Software and Versions

This book examines features and services of WebLogic Server. We've used WebLogic Server 8.1 SP 1, and WebLogic 7.0 SP 2. We recommend that you apply the latest service packs after installing WebLogic Server to ensure all known issues have been resolved. Most of the changes between WebLogic 7.0 and WebLogic 8.1 occur in the form of new features or in slight changes to the Administration Console. We have tried hard not to litter the book with sections relevant to only one particular version, or with distracting warnings about which features are in which version. Rather, we have tried to be discrete. So, for example, when we say at the beginning of a section that "WebLogic 8.1 introduces a new feature that ...," you can be sure that the feature is in WebLogic 8.1 only, and not in 7.0.

Customers can choose the particular edition of WebLogic Server that best suits their needs. If you intend to develop pure web applications that consist of static web resources and incorporate dynamic content through servlets and JSPs, you can perhaps opt for the WebLogic Express edition. If you need to build full enterprise systems using EJBs, JMS, and distributed transactions, you will need WebLogic Server instead. Each comes in two different flavors: versions that support clustering and versions that don't.

Your WebLogic distribution is shipped with a stable release of the J2SE SDK. WebLogic 8.1 ships with a 1.4 JDK, and WebLogic 7.0 with a 1.3 JDK. All shell scripts and batch command files within WebLogic reference the JRE contained within this JDK.

WebLogic Server is fully compliant with the J2EE 1.3 standard. This means that you can incorporate any other third-party custom components, such as JSP tags that conform to the JSP 1.2 specification or entity beans that conform to the EJB 2.0 standard. Moreover, WebLogic applications can interact with any LDAP server for which the vendor supplies a JNDI 1.1-compliant service provider. In addition, you can deploy any third-party resource adapter that conforms to the JCA 1.1 standard.

Typically, WebLogic interacts with a backend DBMS through a configured pool of JDBC connections. We've used Microsoft's SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 3 and PostgreSQL to run many of the code samples illustrated here. In fact, you may use any industry-strength RDBMS for which a JDBC 2.0-compliant driver is available, including Oracle 8.0 or higher, IBM's DB2 or Informix, and many others.

Finally, even though WebLogic comes equipped with JAXP-compliant XML parsers, you may choose to utilize other implementations.