Default Web Application - Welcome to BEA WebLogic Server

Welcome to BEA WebLogic Server 8.1! As the #1 Web application server, WebLogic Server implements J2EE 1.3 technologies, Web Services, and other leading Internet standards to provide a reliable framework for highly available, scalable, and secure e-business applications.

New Features

Here's a small sampling of the new features in WebLogic Server 8.1:

New Web Services Features

Reliable SOAP Messaging is a framework whereby an application running in one WebLogic Server instance can asynchronously and reliably invoke a Web Service running on another WebLogic Server instance. Both the sender and receiver WebLogic Servers persist the messages in their local stores until the messages have been correctly delivered.

JMS Transport. By default, client applications use HTTP/S as the connection protocol when invoking a WebLogic Web Service. You can, however, configure your Web Service so that client applications can also use JMS as the transport when invoking the Web Service.

Asynchronous Client Invocation. The clientgen Ant task can now generate stubs for invoking a Web Service operation asynchronously. The stub contains two methods: the first invokes the operation with the required parameters but does not wait for the result; later, the second method returns the actual results. You use this asynchronous client when invoking a Web Service operation reliably using the reliable messaging feature.

SOAP 1.2 support is included. WebLogic Web Services can now be configured to both receive and send SOAP 1.2 messages, rather than the default SOAP 1.1 messages.

Data Security. In addition to the existing Web Service connection security, WebLogic Web Services now support digital signatures and data encryption.

Rowsets

RowSets are a JDBC 2.0 extension to ResultSet which allow a user to read and modify a cached query result and then commit the resulting changes back to a database. RowSets are a disconnected model which use optimistic concurrency control to ensure database consistency.

Thin J2EE Client

Prior to version 8.1 Beta, client applications that incorporated WebLogic Server functionality required the entire WebLogic Server distribution (weblogic.jar and weblogicaux.jar) on the client machine. WebLogic Server now provides two new client .jar files that include only the functionality needed for small-footprint J2EE client functionality.

Administration Console Assistants

The Administration Console provides new assistants to help you deploy different types of J2EE modules and configure JDBC Connection Pools and DataSources. The deployment assistants guide you through the process of selecting deployment files and target servers, and automates the selection of deployment staging modes.

Split Development Directory

BEA provides a new WebLogic Split Development Directory structure for developing and building your WebLogic Server applications. This structure differs from traditional EAR files in that it is optimized for iterative development on a single WebLogic Server. The Split Development Directory is accompanied in WebLogic Server by a set of Ant tasks for building, packaging, and deploying applications as traditional EAR files for production use.

WebLogic Server System Management Ant Tasks

Many of the WebLogic Server system administration tasks, such as starting and stopping servers, querying and modifying configuration MBeans, and deploying applications can now be performed using Ant tasks.

Security

BEA is dedicated to providing you with a flexible, powerful security framemork:

WebLogic Security

WebLogic's security framework exposes a set of fully implemented Service Provider Interfaces for authentication, authorization, auditing, and PKI management. Modules from third-party security vendors can plug right into the WebLogic Server framework. A new role-based authorization module can be applied to all J2EE and non-J2EE resources. An embedded entitlement engine makes it easy to create prose-based rules for dynamically assigning roles and access privileges. The following improvements minimize the time spent developing and administrating security:

Improved functionality for creating security roles and security policies. New windows and improved options facilitate managing access to WebLogic resources such as the Administration Console, the Admin tool, MBeans, applications, COM, EIS, EJB, JDBC, JNDI, JMS, servers, and Web applications.

Improved support for keystores and SSL configuration. The SSL implementation of WebLogic Server supports the use of keystores for storing private keys and trusted CAs. Keystores add a level of protection to the flat files used in past release of WebLogic Server. The default configuration of SSL and demonstration keystores provide users with secure communication out of the box. When a deployment is ready to move to production, the configuration of keystores and SSL has been simplified through the implementation of a wizard.

Support for Sun's Java Cryptography Extension (JCE) package. WebLogic Server now supports the JDK 1.4.1 java.security provider configuration and the Sun JCE provider is used by default.This package provides a framework and implementations for encryption, key generation and key agreement, and Message Authentication Code (MAC) algorithms. Support for encryption includes symmetric, asymmetric, block, and stream ciphers. The software also supports secure streams and sealed objects.

Export/Import utility. This utility allows security data (users, groups, roles, and credential maps) from a security realm or a security provider to be exported to a file. This file can then be used to import the security data into a different security realm or provider. This feature eliminates the need to re-enter security data when moving from development to production.

WebLogic Tools

Easy to use developer tools help minimize the time spent building your applications:

Use our Developer Tools

WebLogic Workshop is an integrated development environment for building WebLogic Platform applications. With WebLogic Workshop, you can focus on building business logic into your application rather than on complex implementation details. Whether you are an application developer with a problem to solve or a J2EE expert, WebLogic Workshop makes it easy to design, test, and deploy enterprise-class web applications and web services. In the latest release, we've added support for creating Enterprise Java Beans greatly simplifying the development and maintenance of EJBs.

WebLogic Builder prepares Java files for quick deployment to the application server.

Learn More

BEA Resources for Learning

The Avitek Medical Records sample application demonstrates WebLogic Server features. Avitek Medical Records is available from the Start menu on Windows machines. On Linux and other platforms it can be started from the WL_HOME\samples\domains\medrec directory.

Code examples for WebLogic Server, if installed, are available from the Start menu.