Pages

Saturday, October 19, 2013

The road ahead for WebLogic 12c

Before we can describe all the new features of WebLogic 12.1.3 & 12.1.4 and compare this to the 12.1.2 version we should first take a look at the 10.3.6 version. WebLogic 10.3.6 is still the latest 11g version but Oracle will support 10.3.6 till 2018 and extended support till 2021. So Oracle’s Fusion Apps and we have enough time to migrate to WebLogic 12.1.X. Oracle also promised that the upgrade should be easy.  That being said we can take look at the WebLogic 12.1.X features.

Last summer Oracle already released WebLogic 12.1.2 which has since WebLogic 12.1.1 been certified for Java EE 6 and it looks like the Java EE 7 certification is still far away, so Oracle updated the 12.1.2 version with some badly needed frameworks like WebSockets. To make the developer experience more complete Oracle added more support for Maven and it comes with a utility to synchronize a Maven repository with all the needed WebLogic libraries.

12.1.2 is also the first release, which comes with Fusion Middleware infrastructure components. For now FMW 12.1.2 contains ADF & OWSM and comes with Enterprise Manager & MDS.
WebLogic 12.1.2 replaced the BEA installer and the BSU patching utilities with the Oracle Universal Installer and the OPatch utilities for applying patches.  To make it even more easier it just comes in one taste ( no Java included or a specific Operating System installer ).  Just one big jar file for WebLogic with Coherence or one for WebLogic, Coherence and FMW.

WebLogic 12.1.2 introduced Dynamic Clusters, Elastic JMS and integrated Coherence configuration and management. Dynamic Clusters is a great feature to extend the WebLogic Cluster with Managed Servers based on a Server Template. For this we only need to change a parameter on the cluster and the new Managed Servers are distributed over the NodeManagers. To use this feature your blades need to have enough free resources to handle the extra Managed Servers.
Elastic JMS can be combined with Dynamic Clusters, this way we only need to create 1 JMS server, target this to the cluster and every Cluster node will have its own JMS server.

When we look at the announced features of WebLogic 12.1.3 and 12.1.4 we can see that Oracle continues on this road.



WebLogic 12.1.3 will be the first version for many FMW 12c products like Oracle SOA Suite 12c and probably come in one big jar. 12.1.3 & 12.1.4 will add extra features and improvements to Elastic JMS & Dynamic Clusters. Elastic JMS in 12.1.3 will support Server Migration so you can’t lose any JMS messages.
In 12.1.4, Dynamic Clusters will have support for auto-scaling based on thresholds based on user-defined metrics. WebLogic 12.1.4 will also have an API to control the Dynamic Clusters, this way we can easily program when to stop, start or remove nodes from a dynamic cluster.



WebLogic 12.1.3 will come with the JDBC 12c driver, this driver will gives us better integration and reliability between WebLogic 12c and Oracle Database 12c (Application Continuity).
When we take a look at the administration side of WebLogic we can see that the Enterprise Manager will be more important, in WebLogic 12.1.3 we can also do Application and JMS administration from the EM application. Also 12.1.3 will contain a Restful management APIs for additional monitoring, operations, Datasource and deployment support.  Plus a global OWSM policy to protect all your Web and Rest services with one server policy.

WebLogic 12.1.4 will have a new feature called Multi-Tenant Applications, this way you can define an WebLogic template for an application, so one or more customers of this application which will have its own Cluster, Managed Servers, Application and (not shared) resources plus it will support Oracle Database 12c pluggable databases.



The last part of this article will talk about the development side of WebLogic 12.1.3 and 12.1.4.  First WebLogic 12.1.3 has to be the Modern Development Platform and will focus on HTML5 development.



12.1.3 has some great new features like
• Updated version of JAX-RS and WebSockets.
• Server-Sent Events, this allows you to continuously sending updates to the browsers.
• JSON-P or JSON with Padding will solve your cross domain security problems.
• Maven improvements.
• Avatar allows you to develop and deploy server side Javascript Services without knowing Java.

WebLogic 12.1.4 will be certified for Java EE 7 and this means the WebLogic platform will get some framework updates and some new frameworks like
• Java API for JSON 1.0
• Java API for WebSocket 1.0
• Batch Applications 1.0
• Concurrency Utilities 1.0


The last question is off course when can we expect WebLogic 12.1.3 & 12.1.4.  The 12.1.3 version will probably be released in March or April and 12.1.4 will be much later.

Posted by at
Labels: ,

15 comments:

  1. UnknownNovember 5, 2013 at 10:33 AM

    Hi,
    Please help me on this ssue...
    I have deployed my composite. the service is working fine, however for looking into the flow trace, i launched it and couldnt able to see the hyper link for the Bpel instance, so not able to look into the audit flow. the flow trace is showing the services and references but the bpel instance link is not there to launch the audit flow.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Edwin BiemondNovember 11, 2013 at 5:41 PM

      Hi,

      are you running the BPEL in memory mode and did you disable the audit trail?. Or can set the whole soa server logging mode to dev or prod.

      Thanks

      Delete
    2. GFebruary 6, 2014 at 4:29 PM

      I'm doing CI using Maven but the missing Oracle.jar in a centralized maven repository (and the plugin for that matter) really hampers development. It forces us to go though a lot of additional hoops (install maven, add jars to it, etc). Is there an easier way? For instance I don't know the actual weblogic.jar's groupid, artifact id and version, have to determine or "create" them, and go from there. It's a real pain.

      Delete
  2. UnknownMarch 21, 2014 at 1:46 PM

    Hi,

    Do you know the exact date of the publication of the 12.1.3?

    Regard

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousApril 9, 2014 at 9:57 PM

      It doesn't look like 12.1.3 and 12.1.4 are going to be on CY14... already April and 12.1.3 is not out yet...

      Delete
    2. UnknownApril 18, 2014 at 3:58 PM

      I'm still hopeful, because there isn't end of April yet.

      Delete
  3. UnknownJune 12, 2014 at 9:53 AM

    Kindly, I need exact date of the publication of the Weblogic 12.1.3 or 12.1.4 because, I plant my work on this release

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Edwin BiemondJune 13, 2014 at 8:16 PM

      12.1.3 will be released in the next few weeks. 12.1.4 probably late 2015 or early 2016.
      With 12.1.3 you already have everything you want for java and soa development, no need for 12.1.4

      Delete
    2. Kalpesh SoniJuly 23, 2014 at 5:31 PM

      2016 really? your first slide says 2014

      Delete
    3. Edwin BiemondJuly 23, 2014 at 5:36 PM

      That is not how we know it but it says Oracle FIscal Year, which start in july 2014 till june 2015. But 12.1.3 is out and got almost all the features of Java EE 7.

      Delete
  4. Tom NevilleAugust 20, 2014 at 1:46 AM

    Hi Edwin,

    Have you had any success building with Maven a SOA 12C Composite containing a SOAP reference component to a wsdl on the internet. I can build simple composites no problem with Maven, but as soon as I add a SOAP reference component with a external internal based wsdl it fails. In my case I'm seeing a java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: oracle/security/xmlsec/c14n/CanonicalizationException error. I believe this class to live in the osdt_xmlsec jar which is in my Maven repository. Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownMarch 16, 2015 at 10:43 AM

    Hi Edwin,

    We are currently using 11.1.6 version of SOA Suite in production. We are planning to upgrade to 12c soon. I couldn't find much information about 12c performance and stability. Could you please help me on this?

    Thanks in advance.

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownApril 2, 2015 at 8:02 PM

    We can't use 12.1.3 and await 12.1.4 because of this issue http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26003785/file-metro-default-xml-not-found-on-weblogic-12-1-3

    ReplyDelete
  7. Rodrigo UchôaApril 27, 2015 at 10:23 PM

    Any word on when will the next major release, fully compatible with Java EE, be launched?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Binh NguyenJune 25, 2015 at 1:07 PM

    Thanks, nice post

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)