The Administration Console is the recommended tool for performing all system administration tasks related to WebLogic Server. As shown in Figure 11.1, the Administration Console provides an intuitive Web browser-based interface to a multitude of system administration tasks related to a WebLogic domain and its associated WebLogic Servers and applications.

Figure 11.1. The home page of the WebLogic Server Administration Console.

http://hostname:port/console (unsecured access)
https://hostname:port/console (secured access)

http://EINSTEIN:7001/console

http://localhost:7001/console

Navigating the Administration Console

Through the Administration Console, you have full administrative control of an entire WebLogic domain and the associated WebLogic Servers. However, to use the Administration Console in a productive and intelligent manner, you must first understand how to navigate its interface.

As shown in Figure 11.2, the Administration Console interface is divided into left and right panes.

Figure 11.2. The Administration Console interface.

The left pane of the Administration Console provides a hierarchical navigation tree (Domain tree) for managing the Administration Console and the active WebLogic domain, including all associated WebLogic Servers and their resources. When you traverse and select a node in the Domain tree, the right pane of the Administration Console displays a table of data, configuration or monitoring information for that selection. Most of the pages displayed in the right pane provide easy-to-use intuitive guides for setting the attributes of the selected node in the Domain tree.

If a node in the Domain tree is preceded by a plus sign, you can click on the plus sign to expand the tree to access additional resources for that node. You can also right-click on certain nodes in the Domain tree to bring up a context menu of administration and monitoring tasks related to that node. For example, Figure 11.3 shows the context menu related to the Administration Server node named AdminServer.

Figure 11.3. An example of a context menu for the Administration Console.

If you need help in using the Administration Console for any reason, you can easily reference the online Administration Console Help system, as shown in Figure 11.4, by clicking the Help icon displayed in the top-right corner of the Administration Console.

Figure 11.4. The Administration Console Help system.

A Simple Example of Using the Administration Console

Using the Administration Console requires you to first understand the task you want to perform, and the console’s interface provides you with the means to achieve that goal. Because this chapter assumes you have just recently been exposed to WebLogic Server, we’ve provided a simple example to demonstrate how you can set the machine name of the Administration Server.

Follow these steps to configure the machine name for your Administration Server using the Administration Console:

1. Launch your Administration Console so that it connects to your WebLogic Administration Server.

2. Enter a valid administration username and password.

3. Expand your domain tree.

4. Select the Machines node and click the Configure a New Machine link in the right pane.

5. In the displayed Configuration, General tab, as shown in Figure 11.5, enter the machine name you want to assign to your Administration Server and click Create.

   

   Figure 11.5. Configure a machine name using the Administration Console.

6. Select the Configuration, Servers tab and select your Administration Server as the server that runs on that machine, as illustrated in Figure 11.6. Then click Apply.

After you create your machine configuration, you will see it listed under the Machines node in your Domain tree.

Figure 11.6. Adding your Administration Server to your machine configuration.

The weblogic.Admin command-line utility provides a suite of useful functions that can be used toward the system administration of a WebLogic Server domain. It is an alternative to using the Administration Console, especially if you prefer to use the command line as opposed to a Web browser interface, or the Web browser is just not available.

The syntax and required arguments for using weblogic.Admin are as follows:

java weblogic.Admin [-url URL] [-username username] [-password password]
COMMAND arguments

where

Before you select the weblogic.Admin utility as your primary administration tool, review the following guidelines for its usage:

Embracing the preceding guidelines, until you become familiar with the management infrastructure provided by WebLogic Server, you should use the weblogic.Admin utility for those tasks where the functionality is already provided for you in the form of commands or for tasks for which you have predeveloped and tested scripts.

java weblogic.Admin [-url URL] [-username username][-password password] CONNECT
 count

java weblogic.Admin [-url URL] [-username username][-password password] FORCESHUTDOWN [targetserver]

java weblogic.Admin [-url URL] [-username username][-password password] GETSTATE targetserver

java weblogic.Admin HELP [COMMAND]

java weblogic.Admin [-url URL] [-username username][-password password] LICENSES

java weblogic.Admin [-url URL] [-username username][-password password] PING [round_trips] [message_length]

java.weblogic.Admin [-url URL] [-username username][-password password] SERVERLOG [[starttime]|[endtime]]

java weblogic.Admin [-url URL] [-username username][-password password] SHUTDOWN [targetserver]

java weblogic.Admin -url URL -username username -password password VERSION

The WebLogic Builder tool is a new addition to the WebLogic suite of deployment tools. It is a Java-based graphical application that you can use to

The EJBGen utility is a command-line Enterprise Java Beans 2.0 code generator. If you have annotated your Bean class file with javadoc tags, you can use the EJBGen tool to generate the Remote and Home classes as well as the deployment descriptor files for an EJB application.

The weblogic.Deployer utility is a command-line deployment utility that can be used to deploy J2EE modules and applications to WebLogic Server by directly interfacing with the WebLogic Server deployment API. If you intend to automate your deployment process, you can easily embed the weblogic.Deployer utility commands inside a batch or shell script, which can then be invoked from the command line.

The Administration Console provides the same deployment functionality as the WebLogic Builder and weblogic.Deployer utility, but through a Web browser. However, there is one limitation of using the Administration Console: The file system where the EAR, WAR, JAR, or RAR files reside must be accessible to the WebLogic Server machine.

All J2EE Web applications use a standard hierarchical directory structure to maintain their application resources (servlets, classes, static files, and other resources). This directory structure is described in Table 11.2.

The directory structure described in Table 11.2 complies with the J2EE specification and provides the foundation to assemble and deploy your Web application with any one of the following methods:

WebLogic provides a default Web applications directory named applications, which you can find under your WebLogic Server domain directory. For the purposes of following this example, create a directory structure as specified in Table 11.2, using the name HelloWorldApp as your document root. Your HelloWorldApp application directory should resemble Figure 11.8.

Figure 11.8. Your HelloWorldApp application directory.

Typically, a Web application contains a Welcome page as an entry point to a Web application. Even though this example is relatively simple, you can create a Welcome page to call the servlet you will create shortly.

Use the following HTML to create your Welcome page and save the HTML file as index.html in the root of your HelloWorldApp directory:

<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to my HelloWorldApp</title>
</head>
<body>
<p> This is the default welcome page for this example.
<p> <a href="./MyServlet">Click here</a> to call the Hello World servlet.
</body>
</html>

A complete discussion of servlets is outside the scope of this book. However, for the purposes of this example, follow these steps to create and compile a servlet named MyServlet, which is part of a package named objectmind.servlets:

Now that you have created your J2EE components and HTML files, it is time to start using the WebLogic Builder to assemble and deploy your Web application.

Start the WebLogic Builder by choosing Start, Programs, BEA WebLogic Platform 7.0, WebLogic Server 7.0, WebLogic Builder.

Alternatively, you can start the WebLogic Builder from the command line by using the following command:

startWLBuilder.cmd

After the WebLogic Builder is launched, choose File, Open. From the dialog box, you can select an exploded or archived J2EE module. For this example, you have so far partially created an exploded Web application. Hence, select the HelloWorldApp directory, as shown in Figure 11.9, and click Open.

Figure 11.9. Select your Web application using the WebLogic Builder.

After you click Open, the WebLogic Builder tries to locate and read any deployment descriptors associated with the J2EE module that you have selected to open. Because you have not created any deployment descriptors yet, the WebLogic Builder prompts you to allow it to search for Web modules or classes in your application directory and create the deployment descriptors for you, as shown in Figure 11.10. Click Yes.

Figure 11.10. The WebLogic Builder’s no deployment descriptor prompt.

When you open the HelloWorldApp module in the WebLogic Builder, you see a screen similar to Figure 11.11.

Figure 11.11. The WebLogic Builder screen.

The WebLogic Builder screen is divided into the following panes:

The WebLogic Builder does its best in ensuring the values assigned to the deployment descriptor elements in the web.xml and weblogic.xml files are correct. However, because they are auto-generated, often you will need to create, modify, or delete certain deployment descriptor elements.

You can edit the deployment descriptors using the WebLogic Builder, or you can directly edit the web.xml and weblogic.xml files using an XML editor, such as the BEA XML Editor. In this example, you will edit the deployment descriptor files using the WebLogic Builder.

Because you have just created your deployment descriptors, to physically save them to your WEB-INF directory, you need to save your J2EE module. After you complete this save operation, you will see the web.xml and weblogic.xml files in the root of your WEB-INF directory.

Up to now, you have partially created the HelloWorldApp Web application. The next step is to assemble the components of the application (servlets and HTML pages) so they are reflected in the deployment descriptors as one Web application. Follow these steps to assemble your HelloWorldApp application:

You have two options for deploying your HelloWorldApp application. Either you can create a WAR archive file of the entire contents of the HelloWorldApp directory, or you can deploy your application directly from the HelloWorldApp directory as long as the target Administration Server is hosted locally. This exploded directory deployment is possible because the web.xml and weblogic.xml deployment descriptors have been created and edited to reflect the J2EE components and other files that constitute your Web application.

The difference between these two deployment methods in the WebLogic Builder is that in an exploded directory deployment, the name of the Web application is stated by the name of the document root directory, which in this case is HelloWorldApp. In the WAR archive deployment method, the name of the Web application is governed by the name you assign to the WAR archive file, and you can deploy the Web application to a remote Administration Server.

The following steps will guide you through the deployment procedures for your exploded directory Web application:

To validate your application has been deployed, you can open the Deploy screen by choosing Tools, Deploy Module and clicking the Manage Deployments tab. Here, you can validate the status of your Web application on WebLogic Server. If it does not appear to be deployed, highlight your HelloWorldApp application and click Deploy.

You can test your Web application by typing the following URL in your Web browser:

http://<machine_name>:7001/HelloWorldApp

where machine_name specifies your WebLogic Server’s DNS name or IP address. This URL should launch your Welcome page, as shown in Figure 11.16.

Figure 11.16. The Welcome page of your HelloWorldApp application.

Click the Click here link to invoke your MyServlet servlet to display the Hello World! HTML page. Alternatively, you can invoke it by using the following URL:

http://<machine_name>:7001/HelloWorldApp/Myserlet