As been said before, the c in WebLogic Server 12c stands for cloud. WebLogic Server 12c is optimized to run as a high-performance, mission-critical, elastic-cloud infrastructure on the Exalogic Cloud. The Exalogic Cloud is tested and tuned to provide the best foundation for Java applications, Oracle applications, and other enterprise applications.
The Exalogic Elastic Cloud is a component of Oracle's Cloud Application Foundation, the company's next-gen app infrastructure. (Oracle calls it the world's first and only engineered system for cloud computing). It combines the Exalogic cloud and the WebLogic Server with Tuxedo for C/C++/COBOL, Oracle's Coherence in-memory data grid, the JRockit and Hotspot Java VMs, Oracle Enterprise Manager, and the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder.
This release is part of Oracle's Java Cloud Service. The Java Cloud Service supports development and deployment from multiple Java-based integrated development environments (IDEs), including Oracle's own JDeveloper, its open-source NetBeans IDE and the Eclipse environment.
When WebLogic 12c was announced on December 1, 2011, a few days later the new release was available at OTN. Developers, administrators, and other technicians started downloading it to play around.
The following types of WebLogic Server installers are available:
- OS-specific Package installer: This type of installer includes the JDKs for the selected platform. The installer can be an
.exe(Windows) file or a.bin(Linux, Mac) file. - Generic Package installer: This is a JAR file without the JRockit SDK and Sun JDK. You will need to pre-install Java for this type of installation.
- Upgrade installer: Upgrade installers allow you to upgrade an existing WebLogic Server installation to the current patch release. For example, if you have WebLogic Server 10.3.0 installed, you can use an Upgrade installer to upgrade your installation to WebLogic Server 10.3.6.
The installation process hasn't been changed from its prior release, and is pretty straightforward. Besides changing some splash-screens and version numbers, everything is still the same
Also after installation, the software directory structure seems pretty much the same, except of course, with updated software and version numbers.
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For installations on any supported platform on which Java is already installed. Includes WebLogic Server and Coherence, but without JDKs. |
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For installations on Linux x86 32-bit machines. Includes WebLogic Server, Coherence, Sun SDK 1.6_29, and Oracle JRockit 1.6_29. |
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For installations on Solaris 32-bit machines. Includes WebLogic Server, Coherence, Sun SDK 1.6_29, and Oracle JRockit 1.6_29. |
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For installations on Windows 32-bit machines. Includes WebLogic Server, Coherence, Sun SDK 1.6_29, and Oracle JRockit 1.6_29. |
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Development-only installer that extracts a complete WebLogic Server installation. |
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Contains additional files that supplement the development-only installer ( |
Upgrades are available for WebLogic 8.1 up to the latest version 10.3.5. You can do the upgrade by using the patchset assistant or upgrade wizard. Also upgrades from IAS, GlassFish, and JBoss are supported.
Available upgrade strategies are:
- Internet Application Server: Automated tooling.
- WLS11g: simple upgrade. Use domain upgrade wizard if you are an existing WebLogic customer on WebLogic version 8, 9 or 10.X. It is not necessary for WebLogic Server applications to be undeployed. In most cases, WebLogic Server applications can be run without modifications in the new WebLogic Server 12c. Upgrade script can be found in
WL_HOME/common/bin. - Glassfish: simple redeploy.
- JBoss: migration services.
At the launch of WebLogic 12c, Oracle told us there would be more than 200 new features available in this release. We won't discuss all 200 features but here are the most important ones. Except for supporting all the new JAVA EE6 features, the following features are also added or changed.
Not immediately available but during February 2012 JDK7 support came out through an updated Oracle WebLogic Server 12.1.1 distribution. This distribution includes patches that enable Java SE Development Kit (JDK) 7 certification and provide other product optimizations. The patches can be found in the MW_HOME/patch_wls1211/patch_jars.
Several Admin Console changes have been made to support the implementation of Java EE 6, including changes to:
- Deployment
- Application container
- SCA container
- Split source
- Application and module naming
The default value for startScriptEnabled has been changed to true as of this release. In previous releases, the default was false.
WebLogic 12c supports data sources using Java EE 6 specifications and provides an extended set of WebLogic data source configuration attributes.
The name element identifies a Datasource and is registered with JNDI. The value specified in the name element begins with a namespace scope:
java:comp:Names in this namespace use single componentsjava:module:Shared by all components in a module, for example, the EJB components defined in anejb-jar.xmlfilejava:app:Shared by all components and modules in an application, for example, the application-client, web, and EJB components in a.earfilejava:global:Shared by all the applications in the server
WebLogic 12c has Active GridLink used as an optimalization for RAC. It uses Fast Connection Failover for faster RAC failure detection.
Security is a very important subject in today's IT systems. WebLogic 12c support, along with support for Java EE 6, also some new or enhanced security features. We will now look at some security features.
WebLogic 12c adds support for the security context in the Admin Console creating inbound EIS-to-WebLogic principal mappings, which map EIS principals, such as users or groups defined in the EIS security domain, to corresponding principals in the WebLogic domain.
The JASPIC specification defines a service provider interface (SPI) for authentication providers that use message authentication mechanisms, and can be integrated in server web application message processing containers or runtimes. This message processing runtime uses this SPI at the identified message processing points to delegate the corresponding message security processing to the authentication providers.
Some certificates are removed from 12c such as Certicom.
JSSE is the only SSL implementation that is supported in WebLogic Server 12.1.1. The default value for JSSEEnabled has been changed to true. Previous releases have it set to false. However, even if JSSEEnabled is set to false, it will be ignored. The MBean value will not be changed, either in memory or in the persisted config.xml file. WebLogic Server will continue to use JSSE, but will give a warning.
The WebLogic Thin T3 Client JAR (wlthint3client.jar) supports GlassFish application server version 3.1 and higher. It is a lightweight alternative to the wlfullclient.jar and wlclient.jar (IIOP) remote client JARs. The Thin T3 client has a minimal footprint while providing access to a rich set of APIs that are appropriate for client usage. As you may expect, the Thin T3 Client uses the WebLogic T3 protocol, which provides significant performance improvements over wlclient.jar, which uses the IIOP protocol.
The Thin T3 Client is the recommended option for most remote client use cases. There are some limitations in the Thin T3 Client as outlined here. For those few use cases, you may need to use the full client or the IIOP thin client.
The Thin T3 Client can be used in standalone applications, and is also designed for applications running on foreign (non-WebLogic) servers. One common use case is integration with WebLogic JMS destinations.
In WebLogic 12 c , the boot username and password system properties weblogic.management.username and weblogic.management.password have been deprecated and will be removed in a future release, and you will no longer be able to specify the username and password in the startscript for starting in production mode.
The only thing to use is boot.properties. boot.properties file should be created manually when running in the Production mode and should be placed in the Domain directory in the security folder of the Admin Server.