BEA WebLogic
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BEA WebLogic is a J2EE application server and also an HTTP web server by BEA Systems of San Jose, California, for Unix, Linux, Microsoft Windows, and other platforms. WebLogic supports Oracle, DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, and other JDBC-compliant databases. WebLogic Server supports WS-Security and is compliant with J2EE 1.3.
BEA WebLogic Server is part of the BEA WebLogic Platform™. The other parts of WebLogic Platform are:
- Portal, which includes Commerce Server and Personalization Server (which is built on a BEA-produced Rete rules engine),
- WebLogic Integration,
- WebLogic Workshop, an IDE for Java, and
- JRockit, a JVM for Intel CPUs.
- Native enterprise-grade JMS messaging
- J2EE Connector Architecture
- WebLogic/Tuxedo Connector
- COM+ Connectivity
- CORBA connectivity
- IBM WebSphere MQ connectivity
WebLogic supports security policies managed by Security Administrators. The BEA WebLogic Server Security Model includes:
- Separate application business logic from security code
- Complete scope of security coverage for all J2EE and non-J2EE components
Versions
- 9.2 - GA Released during late June 2006. This release includes WebLogic Portal, WebLogic Server and WebLogic Workshop.
- 9.2 - Beta release of Portal product on WLS, released Spring 2006.
- 9.1 — Shipped early 2006. Production-ready WebLogic Server still based on Java 1.4. Cleaned up many issues with 9.0 product and provided foundation for Platform products (Portal and Integration) to build upon.
- 9.0 — Code name Diablo, shipped in the latter part of 2005 supporting Java 1.4 specification.
- 8.1 — Shipped Summer 2003, announced March 2003, discussed Jan 2003. However still by Summer 2004 not all enterprise customers were comfortable with its stability. Alfred Chuang, CEO of BEA Systems told analysts in August 2004 that his priorities included hardening WebLogic 8.1 to improve its scalability and reliability. There has been considerable debate around why BEA picked the number 8.1, thereby skipping 8.0. Developers suggested that 8.1 should have been 7.1 or perhaps 7.0.1. The website http://www.theserverside.com/ hosts WebLogic developer debates on these issues.
- 7.0 — Previous version to 8.1. There was no 8.0 release. Released Summer 2002 only one year before 8.1, even though most vendors have an 18 month product lifecycle between major releases. After the release of 8.1, BEA encouraged its users on 6.1 or earlier to skip 7.0 and move directly to the freshly released 8.1. [] (Often enterprise users wish to stay one release back from the current one in order to achieve greater reliability.)
- 6.1 — No longer supported on November 2006
- 6.0 — No longer supported (April 2003)
- 5.1 — Previous version to 6.0
Supported open standards
- J2EE 1.3 & 1.4
- JAAS
- SNMP
- XSLT & XQuery
- ebXML
- BPEL & BPEL-J
- Native support for:
- *SOAP
- *WSDL
- *UDDI
- *WS-Security
- *WSRP
WebLogic History
WebLogic, Inc., was founded by Paul Ambrose, Bob Pasker, Laurie Pitman, and Carl Resnikoff, in September, 1995.Up until then, Paul and Carl had been developing (pre-JDBC) Oracle, Sybase, and Microsoft SQL Server database drivers for Java under the name dbKona, as well as a "three tier" server to permit applets to connect to these databases. [An old dbKona/An T3 Usenet posting]. This was the WebLogic 1.48 server, and was called T3Server (a bastardization of 3-Tier Server).
Concurrently, Laurie and Bob had been working on network management tools in Java. Bob had written a SNMP stack in Java and a W32 native method for [ICMP ping], while Laurie worked on applets to display the management data.
One of the hidden features of the 1.48 server version was the ability to extend it by modifying a dispatcher and adding a handler for different types of messages. Bob talked Paul into sending him the source code for the server, and Bob extended it so that Applets could make SNMP and PING requests on the network, and display the results.
At this point, the founders worked together to pursue what was eventually to be called the Application Server.
Version 2
On 13-June-1996, [Sun released a spec for JDBC]. WebLogic had been working with Sun on the spec, converted all the dbKona database drivers to the JDBC API, and jdbcKona was [announced] on 20-Jan-1996. The [dbKona] APIs were retooled to sit on top of JDBC.
The Version 2 T3Server included a rewritten core, including a new dispatcher, new Applet/Server communications (the t3:// protocol), and most importantly, dynamic code loading. Continuing with its naming scheme, the 2.x server provided [eventKona/T3] and [remoteKona/T3].
Undocumented in the 2.0.9 release was a Java Servlet engine. The servlet engine was used for [administration] , and it wasn't until 2.2 that customers could [add their own servlets].
With Version 2.4, WebLogic [introduced RMI/T3], the first commercial implementation of RMI, and Bean/T3, a distributed version of JavaBeans.
[Version 2.0.x and 2.1.x Release Notes]
Version 3
For Version 3, the T3Server was renamed to Tengah, a [Javanese word that means "core" or "center"].
[Weblogic 3.0] included a new Swing console, ACL support, JNDI support, Time services, and early access to EJB.
On 15-June-1998, Weblogic [announced] the first commercial implementation of EJB 1.0 in its 3.1 product. Also [introduced in WebLogic 3.1] were:
- ZAC -- a thick client deployment tool
- COM -- for integrating with MSFT COM components
- Clusters -- for load sharing and high-availability
Version 4
WebLogic 4 was released after the acquisition. However, most of the development work associated with the release had already been completed.
See also
External links
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