[PJUG Javamail] J2EE demo app for Oracle Application Server

[Hall, Steve J]

Hi Ian,

I have run this process for several years:  Build a compliant Enterprise Archive  (EAR), package your Oracle-specific deployment descriptors in the EAR.   Use Oracle's Enterprise Manager to configure the datasource and to  deploy the EAR.  That's about all there is to it.  The application server knows how to unbundle and deploy a properly configured EAR.  In our environment, all of this is scripted.  We build the EAR using ANT, which has worked well enough over these last 5 years.

In our case, we wanted portability not vendor lock-in, so we developed a standard JEE EAR running JBoss on our development machine, then deploy to TEST and PRODUCTION on the Oracle Application Server.  The specific deployment descriptors for JBoss and for Oracle are named differently.  We found that they could co-exist in the EAR without a problem.  This makes our EAR portable across environments.

If you are new to Oracle, you have probably surmised like the rest of us that Oracle documentation writers get paid by the word.  I got through this initially using the Oracle Application Server 10g Administration Handbook, a relatively slim and accessible 382 pages:  ISBN 0-07-222958-6 .  I am not a Systems Administrator - I am an Software Engineer so nothing here is too specific that requires a deep dive on the systems admin side.  If you are running OID (Oracle Identity Management) there are some specific things that you will need in the Oracle deployment descriptor and in web.xml for role based authorization (they need to map).  Additionally, most systems admins will front end the application server with Apache, which ours have done.  Apache is a largely transparent issue from a developer's perspective, however.

Additionally, it might interest you to know that Oracle has abandoned OC4J (10g)  and migrated to Oracle Web Logic (they bought the company several years ago)  So it is likely that 10G and 11G are very different application servers, if my understanding is correct.  I recommend you research this and pick one, since the path from one to the other is not likely to be straightforward or easy.  More current is probably a better choice, assuming you have a choice.   I believe Oracle 10g is either Java EE 1.3 or Java EE 1.4 compliant based on the specific version: for example 10.1.3.1 is Java EE 1.4 compliant (if I remember correctly).  I do remember some pain around this a few years back when we migrated from Java EE 1.3 to java EE 1.4.   Also,  I believe 10g is  JRE 5 or below.  In short 10g is a bit dated as many of us are running Java JRE 6 and Java EE 6 in production and already looking toward the next version of the Java EE spec.  If you are not familiar with Java EE you may want to take some time to look into what the versions offer, as Java EE 6 offers many improvements over 1.4.

Lately I have been looking more seriously at JBoss in production integrated with Active Directory for authentication and for authorization via role based security.   I have already migrated the application and done the integration with AD, we will be going to production very soon.  In short if you have a choice of application servers, JBoss may be a very good one, or go with the Spring folks - another great choice.

By the way, my particular configuration is Servlets, Stateless Session Beans, integration to an Oracle database, with WEB (JSP) and Swing client apps.  I also integrate to an SVN Edge server, and to a several FTP servers - but that's a longer story than you probably care about.  I mention this as a qualifier so you can better understand how this subset of the available Java EE technologies maps to my ramblings above.

Good luck.


Regards,
Steve

From: javamail-bounces at pjug.org [mailto:javamail-bounces at pjug.org] On Behalf Of Ian Downard
Sent: Monday, February 27, 2012 1:36 PM
To: javamail at pjug.org
Subject: [PJUG Javamail] J2EE demo app for Oracle Application Server

I'm trying to learn how to manage J2EE apps on Oracle Application Server 10g and 11g.  Can anyone recommend a good blog or other reference which walks through the deploy process for a fairly sophisticated J2EE sample application (such as the Petclinic<http://static.springsource.org/docs/petclinic.html>)?

Thanks in advance.
--Ian
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