To bring some structure in all the new features, we will divide them in categories from which you will get a clearer view, and address the new features in a broader perspective.
The new Oracle WebLogic 12c implements the Java EE 6 standards, which supports all kinds of Java EE 6 specifications implemented such as Java EE 6 features and development features:
The new features and specifications are listed as follows:
- JSF 2.0
- Java Servlets 3.0
- JPA 2.0
- EJB 3.1
- JAX-RS
- Managed Beans 1.0
- Support for Java SE 7 (and Java SE 6) which includes:
- Java language optimizations and internationalization
- Client and server support
- SSL/TLS 1.2 in JSSE to support JAVA socket transport security
- JVM Converge
Not typically a specification, but important though: the convergence of the Java VM; JRockit and HotSpot, are both incorporated with the best features from both Java virtual machines. The JVM convergence will be a multiyear process. Probably it will be a converged JVM-based on HotSpot with all goodness of JRockit.
The following are the JRockit features and specifications:
- Robustness
- Cooperative thread suspension
- More robust JIT compiler
- White box testing APIs
- Refactored codebase for maintainability
- Serviceability
- JRockit Flight Recorder
- HPROF heap dump support
- Enhanced JMX agent
- Native memory tracking
- Fine granular compiler directives
- Performance
- Up to 64 GB compressed references (was 4 GB)
- Up to 30 percent lower GC pause times overall
The following are the features of HotSpot JVM:
- Oracle apps and middleware on Solaris
- Client and non-Oracle apps on Solaris/Windows/Linux
Note
We will discuss JVM Converge in detail in Chapter 2, Supporting the JAVA EE 6. We will also highlight some of the important new JAVA EE 6 specifications.
WebLogic 12c has support for many IDEs. WebLogic already supports JDeveloper 11.1.1.5, but will come out with 11.1.1.6 later on. However, anyone developing applications using WLS 11.1.1.5 can deploy them to WLS 12c.
Also supported are Eclipse and NetBeans 7.1 IDE. As said, the JDeveloper 11.1.1.6 and IntelliJIdea IDE will be supported in a later timeframe. The following is the screenshot of the IDEs already supported by WebLogic 12c:
The following screenshot shows the IDEs that will be supported later in 2012. Unfortunately, during the writing process of this book, JDeveloper 12 was not available.
The following are the other features:
- New enhanced WebLogic Maven plugin.
- Lightweight development with WebLogic server. The ZIP distribution file does not contain any installers and can be used to configure a domain when unzipped.
- Built-in GlassFish descriptor recognition for easy re-deployment to Oracle WebLogic Server. GlassFish Server supports the
weblogic-application.xml, weblogic.xml, andweblogic-webservices.xmldeployment descriptor files.
There are many new features and tooling in the new WebLogic 12c. They are as follows:
- WebLogic 12c provides upgrades from iAS with automated tooling WebLogic 11g
- GlassFish redeployment with a built-in GlassFish descriptor recognition for re-deployment to WebLogic server
- JBoss and WebSphere with migration services
- WebLogic 12c has Active GridLink — This is an optimization for RAC Databases. GridLink uses Fast Connection Failover for faster RAC failure detection.
As WebLogic 12c is part of the Cloud foundation, it will run on conventional systems, and also on utilized hardware or better called engineered systems or Exalogic. To meet the requirements of these new hardware techniques, WebLogic 12c has better performance features.
Some of these features are:
- Higher Performance accomplished with different kinds of techniques such as the following:
- Parallel muxers with Java NIO APIs for low-level I/O-based operations
- An optimized work scheduler providing improvements to the Increment Advisor used to manage the size of WebLogic Server's self-tuning thread pool
- Lazy de-serialization of session data on the replica server until required
- Multiple replication channels for synchronous in-memory session replication between servers in a WebLogic cluster
- Enhanced high availability and disaster recovery
WebLogic 12c supports Oracle Traffic Director. Oracle Traffic Director is a layer-7 software load balancer. Oracle Traffic Director:
- Is a load balancer
- Is a local traffic manager
- Uses the application network layer 7
- Can act as a reverse proxy
- Supports SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0. You can configure SSL/TLS-enabled HTTP listeners
- Will be the replacement for Oracle Web Cache
- Is not a built-in feature of WebLogic 12c
- Supports Integrated traffic management such as routing, load balancing, request-routing and caching, and SSL crypto acceleration
Tight integration with the Enterprise Manager 12 Cloud Control and the use of the Middleware. Within the Enterprise Manager one can administer, clone, perform deployment, and provision tasks. Enterprise Manager 12c will be discussed in Chapter 5,Integration and Management with Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control.
Some of the other features are as follows:
- Navigate the middleware routing topology
- Customize middleware performance summaries
- End-to-end performance management
- Use the middleware diagnostics advisor to size the JDBC connection pool
- Diagnose WebLogic performance bottlenecks
- Capture diagnostics snapshots
- Clone an Oracle WebLogic domain from the software library
- Deploy a Java EE application
- Manage SOA suite
- Manage Coherence
The following screenshot shows you a typical middleware diagnostics page:
Managing Oracle WebLogic Server with EM 12c provides you a broad end-to-end monitoring and management perspective from the external face of applications, to the majority of the business logic. This means multiple clusters of managed servers that handle both presentation and business logic and communicate with each other via RMI, Web Services, and other remote invocations in order to complete transactions for frontend processes. In order to properly manage these WebLogic servers (whether there are multiple large-scale deployments or just a couple of clusters), administrators need to keep track of performance, service levels, configurations, error/exception handling, patching, and general application life cycle activities such as scale out and WebLogic domain or Java EE application provisioning.
The use of Coherence already exists, but was always a bit of a side product, from WebLogic 12 there will be a tighter integration with the latest Coherence as follows:
- ActiveCache integration for JPA used in WebLogic server. This allows JPA Entity caching and the TopLink grid enables you to direct queries to the Coherence Active Cache.
- Coherence clusters have their own MBeans within WLS, which means more integration of Coherence into the WebLogic server
Another integration is the one with the node manager, which is used for starting/stopping cache servers remotely and from the console. Exalogic and Cloud ready!
Oracle WebLogic is an Enterprise Application Server part of the Application Cloud Foundation. Oracle Cloud Application Foundation combines technologies together: Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, the basis for the cloud world, Oracle WebLogic Server for Java EE, Oracle Tuxedo for C/C++/COBOL, Oracle Coherence in-memory data grid, Oracle JRockit and Hotspot Java SE solutions, Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder, and Oracle Traffic Director.
In the following diagram, you can see where WebLogic is positioned in this foundation:
The following are some Exalogic features:
- The Virtual Assembly Builder: Deploys, un-deploys scale assemblies with Oracle Virtual Assembly, quickly create and configure entire multitier application topologies. With OVA, there is a new model for deployment, patching, versioning, and management.
- Exabus: High-speed network virtualization. Exabus has the following components:
- Coherence 3.7 for Java applications
- Tuxedo 12c for C++ applications
Infiniband network interface
Both are using direct memory access and kernel bypass for better throughput and lower latency.
- Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control, which we have seen earlier in this chapter.
More Exalogic features will be discussed in Chapter 6,Oracle WebLogic 12c to the Cloud – Exalogic.