding Security, covers the basics of the Java EE Security model with step-by-step instructions on how to configure it on a WebLogic server, creating an authentication mechanism using LDAP, and integrating it on the sample application.
Chapter 9, Servlets, Composite Components, and WebSockets, shows how to create and apply reusable web components by applying JSF templates, how to create and test a WebSocket component, and includes a few tips about the new Servlet specification.
Chapter 10, Scaling Up the Application, explains how to create and configure a WebLogic Server cluster using a software load balancer to distribute requests among the servers, how to make session replication more scalable by using Coherence*Web, and how to use the WebLogic Singleton Service.
Chapter 11, Some WebLogic Internals, covers a few features brought by WebLogic Server and Java EE 6 that helps the development process by cutting deployment time, optimizing class redefinitions without the need to restart the whole application, finding classloader issues, and monitoring server resources in a simple way.