i am jambay

Cloud Foundry VMC-ng Has Helpful Client Logging

2012-10-01T21:56:00.002-07:00

I noticed on the twittersphere that Brian McClain and Mark Lucovsky had a small exchange about the latest tips and tricks for developing Cloud Foundry API clients. Brian has written a Cloud Foundry Chaos Monkey. The important thing to note is the latest cfoundry gem maintained by Alex Suraci on the Cloud Foundry frameworks team has excellent client logging support of Cloud Controller calls. The cfoundry gem is simply a nice ruby wrapper around the Cloud Controller REST API. You can see these calls in action by using the latest pre-release version of vmc (which also is a gem), which we call vmc-ng where the ng is for next generation. The latest vmc builds upon the latest cfoundry gem.

A few things to note about using vmc-ng:
1) You should install it with gem install vmc --pre where the --pre gives you the ng bits. Note that this is preview code and not fully baked yet.
2) vmc-ng functionality is not enabled by default, you need to create a file or directory in your ~/.vmc directory called use-ng. If you do not have this, vmc will fall back to use the standard version without the new client logging capabilities
3) In order to switch back to the old vmc, simple remove the ~/.vmc/use-ng file or directory.
4) The syntax of some of the commands has changed, so make liberal use of the help. One of my favorites is the updated line view of applications vmc apps -l and you can see an example of that below. Another great switch is -t that turns on tracing and shows all of the HTTP request/response in standard out.
5) When using vmc-ng, the Cloud Controller HTTP calls are logged in the ~/.vmc/logs/api.cloudfoundry.com.log file, where api.cloudfoundry.com is the target.

Check out the gist for a full example using vmc-ng and illustrating the new client logging feature.

Great Mobile Demos - Using AirPlay to Demo iPhone and iPad Apps

2012-05-12T07:11:00.000-07:00

I currently work on Cloud Foundry and vFabric products at VMware, and our customers are often building and hosting mobile applications with our products. Demoing these can be a crappy end-user experience for the person seeing the demo as screenshots and emulators don't give the exact mobile experience.

A friend of mine, Jeremiah Stone at SAP, recently showed me an awesome product called AirServer. AirServer is $15 and lets you turn your Mac/PC into an AirPlay receiver. This means that using new Apple products like an iPhone 4S or an iPad 3, you can exactly mirror the video/audio of the device to your computer, which can of course be projected to another audience. The projection is smooth enough that you can mirror the iPhone 4S camera display too which is like having a mobile video capture device live feed.

The best way of explaining it is that AppleTV let's you do this with an iPhone/iPad:

Using an app like AirServer, you can also point it at your laptop instead of AppleTV.

Imagine how much better the end-user experience of someone attending a web conference, conference room presentation, or even an auditorium can see your demo when it's exactly the user experience that a real iPhone and iPad application have instead of an approximation of it.

Here's a quick recording of what it's like. Fast forward to 1 minute 30 seconds if you just want to see the punchline.

A few notes, make sure you note the "double-click" and swipe left twice to get the AirPlay menu on your iOS device. I did not even know that menu was there previously.

Also note that some wireless networks may block the video projection. I could not get the display mirroring to function on the wireless network at work. I've heard that using an Ad-Hoc network or a Hotspot network should work in situations like that, so I'll need to play with that still. If you have trouble using it at first, make sure you're not on a wireless network that might be locked down.

Now go build an amazing mobile application on Cloud Foundry that I can demo!

Update: The Ad-Hoc network setup is super simple, I recorded that too. Just create a new Ad-Hoc network on you machine, connect to that network with your phone (no IP setup needed) and you're good to go.

Fixing Twitter Bootstrap and Eclipse Javascript Errors

2012-03-26T23:29:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to play with Twitter Bootstrap and some of it's other associated projects like Font Awesome lately and decided to see if I could integrate into a sample application I'm building. I'm using an SpringSource Tool Suite 2.9.1 which is based on Eclipse 3.7.2. When using a Dynamic Web project type and bringing in the assets directory from the Bootstrap download into my WebContent directory, I kept getting JavaScript errors, lots of them.

I realized that it was simply complaining about a single prettify minimized js file that went away if I got the unminimized version. But I'm stubborn so I refused to let Eclipse win with this work-around...

At first I thought it was related to the Validator or a Builder. But then I noticed that there was a JavaScript reference to a runtime and I checked the Facets. Sure enough there is a JavaScript facet that you can unlock and then uncheck.

Since I am not using that capability now, removing that Facet seemed to do the trick once I applied and executed a Project -> Clean, but at least on one occasion I actually had to rename/replace the javascript file that was causing problems to be marked as directed to in this Stack Overflow thread. Once that was out of the way I now had a nice Bootstrap example ready to customize. I simply copied one of the html files like starter-template.html or hero.html over from the Bootstrap examples directory and fixed the asset references with a replace-all. If you have a better approach to get Bootstrap and Eclipse to play nicely, I'd love to hear about it.

Mirco Cloud Foundry - Set the Local Timezone

2012-03-25T13:29:00.000-07:00

Would you like your Mirco Cloud Foundry to use a local timezone instead of UTC? Hopefully this propagates to the default timestamp display of whatever programming language you are using. I wanted this for a Java application I've been playing around with. Here are the simple steps I used.

1) Log in to Micro Cloud Foundry using the IP Address displayed on the console as root using the password you supplied when setting up MCF.

ssh root@192.168.129.139

2) Run the dpkg-reconfigure command to select your timezone

root@micro:~# dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

You should get an ASCII-GUI that let's you select the timezone.

When finished you should see output like this:

Current default time zone: 'America/Los_Angeles'
Local time is now:      Sun Mar 25 13:01:18 PDT 2012.
Universal Time is now:  Sun Mar 25 20:01:18 UTC 2012.

root@micro:~# date
Sun Mar 25 13:01:30 PDT 2012

3) Restart your applications.

Once I restarted the Java application, this time it picked up the local timezone as the default

toString()

output for a

java.util.Date

instead of the UTC timezone.

Arun Gupta Java EE 6 and Spring Response

2012-03-23T01:57:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer - I am a VMware employee and former WebLogic Server Product Manager at Oracle. I know Arun personally and he is my friend. The views expressed below are mine own and do not necessarily represent the views of my employer. I tried to post this comment on Arun's blog https://blogs.oracle.com/arungupta/entry/why_java_ee_6_is but it was marked as spam.

Arun,

I'm really surprised to see you trolling Spring like this. I realize that in your job as a Java EE evangelist that you want to advocate for products and frameworks that you are paid to advocate for, but I don't see the point in misrepresenting many of the attributes that people like about the Spring Framework. I find it hard to believe that you actually believe your blog is a balanced and objective analysis. I must say that I never hear the question why should I use Java EE 6 versus Spring and I think it's mostly a contrived question. Evans Data surveys indicate that about 2/3 of Java developers are using or will use Spring http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-spring-momentum-3-14-12.html. I guess if you're paid to travel around the world telling people not to use the most popular Java framework that you need to come up with reasons. From what I can tell the people screaming the hardest not to use Spring are mostly authors employed by vendors that have a strong interest to lock-in their customers to full Java EE server instead of a framework that lets them (but not requires them!) to run on a Servlet or Java SE container. In your publications list I see authors employed by vendors selling JBoss, Resin, WebSphere, Glassfish and WebLogic Server. There have been lots of people that have a different point of view on this topic. What I really don't understand as why someone promoting the Java ecosystem as their primary job wants to so obviously dissuade users from making up their own minds with an objective analysis of trade-offs, especially when it does not have to be a mutually exclusive choice and Spring is part of the Java community. You know that many other people (in fact the vast majority of Java developers) do not share your view, yet you do not provide a single link to present an alternative perspective. Are Spring advocates not part of the Java community in your view?

I find it very strange that you try and attach a "l"-word attribute to Spring when the major app server vendors have not even been shipping full Java EE 6 releases until so recently that almost no customers have the latest versions of WebLogic, WebSphere or JBoss installed. Java EE 6 came out in December of 2009 which is 2+ years old, WebLogic Server 12c only started supporting a Java EE 6 compliant server 3 months ago! WebSphere 8.0 was summer 2011 and JBoss EAP 6 is not even yet generally available. You are advocating to use a framework with implementations that are so new that almost no customers of the major application servers have a compliant server in production. Java EE 6 is not even available in the Oracle Public Cloud yet, so if Oracle can't even upgrade their containers that fast how can you expect all the customers to be up-to-date? Spring 3.1, which had a lot of features for a minor release, started shipping in the Fall of 2011, almost 2 years after Java EE 6. Plus as you probably are aware, it supports Java SE 5 and above, so customers are not required to be on the bleeding edge to use it.

You had some trouble finding a tutorial, and I am happy to help you with that since that should be very easy. First go to http://www.springsource.org/ and you should click the big button that says "Get Started". The next page has the links for both tutorials and sample code. The tutorials page http://www.springsource.org/tutorials has both video and written tutorials. If you want to create an MVC style application, there is one called "Green Beans: Getting Started With Spring MVC" by Colin Sampaleanu. http://blog.springsource.com/2011/01/04/green-beans-getting-started-with-spring-mvc/ Someone helpfully published a maven archetype in the comments and with only two maven commands you can run the sample with Apache Tomcat, no separate application server installation is required! http://code.google.com/p/flaveur/source/browse/trunk/m2/baremvc/README If you also wanted to use persistence, you could consider a video like Spring Data JPA by Oliver Gierke http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg2gCpBCkZw

The listing of jar files in the application is not complete if you don't list all the jar files inside Glassfish or WebLogic Server that implement Java EE 6. The comparable Apache Tomcat list of jars is obviously much smaller. You know that an application is a container + framework code + application code and you should represent the entire accurate picture.

As for jpetstore, that's not really an updated Spring example as you can see by the Spring version being only a SNAPSHOT before 3.0.0 was released. It should probably be removed from the list of samples. The error you saw in maven is from an issue with a JBoss repository. When I removed the JBoss repository at the bottom of the pom.xml file and updated the Spring version from a SNAPSHOT to RELEASE then my maven build worked fine. If you want to use a sample that is often highlighted by Spring advocates, then you could look at Spring Travel, but it is only based on Spring 3.0 and not yet taking advantage of all of the Spring 3.1 capabilities. https://src.springframework.org/svn/spring-samples/travel/

Your comparison tables are also Apples and Oranges. You can simply put Tomcat or Jetty in that comparison table and tc Server Standard edition is under 15MB http://repo.vmware.com/pub/rhel5/vfabric/5/x86_64/. If you include tc Server, then you should use the Standard Edition recommended for production at 15MB as the Developer Edition includes Spring Insight, which would require including JRockit and JRockit Mission Control in the Java EE 6 column. I suppose it doesn't help your case to point out that the production version of WebLogic Server 12c has a 1 Gigabyte generic zip installer and that the smaller developer versions are not suitable or supported in production. I think you are also well aware of the fact that you could run Spring apps on embedded Tomcat 7 which is just a few megs. I am simply amazed that you think tc Server is proprietary when it is based on Apache Tomcat, the reference implementation of the Servlet Specification, which is part of Java EE! Why would you want to mislead people like that? You know as well as I do that there are lots of WebLogic Server customers that are stuck using weblogic.ejb... packages in their code from previous versions of the specification. The only thing even close to that might be Tomcat valves, but over 1/2 of all Java applications use Tomcat these days http://blog.newrelic.com/2012/01/10/infographic-oss-java-wins-in-the-cloud-era/, which is free and open source, so it's not locking anyone in.

VMware provides commercial support for both Tomcat and Spring as open source products and customers are not left on their own to manage jars. VMware also provides commercial products like tc Server, which is Apache Tomcat with some additional management and configuration capabilities and other open source derived products in the vFabric family that represent the way most modern applications are built. VMware customers are free to use open source with or without commercial support or they can choose a commercial product derived from open source, the choice is theirs.

While Java EE 6 was finalized over 2 years ago, Spring has moved on to simplify and provide solutions to lots of other problem domains with Spring Data applied to NoSQL (MongoDB, GemFire, Riak, Redis, Neo4j) and Big Data (Hadoop) http://www.springsource.org/spring-data. Spring Social http://www.springsource.org/spring-social has already been available providing solutions to integrate with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, TripIt and Github while JSR 357 is just getting started http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=357. Developers want solutions to these problems now, not when RedHat, Oracle and IBM get around to it.

People may not realize that you and I are friends and I'm happy to see you are passionate about your job, but I can't let you misrepresent the facts without setting the record straight. I don't understand the Java EE vendor mentality that encourages deriding Spring when so many developers use it effectively and like it. Go ahead and cheer for your team, but to misrepresent what you see as the other team's case is disingenuous. I personally find it very deflating to the Java community as a whole when you, Bill Burke and others write trolling articles. Hopefully only the vendors are paying attention in these artificial and made-up scuffles while productive developers are actually getting work done.

Cheers,

James Bayer
@jambay

Will Cloud Era Beer Be Mostly Generic?

2012-01-16T23:28:00.001-08:00

Disclaimer: I am employed by VMware and work with the Cloud Foundry team.

The Cloudbees guys like stirring the pot a bit, which is fine, but I’m taking the bait this time. In several of their blog posts they try and paint OS or virtualization vendors with a broad brush that can't possibly be relevant in the cloud era, which they believe is a very convenient argument for them. Today Sacha Labourey offered some commentary on the recent EC2 Windows free tier announcement and I think he's got it wrong enough (at least about the non-obvious points) that it inspired me to write some thoughts down of my own.

Sacha's outline is something like:

Microsoft Windows is more expensive than Linux (sorry Microsoft)
VMware is more expensive than Xen (sorry VMware)
Paid Linux is more expensive than free Linux (sorry Redhat)
Hosting margins are smaller than license or subscription margins (sorry licensed and subscription software vendors)
Windows has weak cloud DNA
Amazon will be the new Microsoft
Therefore, try Cloudbees, the closed-source Java PaaS!

To really dumb it down, my take away is that Sacha feels like cloud providers like Amazon will commoditize the operating system and virtualization companies to an extreme almost exclusively because they will have the lowest raw compute cost per hour. He implies that totally free open source software without commercial support will dominate the entire stack and dramatically erode business from commercial and subscription based software providers. Virtualization and operating systems won’t matter as Amazon Linux will become defacto. He thinks we're all going to love the taste of the blandest and cheapest generic cloud beer.

I disagree that server-side operating system and virtualization software will become undifferentiated and therefore irrelevant in the cloud era. If the only prism you view things in is cost per hour of raw compute instances available on-demand, then sure, running Amazon Linux on EC2 is tough to beat. Some fraternity parties make beer selection decisions with a framework like that. However, an overwhelming majority of the workloads don't and won't fit that model. Even if PaaS really takes off, it will run better on great virtualization and operating systems. Public coulds are not the only way to operate cloud era infrastructure. Cloud can be a malleable term, when I think cloud I think multi-data center, physical layer abstraction, high availability, great density, elasticity, self-service, and organization-relevant billing and metering. Vendors that offer a holistic solution that spans public and private clouds and integrates with pre-cloud systems will have loyal customers that are willing to pay a premium over cheaper solutions with gaps. A winning solution will leverage innovations and differentiation in the operating systems and virtualization.

It's not too hard to think of a few examples of why enterprises run Windows which include Exchange, Active Directory, Office, .NET and SQL Server. These customers choose to pay more when there are free Linux alternatives! It would be cheaper for everyone to sustain themselves on ramen noodles every night, yet the restaurant business seems to be doing just fine. Macs cost more than non-Mac laptops, yet I see lots of cloud people using Macs. I believe that generic beer will not be the only option and probably not even the most popular choice on the menu in the cloud era. Customers will pay a premium for stuff that lets them accomplish their goals, which may not be directly aligned with the cheapest compute cost per hour on the blandest stack. Time-to-market, ease-of-use, locality, quality and reliability could all conceivably prioritized over raw compute cost per hour depending on the need. EC2 already illustrates this breadth of menu approach by the variety of OS's supported and different tiers of pricing.

A few other random points. I recently learned that many of the worlds ATM's run an embedded version of Windows blue-screen-of-death jokes aside. Windows has demonstrated it can be optimized for very small footprints.

Amazon Linux might be great for some situations, but Red Hat has indicated that they may not continue letting their operating system innovations to trickle downstream easily as shown by their decision to ship the kernel with patches pre-applied in RHEL 6. Operating system R&D is funded by customers and there will be differentiated features for paid offerings. Why else would Joyent invest so much in SmartOS? Amazon Linux is basically equivalent to RHEL today, but this is a fluid situation.

Cheap beer has it’s time and place, but the majority of customers want choice and are willing to pay for quality on most occasions. Keep yourself honest and try the cheap beer every once in awhile, just to be sure. It reinforces my appreciation that you get what you pay for.

Generic beer image is attributed to pdxdiver from flickr.

Micro Cloud Foundry – Increasing Default Memory Limits

2011-11-06T16:47:00.001-08:00

I attended my first SpringOne a few weeks ago in my former hometown Chicago. It was a very fun event with lots of energy around the Spring community as well as they Groovy and Grails crowd. Cloud Foundry topics took center stage with many standing-room-only sessions and lots of people coming up to the booth. All attendees received their very own copy of Micro Cloud Foundry as part of their conference paraphernalia on a USB stick inside the black binder. Micro Cloud Foundry is a Virtual Machine that lets developers have a complete Cloud Foundry instance on their laptop. This is great because you can develop locally and be confident that your application will run the same on cloudfoundry.com or another instance. There are some great resources for getting started with Micro Cloud Foundry including Josh Long’s screencast and a Getting Started guide written by Charles Lee. Micro Cloud Foundry defaults to a 1GB Virtual Machine, which limits the number of applications and the amount of memory per application to 1GB. The Java and Spring application profiles default to 512MB, which is only 2 applications with the default settings. I had a question from someone who walked up to the booth whether the memory limits could be increased. Since Cloud Foundry guru Dave McCrory was close by I got a tip to simply boost the memory for the VM and reconfigure using the console menu. I tried it on my laptop since I’m lucky enough to have 8GB of RAM and it worked well. Below are the steps.

Just need the punchline?

@jambay
jambay got micro #cloudfoundry to use up to 2GB of memory (1GB is default), stop mcf, change vm mem setting, start vm, menu option thanks @mccrory
Oct 26 via webFavorite RetweetReply

The detailed steps

Micro Cloud Foundry has a text based interface, and if you select “help” you can see the defaults. There is also a Knowledge Base article describing resource limits on support.cloudfoundry.com.

You can validate your Micro Cloud Foundry VM settings by using the vcap command line interface, here is where I start:

So now you can stop your Micro Cloud Foundry VM, preferably through the text command interface so the VM shuts down properly. Once the VM has been shutdown, you will be able to edit the memory settings by selecting Processors & RAM as shown below. You cannot edit the memory settings while the VM is running.

Now change the value from 1024 MB to 2048 MB.

After restarting the VM with the larger memory settings, the Micro Cloud Foundry interface should detect that the memory settings need to be reconfigured and that should be shown with red text, so select that command.

Follow the instructions in the console and when the services finish coming up again a few moments later, you can reissue the “vmc info” command and hopefully see the new higher memory limit in the response.

1st Day at VMware

2011-10-11T00:32:00.000-07:00

Today was my 1st day at VMware where I'll be working as a Product Manager on the Cloud Foundry team. This tweet sums up my first day:

@jambay
jambay today was my first day at #vmware. 1st impressions: exciting, intense, active, great campus, vibrant, nice perks. #cfoundry fires me up.
Oct 11 via webFavorite RetweetReply

I feel like the PaaS space is still very much in it's early days, somewhat like the application server market was in 1999 when I first started writing my first Servlets with WebSphere as a fresh out-of-school IBMer learning Java. VMware has assembled an incredibly talented team over the last few years to work in this area and has been doing lots of hiring lately like this example demonstrates. In addition to the great people, VMware has a fantastic technology portfolio that is unburdened by a huge legacy middleware business that allows them to think differently and move with much more agility. Do not misunderstand me, I believe Oracle, IBM, Redhat and other traditional middleware vendors will likely still have success selling traditional middleware in the short and mid-term, but I had to jump at this opportunity to be involved where I think the most innovation is and make my impact on this developing space that I think has great promise.

Thank you to everyone at Oracle for the kind words and emails. I really appreciated my time there and at BEA Systems, made great friends and learned a lot. I know that Java EE, Glassfish and WebLogic Server are in great hands and you will continue being successful.

If you want to learn more about what has me so excited about Cloud Foundry, there are several obvious paths. One great aspect of Cloud Foundry is that it's hosted on github and Apache 2.0 licensed, so it's easy to get and review the code. You can also download and use the complete package with a Micro Cloud Foundry virtual machine that you can run on a laptop, with a step-by-step example using Java or other languages and frameworks like Ruby. You can also watch a video or two on youtube if you just want to see more about what it's all about.

Coherence*Web with WebLogic Server Simple Example and Troubleshooting Overview

2011-09-29T22:35:00.000-07:00

This blog was originally posted on http://blogs.oracle.com/jamesbayer when I worked for Oracle.

This quick troubleshooting guide covers a basic setup of a simple sample application using Coherence*Web instead of traditional WebLogic Server session replication. I used Coherence 3.6.1.x and WebLogic Server 10.3.4 for when I originally created this example, but the steps should be similar for any Coherence 3.5+ and WebLogic Server release capable of using the Coherence*Web SPI, which include some older releases of WLS, but consider 10.3.1+ as the most well-worn-path. I apologize for the formatting, which is a bit sloppy compared to my normal blog posts. This has been in a word doc on my desktop for a long time waiting for when I had time to post it properly. Given two requests for this in the last week I figured a sloppy blog post was better than not sharing it broadly.

For simplicity, we are assuming 2 WebLogic Server managed server instances in a WLS Cluster are running Coherence*Web as storage disabled nodes. The WebLogic Servers will have a simple test web application located here deployed that stores session data on a Coherence cluster with 2 storage enabled cache servers. There are a sequence of steps that help validate that session failover is working properly. Some of these steps are from product documentation, and I've supplemented with my own comments in red. Note that this example will not use Active Cache, which is a way to manage Coherence configuration and Cache Server lifecycle from WebLogic Server. I recommend users understand this example first before adding on Active Cache. More detail on Active Cache including a video is covered in this blog entry http://blogs.oracle.com/jamesbayer/entry/weblogic_server_1034_screencas

2.2.6.2 Configuring EAR-Scoped Cluster Nodes

To use Coherence*Web for session management in EAR-scoped cluster nodes, follow these steps:

Use the WebLogic Server Administration Console to deploy the coherence.jar and coherence-web-spi.war files as shared libraries to all of the target servers where the application will be deployed. See "Install a Java EE Library" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console Help for more information.

I always recommend using a shared library to include the coherence.jar on the classpath of your application instead of the approach where it is embedded directly inside your application (say in APP-INF/lib or WEB-INF/lib). This way if you patch or upgrade Coherence, the most you need to do is redeploy the coherence.jar shared library and your application. If you use the approach where your application directly embeds coherence.jar inside of it, then you need a new build of your application which updates the embedded coherence.jar, which is typically an undesirable process.

Note: The WLS 10.3.1 Administrative Console will not let you deploy coherence.jar without an error, but you can use the WLST command like:

deploy('coherence','/scratch/jbayer/coherence/lib/coherence.jar', libraryModule='true')

This console deployment issue does not affect WLS 10.3.2+. However, you may note what appears to be an error when deploying coherence.jar, but if you read it closely "Assuming this is a library deployment." you will see that it is not an error, it is a warning and you can proceed with the deployment..

Assuming you are using an EAR, create a library reference to coherence in your sample application. Assuming you have an EAR file with a WAR module inside, then weblogic-application.xml looks like this:

<weblogic-application ...>

...

<library-ref>

<library-name>coherence</library-name>

</library-ref>

...

</weblogic-application>

The above library-ref element will merge the coherence.jar into the APP-INF/lib of the App during the deployment process, which will make Coherence classes EAR scoped.

Quick aside, If you are using a stand-alone WAR file that is not encapsulated inside of an EAR, then instead of using a library reference, you can use an Optional Package approach to refer to the library, which involves creating an entry in the META-INF/manifest.mf of the WAR file like this:

Manifest-Version: 1.0

Class-Path:

Extension-List: coherencejar

coherencejar-Extension-Name: coherence

Note that there must be a newline at the end of the last line with text otherwise it will not work correctly. Unlike the library reference mechanism, the library is not merged into an archive on disk at deployment time, rather it utilizes a Java Optional Package approach to put the coherence.jar on the classpath.

For the WAR modules, have the weblogic.xml use a library reference for the coherence-web-spi.war like this:

<wls:weblogic-web-app ...

<wls:library-ref>

<wls:library-name>coherence-web-spi</wls:library-name>

</wls:library-ref>

</wls:weblogic-web-app>

This will merge the contents of the coherence-web-spi.war with the application's web module.

Now we also have to configure the tangosol-coherence-override.xml file if you want to override default configuration settings. One such setting I like to override is to use Well-Known-Addresses (WKA), which is a unicast approach instead of the default multicast networking that many Network Administrators do not permit. The tangosol-coherence-override.xml file approach will be easier than using -D options on the command line because in WLS there may be multiple web applications using different Coherence configurations, and if you use -D options on the Java command line, then it is the same configuration for all Coherence instances in that JVM without some other tedious intervention. I used the latest release of Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse (OEPE) to create the below configuration file with the Coherence tooling, which will use these two WKA addresses and auto-increment the port the more servers you start (default). I put one copy in the EAR files APP-INF/classes directory and one in $COHERENCE_HOME. You can replace the hostname of adc2101131.us.oracle.com with appropriate hostnames for your systems. Note that the newer versions of Coherence use XSD instead of DTD.

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<!DOCTYPE coherence SYSTEM "coherence-override.dtd">

<cluster-config>

<unicast-listener>

<well-known-addresses>

<socket-address id="2">

<address>adc2101131.us.oracle.com</address>

</socket-address>

<socket-address id="1">

<address>adc2101131.us.oracle.com</address>

</socket-address>

</well-known-addresses>

<address system-property="tangosol.coherence.localhost">adc2101131.us.oracle.com</address>

<port-auto-adjust system-property="tangosol.coherence.localport.adjust">true</port-auto-adjust>

</unicast-listener>

</cluster-config>

</coherence>

Then before you deploy the application to Weblogic Server, you need to setup and start the cache servers. I simply clone $COHERENCE_HOME/bin/cache-server.sh to $COHERENCE_HOME/bin/sessions-cache-server.sh I'll have bolded and highlighted the edits I made....

#!/bin/sh

# This will start a cache server

# specify the Coherence installation directory

COHERENCE_HOME=.

# specify the JVM heap size

MEMORY=512m

if [ ! -f ${COHERENCE_HOME}/bin/session-cache-server.sh ]; then

echo "session-cache-server.sh: must be run from the Coherence installation directory."

exit

if [ -f $JAVA_HOME/bin/java ]; then

JAVAEXEC=$JAVA_HOME/bin/java

else

JAVAEXEC=java

JAVA_OPTS="-Xms$MEMORY -Xmx$MEMORY -Dtangosol.coherence.session.localstorage=true -Dtangosol.coherence.cacheconfig=WEB-INF/classes/session-cache-config.xml -Dtangosol.coherence.override=/scratch/jbayer/coherence/tangosol-coherence-override.xml"

$JAVAEXEC -server -showversion $JAVA_OPTS -cp "$COHERENCE_HOME/lib/coherence.jar:$COHERENCE_HOME/lib/coherence-web-spi.war" com.tangosol.net.DefaultCacheServer $1

Then start two instances of the session-cache-server.sh from the $COHERENCE_HOME directory like this:

bash-3.2$ bin/session-cache-server.sh

Make sure they join the cluster together and see each other by viewing the member list in the output. Here is the output from the first server. Note the highlighted areas in red which show that:

· the override file we intend is being used

· the session-cache-config.xml from the coherence-web-spi.war is being used

· that the protocol specified in the override is being used, in this case WKA mans unicast instead of multicast

· the distributed sessions service is storage enabled

bash-3.2$ bin/session-cache-server.sh

java version "1.6.0_21"

Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_21-b51)

Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 17.0-b17, mixed mode)

2011-02-15 23:26:56.374/0.580 Oracle Coherence 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=main, member=n/a): Loaded operational configuration from "jar:file:/scratch/jbayer/coherence/lib/coherence.jar!/tangosol-coherence.xml"

2011-02-15 23:26:56.379/0.585 Oracle Coherence 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=main, member=n/a): Loaded operational overrides from "file:/scratch/jbayer/coherence/tangosol-coherence-override.xml"

2011-02-15 23:26:56.386/0.592 Oracle Coherence 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=main, member=n/a): Optional configuration override "/custom-mbeans.xml" is not specified

Oracle Coherence Version 3.6.1.0 Build 19636

Grid Edition: Development mode

2011-02-15 23:26:56.760/0.966 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=main, member=n/a): Loaded cache configuration from "jar:file:/scratch/jbayer/coherence/lib/coherence-web-spi.war!/WEB-INF/classes/session-cache-config.xml"

2011-02-15 23:26:57.257/1.463 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D4> (thread=main, member=n/a): TCMP bound to /10.229.188.238:8088 using SystemSocketProvider

2011-02-15 23:27:27.613/31.819 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): Created a new cluster with Member(Id=1, Timestamp=2011-02-15 23:26:57.261, Address=10.229.188.238:8088, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:30802, Role=CoherenceServer, Edition=Grid Edition, Mode=Development, CpuCount=2, SocketCount=2) UID=0x0AE5BCEE0000012E2D5D5EED53EE1F98

2011-02-15 23:27:27.616/31.822 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=main, member=n/a): Started cluster Name=n/a

WellKnownAddressList(Size=2,

WKA{Address=10.229.188.238, Port=8090}

WKA{Address=10.229.188.238, Port=8088}

)

MasterMemberSet

(

ThisMember=Member(Id=1, Timestamp=2011-02-15 23:26:57.261, Address=10.229.188.238:8088, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:30802, Role=CoherenceServer)

OldestMember=Member(Id=1, Timestamp=2011-02-15 23:26:57.261, Address=10.229.188.238:8088, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:30802, Role=CoherenceServer)

ActualMemberSet=MemberSet(Size=1, BitSetCount=2

Member(Id=1, Timestamp=2011-02-15 23:26:57.261, Address=10.229.188.238:8088, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:30802, Role=CoherenceServer)

)

RecycleMillis=1200000

RecycleSet=MemberSet(Size=0, BitSetCount=0

)

TcpRing{Connections=[]}

IpMonitor{AddressListSize=0}

2011-02-15 23:27:27.665/31.871 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Invocation:Management, member=1): Service Management joined the cluster with senior service member 1

2011-02-15 23:27:27.828/32.034 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=ReplicatedCache:ReplicatedSessionsMisc, member=1): Service ReplicatedSessionsMisc joined the cluster with senior service member 1

2011-02-15 23:27:28.074/32.280 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=DistributedCache:DistributedSessions, member=1): Service DistributedSessions joined the cluster with senior service member 1

2011-02-15 23:27:28.105/32.311 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=main, member=1):

Services

(

ClusterService{Name=Cluster, State=(SERVICE_STARTED, STATE_JOINED), Id=0, Version=3.6, OldestMemberId=1}

InvocationService{Name=Management, State=(SERVICE_STARTED), Id=1, Version=3.1, OldestMemberId=1}

ReplicatedCache{Name=ReplicatedSessionsMisc, State=(SERVICE_STARTED), Id=2, Version=3.0, OldestMemberId=1}

PartitionedCache{Name=DistributedSessions, State=(SERVICE_STARTED), LocalStorage=enabled, PartitionCount=257, BackupCount=1, AssignedPartitions=257, BackupPartitions=0}

)

Started DefaultCacheServer...

Here is the output from the second cache server. Note that it shows both servers being part of the cluster now. I'll highlight a few things to look for. Notably, the same configuration values are used as the previous cluster and that this time the member id is 2 and at the end this node asks the member 1 for some partitions.

bash-3.2$ bin/session-cache-server.sh

java version "1.6.0_21"

Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_21-b51)

Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 17.0-b17, mixed mode)

2011-02-15 23:34:51.856/0.251 Oracle Coherence 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=main, member=n/a): Loaded operational configuration from "jar:file:/scratch/jbayer/coherence/lib/coherence.jar!/tangosol-coherence.xml"

2011-02-15 23:34:51.861/0.256 Oracle Coherence 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=main, member=n/a): Loaded operational overrides from "file:/scratch/jbayer/coherence/tangosol-coherence-override.xml"

2011-02-15 23:34:51.866/0.261 Oracle Coherence 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=main, member=n/a): Optional configuration override "/custom-mbeans.xml" is not specified

Oracle Coherence Version 3.6.1.0 Build 19636

Grid Edition: Development mode

2011-02-15 23:34:52.147/0.542 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=main, member=n/a): Loaded cache configuration from "jar:file:/scratch/jbayer/coherence/lib/coherence-web-spi.war!/WEB-INF/classes/session-cache-config.xml"

2011-02-15 23:34:52.500/0.895 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D4> (thread=main, member=n/a): TCMP bound to /10.229.188.238:8090 using SystemSocketProvider

2011-02-15 23:35:16.251/24.646 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): This Member(Id=2, Timestamp=2011-02-15 23:35:16.04, Address=10.229.188.238:8090, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:31080, Role=CoherenceServer, Edition=Grid Edition, Mode=Development, CpuCount=2, SocketCount=2) joined cluster with senior Member(Id=1, Timestamp=2011-02-15 23:34:45.487, Address=10.229.188.238:8088, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:31060, Role=CoherenceServer, Edition=Grid Edition, Mode=Development, CpuCount=2, SocketCount=2)

2011-02-15 23:35:16.270/24.665 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): Member 1 joined Service Cluster with senior member 1

2011-02-15 23:35:16.270/24.665 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): Member 1 joined Service Management with senior member 1

2011-02-15 23:35:16.270/24.665 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): Member 1 joined Service ReplicatedSessionsMisc with senior member 1

2011-02-15 23:35:16.270/24.665 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): Member 1 joined Service DistributedSessions with senior member 1

2011-02-15 23:35:16.273/24.668 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=main, member=n/a): Started cluster Name=n/a

WellKnownAddressList(Size=2,

WKA{Address=10.229.188.238, Port=8088}

WKA{Address=10.229.188.238, Port=8090}

)

MasterMemberSet

(

ThisMember=Member(Id=2, Timestamp=2011-02-15 23:35:16.04, Address=10.229.188.238:8090, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:31080, Role=CoherenceServer)

OldestMember=Member(Id=1, Timestamp=2011-02-15 23:34:45.487, Address=10.229.188.238:8088, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:31060, Role=CoherenceServer)

ActualMemberSet=MemberSet(Size=2, BitSetCount=2

Member(Id=1, Timestamp=2011-02-15 23:34:45.487, Address=10.229.188.238:8088, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:31060, Role=CoherenceServer)

Member(Id=2, Timestamp=2011-02-15 23:35:16.04, Address=10.229.188.238:8090, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:31080, Role=CoherenceServer)

)

RecycleMillis=1200000

RecycleSet=MemberSet(Size=0, BitSetCount=0

)

TcpRing{Connections=[1]}

IpMonitor{AddressListSize=0}

2011-02-15 23:35:16.321/24.716 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Invocation:Management, member=2): Service Management joined the cluster with senior service member 1

2011-02-15 23:35:16.429/24.825 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=ReplicatedCache:ReplicatedSessionsMisc, member=2): Service ReplicatedSessionsMisc joined the cluster with senior service member 1

2011-02-15 23:35:16.618/25.013 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=DistributedCache:DistributedSessions, member=2): Service DistributedSessions joined the cluster with senior service member 1

2011-02-15 23:35:16.648/25.043 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=main, member=2):

Services

(

ClusterService{Name=Cluster, State=(SERVICE_STARTED, STATE_JOINED), Id=0, Version=3.6, OldestMemberId=1}

InvocationService{Name=Management, State=(SERVICE_STARTED), Id=1, Version=3.1, OldestMemberId=1}

ReplicatedCache{Name=ReplicatedSessionsMisc, State=(SERVICE_STARTED), Id=2, Version=3.0, OldestMemberId=1}

PartitionedCache{Name=DistributedSessions, State=(SERVICE_STARTED), LocalStorage=enabled, PartitionCount=257, BackupCount=1, AssignedPartitions=0, BackupPartitions=0}

)

Started DefaultCacheServer...

2011-02-15 23:35:16.657/25.052 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D4> (thread=DistributedCache:DistributedSessions, member=2): Asking member 1 for 128 primary partitions

If the cluster has formed well, then we are ready to deploy the application to WebLogic Server. Deploy CWebTestApp.ear (assuming you have the correct values for APP-INF/classes/tangosol-coherence-override.xml inside of it and see if it activates and joins the cluster. Here is output from one of the two managed servers in the WLS cluster. Your output may vary to a degree.

2011-02-16 00:13:10.175/115.554 Oracle Coherence 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=[STANDBY] ExecuteThread: '5' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)', member=n/a): Loaded operational configuration from "zip:/scratch/jbayer/wls1034/user_projects/domains/base_domain/servers/ManagedServer_2/stage/coherence/3.6.1.0@3.6.1.0/coherence.jar!/tangosol-coherence.xml"

2011-02-16 00:13:10.190/115.568 Oracle Coherence 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=[STANDBY] ExecuteThread: '5' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)', member=n/a): Loaded operational overrides from "zip:/scratch/jbayer/wls1034/user_projects/domains/base_domain/servers/ManagedServer_2/stage/coherence/3.6.1.0@3.6.1.0/coherence.jar!/tangosol-coherence-override-dev.xml"

2011-02-16 00:13:10.191/115.569 Oracle Coherence 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=[STANDBY] ExecuteThread: '5' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)', member=n/a): Loaded operational overrides from "file:/scratch/jbayer/wls1034/user_projects/domains/base_domain/servers/ManagedServer_2/tmp/_WL_user/CWebTestApp/sapbbg/APP-INF/classes/tangosol-coherence-override.xml"

2011-02-16 00:13:10.197/115.575 Oracle Coherence 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=[STANDBY] ExecuteThread: '5' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)', member=n/a): Optional configuration override "/custom-mbeans.xml" is not specified

Oracle Coherence Version 3.6.1.0 Build 19636

Grid Edition: Development mode

2011-02-16 00:13:10.391/115.769 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=[STANDBY] ExecuteThread: '5' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)', member=n/a): Loaded cache configuration from "file:/scratch/jbayer/wls1034/user_projects/domains/base_domain/servers/ManagedServer_2/tmp/_WL_user/coherence-web-spi/4yxuqd/WEB-INF/classes/session-cache-config.xml"

2011-02-16 00:13:10.681/116.059 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=[ACTIVE] ExecuteThread: '0' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)', member=n/a):

Clustered Session Cache Name=session-storage

Local Session Cache Name=local-session-storage

Local Session Attribute Cache Name=local-attribute-storage

Death Certificate Cache Name=session-death-certificates

SessionDistributionController Class Name=

AttributeScopeController Class Name=com.tangosol.coherence.servlet.AbstractHttpSessionCollection$ApplicationScopeController

Maximum Session Inactive Seconds=3600

Session ID Character Length=52

Session Locking Enforced=false

Member Session Locking Enforced=false

Application Session Locking Enforced=false

Thread Session Locking Enforced=false

Session Get Lock Timeout=300

Suspect Attribute Detection=false

Strict "Servlet Specification" Exception Handling=true

Sticky Session Ownership=false

Sticky Session Ownership Service Name=SessionOwnership

Assume Session Locality for Reaping=false

Parallel Session Reaping=true

Allow Local Attributes=false

Use Default Session ID Decoding=true

Use Default Session ID Encoding=false

Session Expiry Filter Factory=

2011-02-16 00:13:11.256/116.634 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <Warning> (thread=[ACTIVE] ExecuteThread: '0' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)', member=n/a): PreferredUnicastUdpSocket failed to set receive buffer size to 1428 packets (1.99MB); actual size is 25%, 357 packets (512KB). Consult your OS documentation regarding increasing the maximum socket buffer size. Proceeding with the actual value may cause sub-optimal performance.

2011-02-16 00:13:11.257/116.635 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D4> (thread=[ACTIVE] ExecuteThread: '0' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)', member=n/a): TCMP bound to /10.229.188.238:8094 using SystemSocketProvider

2011-02-16 00:13:11.595/116.973 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): Failed to satisfy the variance: allowed=16, actual=45

2011-02-16 00:13:11.596/116.974 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): Increasing allowable variance to 19

2011-02-16 00:13:11.944/117.322 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): This Member(Id=10, Timestamp=2011-02-16 00:13:11.72, Address=10.229.188.238:8094, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:32763, Role=WeblogicServer, Edition=Grid Edition, Mode=Development, CpuCount=2, SocketCount=2) joined cluster with senior Member(Id=1, Timestamp=2011-02-15 23:34:45.487, Address=10.229.188.238:8088, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:31060, Role=CoherenceServer, Edition=Grid Edition, Mode=Development, CpuCount=2, SocketCount=2)

2011-02-16 00:13:11.997/117.375 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): Member(Id=2, Timestamp=2011-02-15 23:35:16.04, Address=10.229.188.238:8090, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:31080, Role=CoherenceServer) joined Cluster with senior member 1

2011-02-16 00:13:11.999/117.377 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): Member(Id=9, Timestamp=2011-02-16 00:13:11.687, Address=10.229.188.238:8092, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:32676, Role=WeblogicServer) joined Cluster with senior member 1

2011-02-16 00:13:12.044/117.422 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): Member 1 joined Service Cluster with senior member 1

2011-02-16 00:13:12.045/117.424 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): Member 1 joined Service Management with senior member 1

2011-02-16 00:13:12.046/117.424 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): Member 1 joined Service ReplicatedSessionsMisc with senior member 1

2011-02-16 00:13:12.046/117.424 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): Member 1 joined Service DistributedSessions with senior member 1

2011-02-16 00:13:12.046/117.424 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): Member 2 joined Service Cluster with senior member 1

2011-02-16 00:13:12.046/117.424 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): Member 2 joined Service Management with senior member 1

2011-02-16 00:13:12.046/117.424 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): Member 2 joined Service ReplicatedSessionsMisc with senior member 1

2011-02-16 00:13:12.046/117.424 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Cluster, member=n/a): Member 2 joined Service DistributedSessions with senior member 1

2011-02-16 00:13:12.087/117.465 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=[ACTIVE] ExecuteThread: '0' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)', member=n/a): Started cluster Name=n/a

WellKnownAddressList(Size=2,

WKA{Address=10.229.188.238, Port=8088}

WKA{Address=10.229.188.238, Port=8090}

)

MasterMemberSet

(

ThisMember=Member(Id=10, Timestamp=2011-02-16 00:13:11.72, Address=10.229.188.238:8094, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:32763, Role=WeblogicServer)

OldestMember=Member(Id=1, Timestamp=2011-02-15 23:34:45.487, Address=10.229.188.238:8088, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:31060, Role=CoherenceServer)

ActualMemberSet=MemberSet(Size=4, BitSetCount=2

Member(Id=1, Timestamp=2011-02-15 23:34:45.487, Address=10.229.188.238:8088, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:31060, Role=CoherenceServer)

Member(Id=2, Timestamp=2011-02-15 23:35:16.04, Address=10.229.188.238:8090, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:31080, Role=CoherenceServer)

Member(Id=9, Timestamp=2011-02-16 00:13:11.687, Address=10.229.188.238:8092, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:32676, Role=WeblogicServer)

Member(Id=10, Timestamp=2011-02-16 00:13:11.72, Address=10.229.188.238:8094, MachineId=21486, Location=machine:jbayer-vm,process:32763, Role=WeblogicServer)

)

RecycleMillis=1200000

RecycleSet=MemberSet(Size=0, BitSetCount=0

)

TcpRing{Connections=[9]}

IpMonitor{AddressListSize=0}

2011-02-16 00:13:12.199/117.577 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Invocation:Management, member=10): Service Management joined the cluster with senior service member 1

2011-02-16 00:13:12.234/117.612 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Cluster, member=10): Member 9 joined Service Management with senior member 1

2011-02-16 00:13:12.478/117.856 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=DistributedCache:DistributedSessions, member=10): Service DistributedSessions joined the cluster with senior service member 1

2011-02-16 00:13:12.560/117.938 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <D5> (thread=Cluster, member=10): Member 9 joined Service DistributedSessions with senior member 1

2011-02-16 00:13:12.618/117.996 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=[ACTIVE] ExecuteThread: '0' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)', member=10): Configured session model "SplitHttpSessionCollection":

Clustered Session Cache Name=session-storage

Local Session Cache Name=local-session-storage

Local Session Attribute Cache Name=local-attribute-storage

Death Certificate Cache Name=session-death-certificates

SessionDistributionController Class Name=

AttributeScopeController Class Name=com.tangosol.coherence.servlet.AbstractHttpSessionCollection$ApplicationScopeController

Maximum Session Inactive Seconds=3600

Session ID Character Length=52

Session Locking Enforced=false

Member Session Locking Enforced=false

Application Session Locking Enforced=false

Thread Session Locking Enforced=false

Session Get Lock Timeout=300

Suspect Attribute Detection=false

Strict "Servlet Specification" Exception Handling=true

Sticky Session Ownership=false

Sticky Session Ownership Service Name=SessionOwnership

Assume Session Locality for Reaping=false

Parallel Session Reaping=true

Allow Local Attributes=false

Use Default Session ID Decoding=true

Use Default Session ID Encoding=false

Session Expiry Filter Factory=

2011-02-16 00:13:12.723/118.101 Oracle Coherence GE 3.6.1.0 <Info> (thread=[ACTIVE] ExecuteThread: '0' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)', member=10): Registering HttpSessionManager(ServetContext=ServletContextWrapper (2.5)

SessionHelper!=null

MajorVersion=2

MinorVersion=5

Clustered=false

ServletContext (wrapped)=weblogic.servlet.internal.session.CoherenceWebServletContextWrapper@1bc1ecee

AttributeMap=null

Oracle Coherence 3.6.1.0) using object name "type=HttpSessionManager,nodeId=10,appId=CWebTestAppcounter"

If so, now try invoking the index.jsp of the counter context path. If both managed servers on are the same hostname, then the same cookie will be sent by the browser (ports differences are ignored by browsers when sending cookies), and you should see the counter increment by 1 when you have the same session. If your WLS servers happen to have different IP addresses or hostnames, then you will have to use a load balancer. More on that later.

To see if Coherence is really being used for session state, kill all the WLS JVM(s) (not the Coherence session cache servers!). Hit refresh in your browser. Both servers should be down. Keep the browser sessions open.

Now restart the WLS managed servers. Since the browser is open, the session reference is still in your browser cookie. When WLS servers are started again and you can refresh the page, the count should pick up where you left off and not start over.

Now you can try the load balancer such as Apache or the simple one included with coherence. In this case I'm going to have the simple load balancer on port 8080 and refer to the managed servers on ports 8001/8002 respectively.

java -cp coherence.jar com.tangosol.net.LoadBalancer adc2101131:8080 adc2101131:8001 adc2101131:8002

Now I should be able to hit the load balancer directly on port 8080. Using the same browser session, I see that the cookie is still valid.

Plus I see that the output from the simple load balancer shows me going to both servers, therefore we observe that the simple Coherence load balancer is not sticky. Below is an example of that output:

routing to 10.229.188.238:8002

routing to 10.229.188.238:8001

Now you should be able to stop one WLS managed server and refresh and still get a valid result. If you refresh several times the LoadBalancer output should have something like this in the System.Out showing that it failed to connect to the server you stopped.

*** could not connect to 10.229.188.238:8002; java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused

Then stop the other WLS managed server. Refresh using the proxy address and there should be a failure to connect from the browser. Then restart the managed server you stopped first and the session should recover.

This marks the end of the basic Coherence*Web with WebLogic Server example. For more information, I recommend reading the Coherence*Web documentation and turning on the JMX reporting features of Coherence and using a tool like JConsole to explore the MBeans for Coherence*Web.

JRockit Flight Recorder Plugin for WebLogic Tab Pack behind a Proxy

2011-09-26T22:45:00.000-07:00

This blog was originally posted on http://blogs.oracle.com/jamesbayer when I worked for Oracle.

One of my favorite demos to show is JRockit Flight Recorder integration with WebLogic Server and the WebLogic Server Diagnostic Framework. It's a great way to see what's going on inside applications and the JVM without agents using out-of-the-box defaults with WebLogic Server and JRockit. I've made video's and blog posts about it previously and we'll be happy to give you a demo of it at Oracle Open World at the JavaOne booth or the WebLogic Server booth at the Demogrounds. JRockit Mission Control, which is used to view the JVM recordings called JFRs for JRockit Flight Recording, has some plugins that it downloads from an Eclipse Update site to get the WebLogic Server specific view. If you're behind a firewall and need to use a proxy, there is a simple way to launch JRMC from a java command line that let's you specify the proxy host, port and other settings you might use like authentication. So from the JRockit bin directory, this is the command that you can use to launch Mission Control and make sure you use a proxy for network connections so you can use the Update Site with the proxy you specify. You can substitute your JROCKIT_HOME for your actual path and your actual proxy settings instead of the ones we use at Oracle.
JROCKIT_HOME/bin/java -Dhttp.proxyPort=80 -Dhttp.proxyHost=www-proxy.us.oracle.com -jar JROCKIT_HOME/missioncontrol/mc.jar
Once you launch JRMC with the proxy enabled (or without the proxy settings if you do not need a proxy to access the Oracle Eclipse Update Site), you can then use the link to install the experimental plugin from the Help menu as shown below. The one you want for sure is the WebLogic Tab Pack.

wlstonweb - An Innovative Tool for WebLogic Scripting

2011-07-23T22:49:00.000-07:00

This blog was originally posted on http://blogs.oracle.com/jamesbayer when I worked for Oracle.

Antonio De Juan from Oracle Support introduced me to a very innovative web application he built and put on www.samplecode.oracle.com called wlstonweb. This cool web application has 2 primary features.
1) Interactive WLST Sessions via a web browser
2) WLST Script Management via a web browser
The interactive WLST session via a web interface is surprisingly almost equivalent to using WLST from a shell because it leverages AJAX and
JQuery
Prototype. The obvious benefit is, you can do everything that WLST exposes all from a web interface, which means that if you're on a mobile device, using someone else's computer, traveling, etc you have a lot of Administrative and Operation capabilities available even though you may not have a terminal handy.

The WLST Script management features allows you to organize your WLST scripts on the file system in a catalog as well as create, edit, and run the scripts directly from the web interface. This is a great way to share WLST scripts that are used often among different parts of an organization and build up a catalog of scripts.

I created a brief recording showcasing wlstonweb. I encourage you to watch it in 720p so the recording isn't blurry. Check it out and contact Antonio via the samplecode site if you have comments or suggestions. The sampelcode UI can be difficult to navigate for new users, so go to the wlstonweb project home page -> File Releases -> war file -> prototype -> wlstonweb.war to download it . Nice work Antonio!

Create WebLogic Diagnostic Image With Metric Thresholds

2011-07-13T22:53:00.000-07:00

This blog was originally posted on http://blogs.oracle.com/jamesbayer when I worked for Oracle.

My colleague Jeff West pointed me to Stack Overflow today where someone had a question about how to take a thread dump when a certain condition was present. In their case, they are trying to troubleshoot a low thread count. Their monitoring tools were missing the critical time window and by the time the thread dump was taken, the threads had recovered. I thought this would be a great opportunity to see if a Diagnostic Image would contain a thread dump (yes it does), and whether I could automatically set WebLogic to create the Diagnostic Image easily when this condition was present (yes it is). Below is the image illustrating the issue they were trying to solve.

Check out this recording if you want to know more about triggering actions when certain conditions are met automatically with WebLogic Server. I show a WebLogic Diagnostic Framework (WLDF) System Module, configure a Notification and a Watch based on a JMX metric threshold. The Watch has with an Alarm with a manual reset (via JMX/WLST) so that the Watch will not fire again until I reset it although you can also choose not to have Alarms or have them reset automatically after a time period.

I encourage you to watch this video in 720p mode or higher for clarity. You can change that using the menu at the bottom right video widget. It will not display correctly in this blog template when using 720p mode.

WebLogic Server Work Manager Demo Recording and Slides

2011-07-09T22:27:00.000-07:00

This blog was originally posted on http://blogs.oracle.com/jamesbayer when I worked for Oracle.

I have previously blogged about WebLogic Server Work Managers and this simple demo before. Now there is a corresponding set of slides and a recording on the youtube.com/OracleWebLogic channel to accompany it. The slides also contain some additional detail not covered in the original example around stuck threads.
I was asked about this feature recently when someone needed to know how you could limit the number of requests serviced by WebLogic Server to match and not exceed the number of datasource connections configured. It's very straight-forward to make this happen with a work manager. The video is much more clear if you use the menu in the bottom right to render it in 720p. Unfortunately, the current blog template does not allow a width compatible with this video in youtube HD so it might be easier to use the link if it's not rendering well for you.

WebLogic Server Work Managers and Overload Protection

View more presentations from jambay

WebLogic Server JMS WLST Script – Who is Connected To My Server

2011-06-25T22:33:00.000-07:00

This blog was originally posted on http://blogs.oracle.com/jamesbayer when I worked for Oracle.

Update 6/27/2011: Tom Barnes indicated a clarification, check out the comments.
Ever want to know who was connected to your WebLogic Server instance for troubleshooting? An email exchange about this topic and JMS came up this week, and I’ve heard it come up once or twice before too. Sometimes it’s interesting or helpful to know the list of JMS clients (IP Addresses, JMS Destinations, message counts) that are connected to a particular JMS server. This can be helpful for troubleshooting. Tom Barnes from the WebLogic Server JMS team provided some helpful advice:
The JMS connection runtime mbean has “getHostAddress”, which returns the host address of the connecting client JVM as a string.
A connection runtime can contain session runtimes, which in turn can contain consumer runtimes. The consumer runtime, in turn has a “getDestinationName” and “getMemberDestinationName”. I think that this means you could write a WLST script, for example, to dump all consumers, their destinations, plus their parent session’s parent connection’s host addresses.
Note that the client runtime mbeans (connection, session, and consumer) won’t necessarily be hosted on the same JVM as a destination that’s in the same cluster (client messages route from their connection host to their ultimate destination in the same cluster).

Writing the Script

So armed with this information, I decided to take the challenge and see if I could write a WLST script to do this. It’s always helpful to have the WebLogic Server MBean Reference handy for activities like this. This one is focused on JMS Consumers and I only took a subset of the information available, but it could be modified easily to do Producers. I haven’t tried this on a more complex environment, but it works in my simple sandbox case, so it should give you the general idea.

# Better to use Secure Config File approach for login as shown here http://buttso.blogspot.com/2011/02/using-secure-config-files-with-weblogic.html
connect('weblogic','welcome1','t3://localhost:7001')
 
# Navigate to the Server Runtime and get the Server Name
serverRuntime()
serverName = cmo.getName()
 
# Multiple JMS Servers could be hosted by a single WLS server
cd('JMSRuntime/' + serverName + '.jms' )
jmsServers=cmo.getJMSServers()
 
# Find the list of all JMSServers for this server
namesOfJMSServers = ''
for jmsServer in jmsServers:
 namesOfJMSServers = jmsServer.getName() + ' '
 
# Count the number of connections
jmsConnections=cmo.getConnections()
print str(len(jmsConnections)) + ' JMS Connections found for ' + serverName + ' with JMSServers ' + namesOfJMSServers
 
# Recurse the MBean tree for each connection and pull out some information about consumers
for jmsConnection in jmsConnections:
 try:
  print 'JMS Connection:'
  print '  Host Address = ' + jmsConnection.getHostAddress()
  print '  ClientID = ' + str( jmsConnection.getClientID() )
  print '  Sessions Current = ' + str( jmsConnection.getSessionsCurrentCount() )
  jmsSessions = jmsConnection.getSessions()
  for jmsSession in jmsSessions:
   jmsConsumers = jmsSession.getConsumers()
   for jmsConsumer in jmsConsumers:
    print '   Consumer:'
    print '     Name = ' + jmsConsumer.getName()
    print '     Messages Received = ' + str(jmsConsumer.getMessagesReceivedCount())
    print '     Member Destination Name = ' + jmsConsumer.getMemberDestinationName()
 except:
  print 'Error retrieving JMS Consumer Information'
  dumpStack()
 
# Cleanup
disconnect()
exit()

Example Output

I expect the output to look something like this and loop through all the connections, this is just the first one:
1 JMS Connections found for AdminServer with JMSServers myJMSServer
JMS Connection:
Host Address = 127.0.0.1
ClientID = None
Sessions Current = 16
   Consumer:
     Name = consumer40
     Messages Received = 1
     Member Destination Name = myJMSModule!myQueue
Notice that it has the IP Address of the client. There are 16 Sessions open because I’m using an MDB, which defaults to 16 connections, so this matches what I expect. Let’s see what the full output actually looks like:

D:\Oracle\fmw11gr1ps3\user_projects\domains\offline_domain>java weblogic.WLST d:\temp\jms.py
 
Initializing WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) ...
 
Welcome to WebLogic Server Administration Scripting Shell
 
Type help() for help on available commands
 
Connecting to t3://localhost:7001 with userid weblogic ...
Successfully connected to Admin Server 'AdminServer' that belongs to domain 'offline_domain'.
 
Warning: An insecure protocol was used to connect to the
server. To ensure on-the-wire security, the SSL port or
Admin port should be used instead.
 
Location changed to serverRuntime tree. This is a read-only tree with ServerRuntimeMBean as the root.
For more help, use help(serverRuntime)
 
1 JMS Connections found for AdminServer with JMSServers myJMSServer
JMS Connection:
  Host Address = 127.0.0.1
  ClientID = None
  Sessions Current = 16
   Consumer:
     Name = consumer40
     Messages Received = 2
     Member Destination Name = myJMSModule!myQueue
   Consumer:
     Name = consumer34
     Messages Received = 2
     Member Destination Name = myJMSModule!myQueue
   Consumer:
     Name = consumer37
     Messages Received = 2
     Member Destination Name = myJMSModule!myQueue
   Consumer:
     Name = consumer16
     Messages Received = 2
     Member Destination Name = myJMSModule!myQueue
   Consumer:
     Name = consumer46
     Messages Received = 2
     Member Destination Name = myJMSModule!myQueue
   Consumer:
     Name = consumer49
     Messages Received = 2
     Member Destination Name = myJMSModule!myQueue
   Consumer:
     Name = consumer43
     Messages Received = 1
     Member Destination Name = myJMSModule!myQueue
   Consumer:
     Name = consumer55
     Messages Received = 1
     Member Destination Name = myJMSModule!myQueue
   Consumer:
     Name = consumer25
     Messages Received = 1
     Member Destination Name = myJMSModule!myQueue
   Consumer:
     Name = consumer22
     Messages Received = 1
     Member Destination Name = myJMSModule!myQueue
   Consumer:
     Name = consumer19
     Messages Received = 1
     Member Destination Name = myJMSModule!myQueue
   Consumer:
     Name = consumer52
     Messages Received = 1
     Member Destination Name = myJMSModule!myQueue
   Consumer:
     Name = consumer31
     Messages Received = 1
     Member Destination Name = myJMSModule!myQueue
   Consumer:
     Name = consumer58
     Messages Received = 1
     Member Destination Name = myJMSModule!myQueue
   Consumer:
     Name = consumer28
     Messages Received = 1
     Member Destination Name = myJMSModule!myQueue
   Consumer:
     Name = consumer61
     Messages Received = 1
     Member Destination Name = myJMSModule!myQueue
Disconnected from weblogic server: AdminServer
 
 
Exiting WebLogic Scripting Tool.

Thanks to Tom Barnes for the hints and the inspiration to write this up.
Image of telephone switchboard courtesy of http://www.JoeTourist.net/ JoeTourist InfoSystems

WebLogic Server–Use the Execution Context ID in Applications–Lessons From Hansel and Gretel

2011-06-17T22:39:00.000-07:00

This blog was originally posted on http://blogs.oracle.com/jamesbayer when I worked for Oracle.

I learned a neat trick this week. Don’t let your breadcrumbs go to waste like Hansel and Gretel did! Keep track of the code path, logs and errors for each request as they flow through the system. Earlier this week an OTN forum post in the WLS – General category by Oracle Ace John Stegeman asked a question how to retrieve the Execution Context ID so that it could be used on an error page that a user could provide to a help desk or use to check with application administrators so they could look up what went wrong. What is the Execution Context ID (ECID)? Fusion Middleware injects an ECID as a request enters the system and it says with the request as it flows from Oracle HTTP Server to Oracle Web Cache to multiple WebLogic Servers to the Oracle Database. It’s a way to uniquely identify a request across tiers. According to the documentation it’s:

The value of the ECID is a unique identifier that can be used to correlate individual events as being part of the same request execution flow. For example, events that are identified as being related to a particular request typically have the same ECID value. The format of the ECID string itself is determined by an internal mechanism that is subject to change; therefore, you should not have or place any dependencies on that format.

The novel idea that I see John had was to extend this concept beyond the diagnostic information that is captured by Fusion Middleware. Why not also use this identifier in your logs and errors so you can correlate even more information together! Your logging might already identify the user, so why not identify the request so you filter down even more. All you need to do inside of WebLogic Server to get ahold of this information is invoke DiagnosticConextHelper:

 
      weblogic.diagnostics.context.DiagnosticContextHelper.getContextId()

This class has other helpful methods to see other values tracked by the diagnostics framework too. This way I can see even more detail and get information across tiers.

In performance profiling, this can be very handy to track down where time is being spent in code. I’ve blogged and made videos about this before. JRockit Flight Recorder can use the WLDF Diagnostic Volume in WLS 10.3.3+ to automatically capture and correlate lots of helpful information for each request without installing any special agents and with the out-of-the-box JRockit and WLS settings! You can see here how information is displayed in JRockit Flight Recorder about a single request as it calls a Servlet, which calls an EJB, which gets a DB connection, which starts a transaction, etc. You can get timings around everything and even see the SQL that is used.

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E21764_01/web.1111/e13714/using_flightrecorder.htm#WLDFC480

Recent versions of the WLS console also are able to visualize this data too, so it works with other JVMs besides JRockit when you turn on WLDF instrumentation.

I wrote a little sample application that verified to myself that the ECID did actually cross JVM boundaries. I invoked a Servlet in one JVM, which acted as an EJB client to Stateless Session Bean running in another JVM. Each call returned the same ECID. You need to turn on WLDF Instrumentation for this to work otherwise the framework returns null. I’m glad John put me on to this API as I have some interesting ideas on how to correlate some information together.

Sharing a Class With a WebLogic Classloader Without Modifying Scripts

2011-06-06T22:47:00.000-07:00

This blog was originally posted on http://blogs.oracle.com/jamesbayer when I worked for Oracle.

A question (mostly original with some slight editing on my part) came up on our internal mailing list today that I thought might be interesting to those that have cloassloader questions. For a quick refresher on the options for classloading in WebLogic, click the image to see a larger image or get the presentation from the bottom of the post on slideshare. The key for this scenario is the DOMAIN_HOME/lib directory.

Scenario: We have a embeddable java component which gets shipped within every webapp in our suite of products. This embeddable java component has a cache object which is loaded every time the component is initialized by the webapp. This cache object is a singleton and has the same content across all the webapps. We have one managed server in which many ear files are deployed to. Each ear initialize's this embeddable java component on start up.

Issue: When I profile the objects loaded (using Classloader Analysis Tool) in each of these web apps I see that this cache singleton object is loaded in each one of the web app class loaders. I would like to load just one of these singleton objects and reference the same object across all the ear's. This saves heap space and all the calls that it takes to create this cache object in each ear. Even though its a singleton I see that since the class loaders are different for each ear that it creates a new cache object. I have an understanding of the weblogic class loader hierarchies (bootstrap, system, webapp etc). I don't want to move this embeddable java component and its dependencies to the system class loader by modifying the scripts or environment variables. Are there other options?

My answer: Have a look at the DOMAIN_HOME/lib directory.

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E21764_01/web.1111/e13706/classloading.htm#i1096881

To try it, just drop the jars you want to be shared in the DOMAIN_HOME/lib directory.

Here’s an example.

      
      /*

      * To change this template, choose Tools | Templates

      * and open the template in the editor.

      */

      package test;

      import java.util.Map;

      /**

      *

      * @author jbayer

      */

      public class SharedCache 

      {

         public static final Map<String,String> mapCache = new java.util.HashMap<String, String> ();

          static    

          {

              System.out.println( SharedCache.class.toString() + " loaded into a classloader" + SharedCache.class.getClassLoader().toString() );

          }

          public SharedCache() 

          {

          }

      }

Now I use this class in two webapps named WebApplication1 and WebApplication2 that refer to the SharedCache class in their identical index.jsp

      <%@page contentType="text/html" pageEncoding="UTF-8" import="test.*"%>

      <!DOCTYPE html>

      <html>

          <head>

              <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">

              <title>JSP Page</title>

          </head>

          <body>

              <h1>Hello World! Cache size: 

      <% 

          SharedCache myCache = new SharedCache();

          out.print( myCache.mapCache.size() );                    

      %>

              </h1>

          </body>

      </html>

When the test.SharedCache class is loaded from each web application respectively, you should see the following in the System.out showing that 2 versions of the class were loaded into separate classloaders for each web module:

      class test.SharedCache loaded into a classloaderweblogic.utils.classloaders.ChangeAwareClassLoader@bde4ac finder: weblogic.utils.classloaders.CodeGenClassFinder@1ff9980 annotation: WebApplication1@web

      class test.SharedCache loaded into a classloaderweblogic.utils.classloaders.ChangeAwareClassLoader@4a4acd finder: weblogic.utils.classloaders.CodeGenClassFinder@3f08e3 annotation: WebApplication2@web

Once you drop the jar with the test.SharedCache in the DOMAIN_HOME/lib and restart the server, and access both web apps, you'll see the class is now shared from one system classloader:

      class test.SharedCache loaded into a classloaderjava.net.URLClassLoader@88e2dd

    

And if you use CAT, you can see that both applications use the same System Classloader. Click to enlarge. The hash code shows that the same classloader is used for both applications.

Check out Jeff West’s recording on WebLogic Server classloaders and CAT.

http://www.slideshare.net/jeffreyawest/weblogic-filtering-classloader-and-classloader-analysis-tool-demo

WebLogic's ClassLoaders, Filtering ClassLoader and ClassLoader Analysis Tool

View more presentations from Jeffrey West

Exalogic Disaster Recovery White Paper Published

2011-05-20T22:49:00.000-07:00

This blog was originally posted on http://blogs.oracle.com/jamesbayer when I worked for Oracle.

My colleague Bharath Reddy, a Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) guru, just published a new white paper Disaster Recovery for Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud on the Fusion Middleware MAA site. I believe customers want simpler middleware and database DR procedures. Exalogic and Exadata provide a comprehensive solution from applications to disk, not just part of a solution.

The whitepaper walks through the topology, configuration and an example procedure that has been validated by Oracle. In many enterprises DR is a time-consuming, expensive, thankless task that only gets a lot of attention when something goes wrong. Providing a thoroughly documented, validated, and tested procedure helps reduce the risk and complexity for DR. Another big advantage of this solution - it is a well-known configuration of hardware and software components and versions that work together because they were engineered and tested together at the factory. That is far more comforting than assembling components from many different vendors that may have never been tested in certain combinations and permutations. This whitepaper is a great resource, be sure to check it out.

A Few WebLogic and Exalogic Links to end March 2011

2011-03-28T22:50:00.000-07:00

This blog was originally posted on http://blogs.oracle.com/jamesbayer when I worked for Oracle.

There is a great amount of activity with Exalogic and WebLogic Server happening. A few links to note quickly:

There is a brand new OTN Forum for the Exalogic Elastic Cloud
My Oracle Support just launched a WebLogic Information Center to aggregate a bunch of useful WebLogic Server information, see the WebLogic Server blog for more details
John Graves has been putting up some excellent content on his blog including developer friendly entries to increase the timeouts for the WLS console, getting FMW Control and the WLS Console to share the same session, Linux Service scripts for Node Manager, and more. Check out his blog for some great WebLogic Server content.

New Exalogic Hardware and Software Whitepapers Available

2011-03-18T22:52:00.000-07:00

This blog was originally posted on http://blogs.oracle.com/jamesbayer when I worked for Oracle.

Two brand new Exalogic whitepapers are now available. One focuses on the benefits of the Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software and the other provides a deep-dive of the Exalogic hardware. The high-level overview has also been refreshed.

Oracle Applications Guidance for Exalogic

2011-03-09T22:53:00.000-08:00

This blog was originally posted on http://blogs.oracle.com/jamesbayer when I worked for Oracle.

Exalogic is continuing to help Oracle deliver on the tagline “Hardware and Software – Engineered to Work Together”. My Oracle Support article ID 1302529.1 was just posted and enumerates various Oracle Applications versions that are recommended for deployment on Exalogic. Please access the note via My Oracle Support for the details. These applications currently include:

Oracle Applications such as E-Business Suite, Siebel, PeopleSoft Enterprise, and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne
Utilities Applications including Mobile Workforce Management, Meter Data Management, and Customer Care and Billing
Oracle Retail Applications Merchandising Operations Management and Merchandising Planning & Optimization modules

The reference video below offers a great explanation for how Exalogic can be an ideal platform for Oracle software including Oracle Applications.

Use WLST to Delete All JMS Messages From a Destination

2011-03-07T22:55:00.000-08:00

This blog was originally posted on http://blogs.oracle.com/jamesbayer when I worked for Oracle.

I got a question today about whether WebLogic Server has any tools to delete all messages from a JMS Queue. It just so happens that the WLS Console has this capability already. It’s available on the screen after the “Show Messages” button is clicked on a destination’s Monitoring tab as seen in the screen shot below.

The console is great for something ad-hoc, but what if I want to automate this? Well it just so happens that the console is just a weblogic application layered on top of the JMX Management interface. If you look at the MBean Reference, you’ll find a JMSDestinationRuntimeMBean that includes the operation deleteMessages that takes a JMS Message Selector as an argument. If you pass an empty string, that is essentially a wild card that matches all messages.

Coding a stand-alone JMX client for this is kind of lame, so let’s do something more suitable to scripting. In addition to the console, WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) based on Jython is another way to browse and invoke MBeans, so an equivalent interactive shell session to delete messages from a destination would looks like this:

D:\Oracle\fmw11gr1ps3\user_projects\domains\hotspot_domain\bin>setDomainEnv.cmd
    
D:\Oracle\fmw11gr1ps3\user_projects\domains\hotspot_domain>java weblogic.WLST
    
Initializing WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) ...
    
Welcome to WebLogic Server Administration Scripting Shell
    
Type help() for help on available commands
    
wls:/offline> connect('weblogic','welcome1','t3://localhost:7001')
    
Connecting to t3://localhost:7001 with userid weblogic ...
    
Successfully connected to Admin Server 'AdminServer' that belongs to domain 'hotspot_domain'.
    
Warning: An insecure protocol was used to connect to the
    
server. To ensure on-the-wire security, the SSL port or
    
Admin port should be used instead.
    
wls:/hotspot_domain/serverConfig> serverRuntime()
    
Location changed to serverRuntime tree. This is a read-only tree with ServerRuntimeMBean as the root.
    
For more help, use help(serverRuntime)
    
wls:/hotspot_domain/serverRuntime> cd('JMSRuntime/AdminServer.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer-0/Destinations/SystemModule-0!Queue-0')
    
wls:/hotspot_domain/serverRuntime/JMSRuntime/AdminServer.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer-0/Destinations/SystemModule-0!Queue-0> ls()
    
dr--   DurableSubscribers
    
-r--   BytesCurrentCount                            0
    
-r--   BytesHighCount                               174620
    
-r--   BytesPendingCount                            0
    
-r--   BytesReceivedCount                           253548
    
-r--   BytesThresholdTime                           0
    
-r--   ConsumersCurrentCount                        0
    
-r--   ConsumersHighCount                           0
    
-r--   ConsumersTotalCount                          0
    
-r--   ConsumptionPaused                            false
    
-r--   ConsumptionPausedState                       Consumption-Enabled
    
-r--   DestinationInfo                              javax.management.openmbean.CompositeDataSupport(compositeType=javax.management.openmbean.CompositeType(name=DestinationInfo,items=((itemName=ApplicationName,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName=ModuleName,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName
    
openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.Boolean)),(itemName=SerializedDestination,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName=ServerName,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName=Topic,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.Boolean)),(itemName=VersionNumber,itemType=javax.management.op
    
ule-0!Queue-0, Queue=true, SerializedDestination=rO0ABXNyACN3ZWJsb2dpYy5qbXMuY29tbW9uLkRlc3RpbmF0aW9uSW1wbFSmyJ1qZfv8DAAAeHB3kLZBABZTeXN0ZW1Nb2R1bGUtMCFRdWV1ZS0wAAtKTVNTZXJ2ZXItMAAOU3lzdGVtTW9kdWxlLTABAANBbGwCAlb6IS6T5qL/AAAACgEAC0FkbWluU2VydmVyAC2EGgJW+iEuk+ai/wAAAAsBAAtBZG1pblNlcnZlcgAthBoAAQAQX1dMU19BZG1pblNlcnZlcng=, ServerName=JMSServer-0, Topic=false, VersionNumber=1})
    
-r--   DestinationType                              Queue
    
-r--   DurableSubscribers                           null
    
-r--   InsertionPaused                              false
    
-r--   InsertionPausedState                         Insertion-Enabled
    
-r--   MessagesCurrentCount                         0
    
-r--   MessagesDeletedCurrentCount                  3
    
-r--   MessagesHighCount                            2
    
-r--   MessagesMovedCurrentCount                    0
    
-r--   MessagesPendingCount                         0
    
-r--   MessagesReceivedCount                        3
    
-r--   MessagesThresholdTime                        0
    
-r--   Name                                         SystemModule-0!Queue-0
    
-r--   Paused                                       false
    
-r--   ProductionPaused                             false
    
-r--   ProductionPausedState                        Production-Enabled
    
-r--   State                                        advertised_in_cluster_jndi
    
-r--   Type                                         JMSDestinationRuntime
    
-r-x   closeCursor                                  Void : String(cursorHandle)
    
-r-x   deleteMessages                               Integer : String(selector)
    
-r-x   getCursorEndPosition                         Long : String(cursorHandle)
    
-r-x   getCursorSize                                Long : String(cursorHandle)
    
-r-x   getCursorStartPosition                       Long : String(cursorHandle)
    
-r-x   getItems                                     javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[] : String(cursorHandle),Long(start),Integer(count)
    
-r-x   getMessage                                   javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData : String(cursorHandle),Long(messageHandle)
    
-r-x   getMessage                                   javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData : String(cursorHandle),String(messageID)
    
-r-x   getMessage                                   javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData : String(messageID)
    
-r-x   getMessages                                  String : String(selector),Integer(timeout)
    
-r-x   getMessages                                  String : String(selector),Integer(timeout),Integer(state)
    
-r-x   getNext                                      javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[] : String(cursorHandle),Integer(count)
    
-r-x   getPrevious                                  javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[] : String(cursorHandle),Integer(count)
    
-r-x   importMessages                               Void : javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[],Boolean(replaceOnly)
    
-r-x   moveMessages                                 Integer : String(java.lang.String),javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData,Integer(java.lang.Integer)
    
-r-x   moveMessages                                 Integer : String(selector),javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData
    
-r-x   pause                                        Void :
    
-r-x   pauseConsumption                             Void :
    
-r-x   pauseInsertion                               Void :
    
-r-x   pauseProduction                              Void :
    
-r-x   preDeregister                                Void :
    
-r-x   resume                                       Void :
    
-r-x   resumeConsumption                            Void :
    
-r-x   resumeInsertion                              Void :
    
-r-x   resumeProduction                             Void :
    
-r-x   sort                                         Long : String(cursorHandle),Long(start),String[](fields),Boolean[](ascending)
    
wls:/hotspot_domain/serverRuntime/JMSRuntime/AdminServer.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer-0/Destinations/SystemModule-0!Queue-0> cmo.deleteMessages('')
    
2

where the domain name is “hotspot_domain”, the JMS Server name is “JMSServer-0”, the Queue name is “Queue-0” and the System Module is named “SystemModule-0”. To invoke the operation, I use the “cmo” object, which is the “Current Management Object” that represents the currently navigated to MBean. The 2 indicates that two messages were deleted.

Combining this WLST code with a recent post by my colleague Steve that shows you how to use an encrypted file to store the authentication credentials, you could easily turn this into a secure automated script. If you need help with that step, a long while back I blogged about some WLST basics. Happy scripting.

Look Inside WebLogic Server Embedded LDAP with an LDAP Explorer

2011-02-28T22:58:00.000-08:00

This blog was originally posted on http://blogs.oracle.com/jamesbayer when I worked for Oracle.

Today a question came up on our internal WebLogic Server mailing lists about an issue deleting a Group from WebLogic Server. The group had a special character in the name. The WLS console refused to delete the group with the message a java.net.MalformedURLException and another message saying “Errors must be corrected before proceeding.” as shown below. The group aa:bb is the one with the issue. Click to enlarge.

WebLogic Server includes an embedded LDAP server that can be used for managing users and groups for “reasonably small environments (10,000 or fewer users)”. For organizations scaling larger or using more high-end features, I recommend looking at one of Oracle’s very popular enterprise directory services products like Oracle Internet Directory or Oracle Directory Server Enterprise Edition. You can configure multiple authenicators in WebLogic Server so that you can use multiple directories at the same time.

I am not sure WebLogic Server supports special characters in group names for the Embedded LDAP server, but in this case both the console and WLST reported the same issue deleting the group with the special character in the name. Here’s the WLST output:

wls:/hotspot_domain/serverConfig/SecurityConfiguration/hotspot_domain/Realms/myrealm/AuthenticationProviders/DefaultAuthenticator> cmo.removeGroup('aa:bb')
    
Traceback (innermost last):
    
  File "<console>", line 1, in ?
    
weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnDelegateException: [Security:090296]invalid URL ldap:///ou=people,ou=myrealm,dc=hotspot_domain??sub?(&(objectclass=person)(wlsMemberOf=cn=aa:bb,ou=groups,ou=myrealm,dc=hotspot_domain))
    
        at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnGroupMembersNameList.advance(LDAPAtnGroupMembersNameList.java:254)
    
        at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnGroupMembersNameList.<init>(LDAPAtnGroupMembersNameList.java:119)
    
        at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnDelegate.listGroupMembers(LDAPAtnDelegate.java:1392)
    
        at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnDelegate.removeGroup(LDAPAtnDelegate.java:1989)
    
        at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.DefaultAuthenticatorImpl.removeGroup(DefaultAuthenticatorImpl.java:242)
    
        at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.DefaultAuthenticatorMBeanImpl.removeGroup(DefaultAuthenticatorMBeanImpl.java:407)
    
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
    
        at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
    
        at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
    
        at weblogic.management.jmx.modelmbean.WLSModelMBean.invoke(WLSModelMBean.java:437)
    
        at com.sun.jmx.interceptor.DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.invoke(DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.java:836)
    
        at com.sun.jmx.mbeanserver.JmxMBeanServer.invoke(JmxMBeanServer.java:761)
    
        at weblogic.management.jmx.mbeanserver.WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase$16.run(WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase.java:449)
    
        at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    
        at weblogic.management.jmx.mbeanserver.WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase.invoke(WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase.java:447)
    
        at weblogic.management.mbeanservers.internal.JMXContextInterceptor.invoke(JMXContextInterceptor.java:263)
    
        at weblogic.management.jmx.mbeanserver.WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase$16.run(WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase.java:449)
    
        at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    
        at weblogic.management.jmx.mbeanserver.WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase.invoke(WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase.java:447)
    
        at weblogic.management.mbeanservers.internal.SecurityInterceptor.invoke(SecurityInterceptor.java:444)
    
        at weblogic.management.jmx.mbeanserver.WLSMBeanServer.invoke(WLSMBeanServer.java:323)
    
        at weblogic.management.mbeanservers.internal.JMXConnectorSubjectForwarder$11$1.run(JMXConnectorSubjectForwarder.java:663)
    
        at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    
        at weblogic.management.mbeanservers.internal.JMXConnectorSubjectForwarder$11.run(JMXConnectorSubjectForwarder.java:661)
    
        at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:363)
    
        at weblogic.management.mbeanservers.internal.JMXConnectorSubjectForwarder.invoke(JMXConnectorSubjectForwarder.java:654)
    
        at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl.doOperation(RMIConnectionImpl.java:1427)
    
        at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl.access$200(RMIConnectionImpl.java:72)
    
        at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl$PrivilegedOperation.run(RMIConnectionImpl.java:1265)
    
        at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    
        at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl.doPrivilegedOperation(RMIConnectionImpl.java:1367)
    
        at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl.invoke(RMIConnectionImpl.java:788)
    
        at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl_WLSkel.invoke(Unknown Source)
    
        at weblogic.rmi.internal.BasicServerRef.invoke(BasicServerRef.java:667)
    
        at weblogic.rmi.internal.BasicServerRef$1.run(BasicServerRef.java:522)
    
        at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:363)
    
        at weblogic.security.service.SecurityManager.runAs(SecurityManager.java:146)
    
        at weblogic.rmi.internal.BasicServerRef.handleRequest(BasicServerRef.java:518)
    
        at weblogic.rmi.internal.wls.WLSExecuteRequest.run(WLSExecuteRequest.java:118)
    
        at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.execute(ExecuteThread.java:207)
    
        at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:176)
    
Caused by: java.net.MalformedURLException
    
        at netscape.ldap.LDAPUrl.readNextConstruct(LDAPUrl.java:651)
    
        at netscape.ldap.LDAPUrl.parseUrl(LDAPUrl.java:277)
    
        at netscape.ldap.LDAPUrl.<init>(LDAPUrl.java:114)
    
        at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnGroupMembersNameList.advance(LDAPAtnGroupMembersNameList.java:224)
    
        ... 41 more

It’s fairly clear that in order to work that the : character needs to be URL encoded to %3A or similar. But all is not lost, there is another way. You can configure an LDAP Explorer like JXplorer to WebLogic Server Embedded LDAP and browse/edit the entries.

Follow the instructions here, being sure to change the authentication credentials to the Embedded LDAP server to some value you know, as by default they are some unknown value. You’ll need to reboot the WebLogic Server Admin Server after making this change.

Now configure JXplorer to connect as described in the documentation. I’ve circled the important inputs. In this example, my domain name is “hotspot_domain” which listens on the localhost listen address and port 7001. The cn=Admin user name is a constant identifier for the Administrator of the embedded LDAP and that does not change, but you need to know what it is so you can enter it into the tool you use.

Once you connect successfully, you can explore the entries and in this case delete the group that is no longer desired.

Exalogic–The One Day Installation Challenge

2011-02-23T23:00:00.000-08:00

This blog was originally posted on http://blogs.oracle.com/jamesbayer when I worked for Oracle.

It’s a really exciting time for the extended WebLogic community as we are enjoying seeing the impressive results of Exalogic deployments. At Oracle Open World, a lot of people I spoke with came away impressed with the raw performance. However, Exalogic offers a lot more than just raw performance. I had the pleasure of working with Ram Sivaram during one of the Exalogic training sessions in Santa Clara. In this video diary, he shows the Exalogic machine arrive on the shipping dock, get unpacked, wired up, powered on, configured, and installed with a WebLogic Server cluster in just about 10 hours. I’ve worked with customers in the past that have taken several weeks or longer to get an environment ready after the hardware arrives. This typically involves many different specialized teams in their organization. Mohamad Afshar just wrote a great explanation of the benefit of Engineered Systems and contrasting that to the status quo. Being able to streamline deployment of middleware capacity will have a lot of value for customers shortening time to deployment. Thanks for the video Ram, you’ve set a high bar, we’ll see if anyone can top your time!

WebLogic Server Virtual Developer Day and Upcoming Developer Webcasts

2011-01-31T23:01:00.000-08:00

This blog was originally posted on http://blogs.oracle.com/jamesbayer when I worked for Oracle.

We have a series of Virtual Developer Days for WebLogic for different geographies coming up as well as developer-oriented webcasts focusing on building a sample application with popular modern technologies. The first one is Feb 1st, 2011 for North America, but there are others coming up through mid-March as well. Check them out and register below.

Virtual Developer Days for WebLogic

AMER Conference begins: February 1, 2011 at 9:30am PST

EUROPE/RUSSIA Conference begins: Thursday Feb 10, 2011 - 9:30 a.m. UK Time / 10:30 a.m. CET

INDIA Conference begins: Thursday Feb 17, 2011 - 9:30am India time

WebLogic Developer Webcasts

Watch this brief video to learn more about the developer webcasts where we’ll build an application over several weeks focusing on different features like JPA, Data Grids, JMS, JAX-RS and more. Register here for the WebLogic developer webcasts.

WebLogic Server 10.3.4 Screencast – Coherence Server Lifecycle Management

2011-01-17T23:02:00.000-08:00

This blog was originally posted on http://blogs.oracle.com/jamesbayer when I worked for Oracle.

Below is a quick overview of a new feature introduced in WebLogic Server 10.3.4 that continues to deepen the Coherence and WebLogic Server integration. Previously Oracle introduced Coherence Clusters as a concept that could be used to manage Coherence configuration for instances of Coherence that ran inside of WebLogic Server JVMs. Now Oracle has introduced Coherence Servers, which are stand-alone JVMs not running inside WebLogic Server that are thin wrappers around a Coherence DefaultCacheServer. The Coherence Server can reference the Coherence Cluster configuration as well as specify fine-grained settings for each Coherence Server such as a name, port, classpath, and JVM options. This feature ties into WebLogic Server Node Manager, which is a process that can always be running as a service on each operating system instance where your WebLogic or Coherence processes can run. From one central location WebLogic Server users can easily manage the configuration and lifecycle of their Coherence JVMs in addition to their WebLogic Server JVMs potentially running on many, many different hosts. This should be a useful feature for customers that use WebLogic Server and Coherence together as well as for Coherence customers that do not utilize WebLogic Server much today, but would like additional manageability and control over Coherence processes. Check out the documentation for detail and examples of scripts. There is a short (5 min) screencast below.