New Features in WebLogic Server 10.0

Introduction

There are a lot of changes and new features in Weblogic Server 10.0. This new release gets better and efficient in terms of performance, in terms of the supported APIs and in terms of the supported external libraries. Almost all of the updates in the Java EE are reflected in the WebLogic Server 10.0. In the following sections we will discuss 18 of these new features:-

1) Core Server

1.1) Client Support and Modularity

In order to ensure for greater flexibility some aspects of the file structure of WebLogic have reorganized. Now many of components of the WebLogic Server that used to be in weblogic.jar are now included in separate modules and weblogic.jar now refers to these components in the modules directory from its manifest classpath. Now this file has relative manifest classpath references to the WL_HOME/modules directory and because of which it can not be moved to any new location. But if required three options are available:-

    - Include both weblogic.jar and WL_HOME/modules/weblogic.server.modules_10.0.0.0.jar directly in the classpath.

    - Modify the manifest classpath of weblogic.jar to refer to this JAR in the correct relative location.

    - Create a consolidated wlfullclient.jar for client applications using the Jar Builder tool.

1.2) Subcomponents Version Information

There is a new verbose optional argument in the java weblogic.version command. It returns version information about many WebLogic Server components.

1.3) Security Consequences

The default J2SE security policy in WebLogic server has been modified to grant access to the new modules. As a result of the reorganization of the weblogic.jar, the security policy, in your scenario, may need to be modified to grant access to the newer separate modules.

2) Java EE Metadata Annotations and Dependency Injection

The Annotations feature in JDK 5.0 allows developers to specify how the application component behaves in the container, requests for Dependency Injections etc. in the Java class itself. This simplifies the application development process and because of these features being useful for EJBs, Web Services and Web Applications, annotations prove to be very handful for programmers in the Java EE Programming model. Now application components can declare dependencies on external resources and configuration parameters through annotations, which is called Dependency Injection. It becomes the duty of the container to read those annotations and provide for the required resources.

3) Web Applications

Web Application technologies such as JSPs and Servlets have new and changed features. These are discussed below:-

3.1) Support for Servlet 2.5

Keeping up the compliance with the Java EE 5, WebLogic Server 10.0 implements the Servlet 2.5 specification. As with the EJB 3.0 specification the support for annotations and Resource Injections are among the new features of this release of the Servlets Technology. The annotations are used to declare data in Java Code instead of defining it in the long and confusing deployment descriptors. Web.xml is now optional.

3.2) Support for JSP 2.1

Keeping up the compliance with the Java EE 5, WebLogic Server 10.0 implements the JSP 2.1 specification. Among the new features of this technology is the support for Deferred Expressions. This feature allows deferring of evaluation of the expression so that it can be processed by the underlying mechanism at a suitable time within its lifecycle. Annotations for tag handlers and event listeners are other new features in JSP 2.1.

3.3) Support for JSF 1.2 and JSTL 1.2

These packages come with WebLogic Server 10.0 in the form of shared Web Application Libraries. Earlier versions like JSF 1.1 and JSTL 1.1, are still supported in WebLogic 10.0.

3.4) Annotations for Web Components in Weblogic format

There are certain WebLogic specific annotations for Servlets and Filters. For Example, WLInitParam etc.

3.5) Java EE Application Client Utility

There is a new option available for the weblogic.j2eeclient.Main utility. This utility is used to execute Java EE application client code. The new option is used to specify the name of the client Jar to be invoked when passing in an exploded EAR file. For Example:-

java weblogic.j2eeclient.Main applicationclient.jar t3://localhost:7001

4) Support for the newer Enterprise JavaBeans, Version 3.0

WebLogic Server 10.0 implements the Enterprise JavaBeans specification v3.0. Also it continues to support the version 2.1 of the EJB Specification. So this means the applications written in version 2.1 will continue to run on this newer Weblogic Server 10.0, without any modification.

WebLogic also provides an implementation of the BEA, which means that JPA and JDO are also supported.

The EJB 3.0 is oriented towards making it easier to program for the application developers. This is achieved by reducing the number of programming artifacts and introducing annotations which is related to the concept of Dependency Injections. Together these features in EJB 3.0 make programming the bean file easier and more intuitive.

EJB 3.0 also looks after standardizing the Persistence Framework and Object-Relational Mapping Model.

4.1) Upgrade EJB 2.x to EJB 3.0

Firstly, the default transaction attribute in Session Beans and Message Driven Beans was "supports" in version 2.1. But now it is changed to "required" in EJB 3.0. So do ensure to provide proper transaction attribute while migrating to the newer version of EJBs. Other than this there is no change for any of the three bean types in their deployment in WebLogic 10.0.

5) Shared Library Support gets better

The Java EE supports use of optional packages and shared libraries. An EAR file may have a directory that contains libraries packaged in Jar files. The name of this directory is specified in the EAR file's deployment descriptor "library-directory" element.

6) JDBC and JTA

A couple of features are introduced to the WebLogic JDBC and JTA in this release:-

6.1) Enhanced JDBC Connection Monitoring and Testing

WebLogic Server used to rely on JDBC drivers to properly handle Database connection failures. For some network failure conditions, WebLogic Server was not able to track a connection failure until the TCP/IP expires from timeout. This feature provides additional connection health monitoring and testing for connections when connectivity is suspected to be broken.

6.2) Oracle Fast Connection Failover Support

Now WebLogic Server supports Oracle Fast Connection Failover. This means now the JDBC applications can utilize a driver independent way to use connection failover support from Oracle 10g.

6.3) Support for MySQL 5.0

WebLogic Server supports MySQL 5.0.x and bundles with the required drivers as well.

6.4) JTA 1.1 support

WebLogic Server is compliant with JTA 1.1. It includes support for looking up the TransactionSynchronizationRegistry object in JNDI using java/TransactionSynchronizationRegistry. BEA extends this support by providing two more global JNDI names:

javax/transaction/TransactionSynchronizationRegistry and
weblogic/transaction/TransactionSynchronizationRegistry.

6.5) Migrating Transaction Recovery Service Automatically

Now an administrator can configure the JTA Transaction Recovery Service, using the WebLogic Server migration framework. This allows for automatic migration from the current unhealthy hosting server to a healthy active server utilizing the WebLogic Server health monitoring capabilities. So now a quick restart can be done on a redundant server should the host server fails which in turn improves the availability of the JTA TRS in a cluster.

6.6) Security for JTA across multiple Domains

WebLogic Server's JTA implementation supports the new Cross-Domain Security feature.