Oracle Developer Tools Blog

Oracle is announcing the delivery of WebLogic Server and Workshop for WebLogic 10g R3. We first announced WebLogic Server 10gR3 at the San Francisco BEA World conference. In technology preview since November 7, 2007, it is the first release of the software.

To download the software, go to the WebLogic Server 10g R3 download page on OTN.

This release focuses on three enhancement areas that we believe will improve the developer experience for you if are an existing WebLogic Server developer, or that will attract you to WebLogic Server if you are not currently using the product.  In addition, JDeveloper and ADF / TopLink runtime users will be supported on Oracle WebLogic Server 10g R3, allowing ADF driven applications to extend farther into new supported platforms.

Lightweight WebLogic Server

· Download time and installation footprint

· Application development round-trip time

· Optional service startup

· Console performance improvements

· Startup and runtime performance 

Programming Model and API Support

· SOA Server-Web services/SCA support

· Spring enhancements

· Web 2.0 support

Technology Integration and Standards

· C# JMS client for .NET integration

· SAML 2.0

· Web Services standards

· Java SE 6

· ADF / TopLink support with 11g release

· JDeveloper support with 11g release

· Eclipse support (see below)

Oracle Workshop for WebLogic 10gR3

To download the software, go to the Workshop for WebLogic 10g R3 download page on OTN.

This release unifies all the previous packages, and removes all licensing features of any kind. Workshop for WebLogic will be freely available on all supported platforms, including websphere, weblogic, tomcat, jboss, jetty and resin. Oracle WebLogic Server 10g R3 developers who use Eclipse will find updated Workshop plug-ins for developing Java/EE and JAX-WS web services that are bundled with the server.  Some of the major highlights of this release include:

Support for new industry standards

• IDE based on Eclipse 3.3 & WTP 2.0
• Support for JDK 6
• Windows Vista support
• XMLBeans 2.3 support

New Web Services Support

• JAX-WS tooling for WebLogic Server 10.3
• Design/Build/Deploy Support
• Start from Java or from WSDL
• JAX-B support with new JAX-B Wizard
• Create JAX-B types from schema
• Generate ant snippets
• New ClientGen Wizard
• Create Web Service Clients from JAX-RPC & JAX-WS Web Services
• Generate ClientGen ant snippets
• Updated JAX-RPC support for WebLogic 10.3

Support for EE5 Standards

• New EE5 Project Creation
• Create EE5 EAR and EJB Projects
• Create Web Applications based on new standards
• Servlet 2.5
• Full support for new Servlet spec, including optional web.xml
• JSP 2.1, JSF 1.2, JSTL 1.2
• Updated wizards and tag support for new standards (SunRI and Apache myFaces)
• WYSIWYG and AppXRay support for Universal Expression Language

New WebLogic Server Value Add

• Support for new WebLogic Fast Swap (Java Class Redefinition)
• Full Deploy/Debugging support for WLS 10.3
• Continued backward compatibility for WLS 8.1, 9.2, 10.0
• Remote Deployment that supports WLS 9.2, 10.0, and 10.3
• New Editors and Wizards for WebLogic Server Deployment Descriptors
• Application upgrade tools for older versions of WebLogic

The Apache MyFaces Trinidad project announce a new release of its JSF component set. The latest version, that offers JSF 1.2 support, is 1.2.9.

The release notes are online.

The interesting fact is, that Trinidad 1.2.x is heavily use in ADF Faces Rich Client. Oracle ADF Faces Components is a set of over a 100 JSF components that let you build a richer user interface for your Java EE applications. Oracle ADF Faces also includes many of the framework features most needed by JSF developers today. The ADF Faces Rich Client offerings can be evaluated by using the latest JDeveloper Technology Preview.

For Feedback, questions or bug reports on Trinidad, the MyFaces community is a great resource!

Behind every how-to there is some code worth sharing. A new website on OTN - "ADF Code Corner" - provides this service to the JDeveloper community. As you can see, the published content has started to increase and more is supposed to come. However, good work comes from good ideas! This means that we need your input. The best place to post ideas for this site is on one of the two OTN forums: JDeveloper/ADF 11 Technology Preview, Oracle JDeveloper/ADF.

If you like to author an article for this page, get in touch with Frank Nimphius to receive the template.

Be the first to check out Andrei Cioroianu's article covering standard EJB3, JSF and some WebLogic Server specific features.

http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/cioroianu-workshop.html

Specifically, the article covers:

Web Project Setup

• Configuring Web Projects
• JSF Configuration

Developing JSF Pages

• Creating JSF Forms
• Defining Style Classes for the Form Elements
• Using Smart Editor to Finish the Form
• Defining Navigation Rules

Using Session Beans in JSF Pages

• Creating EJB Projects
• Building Stateless Session Beans
• Interacting with Session Beans via Backing Beans

Packaging and Deployment

• Local Deployment
• Remote Deployment
• Exporting EAR Files

Enjoy!

Many of you are frequent readers of the different Oracle ADF/JDeveloper blogs looking for best practices, tips and tricks that others share,  sample code, or simply to be up-to-date on the latest features around the tool and the framework.

Some of us find hard to keep track on new blogs and new articles, but at the same time, we don't want to miss what other are working on. In order to provide a centralized access to the valuable information from all this blogs around the world, the JDeveloper team is maintaining a repository that can be accessed through the official JDeveloper's home page in OTN on the right hand side there is a blog search area.

In JDeveloper 10.1.3.x (soon in JDev11g) you can obtain the extension from the Partners Extension category, which will allow you to search for blogs articles directly within  JDeveloper. Finally, the repository can be accessed through RSS as well, if you have a blog and want it to be added into the repository, drop us a comment.

This certified set of Eclipse plug-ins is designed to help develop, deploy and debug applications for Oracle WebLogic Server. It installs as a plug-in to your existing Eclipse, or will install Eclipse for you, and supports your favorite server or servlet engine.
In it's initial release, this is simply a re-brand of the WLS tools project a.k.a WebLogic Server Tools, combined with the Facelets Incubator and Oracle Plugin for DTP. Longer term, the Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse (OEPE) will be the basis for Oracle's strategic Eclipse offering, combining the best Java EE development features of Oracle Workshop for WebLogic and Oracle's independent contributions to the Eclipse platform.

Resources:

OTN Download Site

OTN Homepage

Eclipse 3.3 Update site URL: http://download.oracle.com/otn_software/oepe/europa

Eclipse 3.4 Update site URL: http://download.oracle.com/otn_software/oepe/ganymede

In addition to capabilities provided by Eclipse and Web tools platform, OEPE
provides the following features:

• Fastswap - Java Class Redefinition support for WebLogic Server
• Develop, debug and deploy to Oracle WebLogic Server 10gR3, and multiple previous versions
• Remote deployment and debugging, JSP Debugging for WebLogic Server 9.x and higher
• Virtual EAR technology that improves WebLogic Server deployment performance for large applications
• Leverage WebLogic Shared J2EE Libraries to make packaging of Enterprise Java Applications easier and faster
• Deployment descriptor editors for weblogic.xml and weblogic-application.xml
• Oracle Database Plug-in for Eclipse Data Tools Platform
• Facelets Tools Project Tech Preview (incubator)

ClientGen Wizard is one of the coolest wizards to come out of the Workshop 10gR3 release. In fact, we should have it going forward for our future OEPE releases. 

There are a lot of cool features to JAX-WS that were incorporated into 10gR3 but the ClientGen wizard is one of my favorites.  One of the great things about ClientGen is that it gives you an additional choice to using the more classic Service Control wizard that was part of Beehive and part of prior Workshop releases.

To keep this entry brief I'll write only about invoking the wizard and the first page of the wizard that can be used for selecting an appropriate WSDL that ultimately creates the Client Gen JAR file.

ClientGen can be used in both JAX-RPC and JAX-WS web service projects. I usually put it into a JAX-WS web service project since then I can use other JAX-WS features.

There are two ways to invoke it: 1) from File > New > Other > Web Services > ClientGen Web Service Client or, 2)  right-clicking on a WSDL within a web service project.

When invoked from File > New... the 1st page of the wizard displays as shown below. Here you can choose from a local WSDL in either a valid JAX-WS or JAX-RPC project.

If you choose the remote WSDL Location radio button you have the ability to choose a WSDL off the Internet from which a ClientGen JAR will be created.  As shown below the remote radio button is chosen and then a user can choose a valid project to place the created ClientGen JAR.

If a user invokes the wizard from right-clicking on a WSDL - the second way of invoking the wizard mentioned above - then he'll have to hit the back button once after the wizard pops since a WSDL is already selected.

If the user uses the second method to invoke the ClientGen wizard by right-clicking on a WSDL in his project then we presume he doesn't need to see the first page of the wizard but we provide the option of going to the first page if he changes his mind of what WSDL to use.

Regardless of the path taken to get to the wizard's WSDL selection page, once the remote WSDL location is selected and a valid WSDL URL is provided, the user must then click Validate WSDL button to make sure that the remote WSDL can be used to create the JAR file. If the WSDL URL is validated then the Next button will be enabled so that the user can choose other features in subsequent pages of the wizard and finally click Finish.

That's it for now. I'll return with another posting on subsequent pages for the wizard in the next few days.