WebLogic 12c released!

At December the 1st, 2011, Oracle announced it’s new major release, the 12c release. As Oracle added the i (internet) at its 8 release, the g(gridcomputing) at its 10 release, now the focus will be on the c(cloudcomputing).

Many new features come out of the fact that Oracle has made its key application server ready for the cloud, that is, ready for to run on enigineered systems, in fact its own Exalogic machine, Oracle’s solution for implementing the cloud.

So let’s take a look what this new release brings us, in this blogpost. There are several new features available in the 12c

New or enhanced WebLogic 12c features

• JAVA EE 6 support all kinds of JEE6 specifications are implemented like :
  • JSF 2.0,Java Servlets 3.0 JPA 2.0 and EJB 3.1.
  • Managed Beans 1.0
• WebLogic 12c also supports supports Java SE 7 (and Java SE 6).
  • Java language optimizations and Internationalization
  • Client and server support
  • SSL/TLS 1.2 in JSSE to support JAVA Socket Transport security
  • Converged Java VM:JRockit and HotSpot are  incorporated with the best features from both.The JVM convergence will be a multi-year process, which was confirmed during my presence at Oracle’s Publisher Seminar 2011 during OOW

I won’t discuss the full list in this blog because there’s more about WebLogic than only (although very important of course!) the JAVA EE 6 specifications.

• Support for IDE’s. WebLogic already supported JDeveloper 11.1.1.5, but will come out with the 11.1.1.6 later on. Also suported are Eclipse and NetBeans 7.1 IDE. As said, the JDeveloper 11.1.1.6 and IntelliJIdea IDE will be supported in a later timeframe.
• New enhanced WebLogic Maven Plug-in See the various new options below in this scheme

As you can see, you can even build a simple domain or control it out of Maven!

• WebLogic 12c provide upgrades from
  • iAS with automated tooling
  • WebLogic 11g
  • GlassFish redeployment – With a built in GlassFish descriptor recognition for Re-Deployment to WebLogic Server
  • JBoss and webSphere with migration services
• WebLogic 12c has Active GridLink –> optimalisation for RAC –Uses Fast Connection Failover for faster RAC failure detection.
• Enhanced High Availability and Disaster Recovery
• Higher Performance accomplished with different kinds of techniques like:
  • Parallel muxers with Java NIO APIs for low-level I/O based operations
  • An optimized work scheduler providing improvements to the Increment Advisor used to manage the size of WebLogic Server’s Self-Tuning Thread Pool
  • “Lazy” de-serialization of session data on the replica server until required.
  • Multiple replication channels for synchronous in-memory session replication between servers in a WebLogic cluster

• Tight integration with the Enterprise Manager 12 Cloud Control and the use of the Middleware.

• Tighter integration with the latest Coherence like:
  • ActiveCache integration for WebLogic Server , being used by JPA entities and TopLink. Allows JPA Entity caching and TopLink Grid enables you to direct queries to ActiveCache.
  • Coherence cluster MBeans within WLS
  • Node Manager integration for starting/stopping cache servers . So you don’t have to use the start-stop scripts anymore.
  • Coherence*Web integration for session management

• WebLogic 12c supports Oracle traffic Director. Oracle Traffic Director is a layer-7 software loadbalancer thats acts as a -and supports:
  • Load balancer
  • Local traffic manager
  • Uses the application network layer 7
  • Can act as a reverse proxy
  • Support for SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0. You can configure SSL/TLS-enabled HTTP listeners
  • Will be the replacement for Oracle WebCache.
  • Is not a built-in feature of  WebLogic 12c
  • Integrated Traffic Management like routing, Load Balancing,  request
    routing and caching and SSL Crypto acceleration.

Screenshot of the OTD

Some more Exalogic features

• The Virtual Assembly Builder:
  • Deploy, un-deploy scale Assemblies with Oracle Virtual Assembly, quickly create and configure entire multi-tier application topologies
• Exabus – High Speed Network Virtualization using:
  • Coherence 3.7 for JAVA applications
  • Tuxedo 12c for C C++ applications
• Both are using: Direct Memory Access and Kernel Bypass for better throughput and lower latency

Summary

Of course, I can’t discuss all of the over more than 200 features WebLogic 12c brings with this new release.You can see the Exalogic readiness of the WebLogic 12c release, but for those who can’t afford such a configuration, or simply do not need it, WebLogic 12c can still be of a great value leveraging a solid, robust, fast and scalable application server from which you can use all the built in enhancements.

WebLogic 12c will be ready for all kinds of other products from the Oracle portfolio like the SOA Suite, WebCenter and so on, although those products will be at the 12c level in the coming 2012/2013 year.

An sort of minor detail but for the native BEA customers: the Administration Console will be phased out somewhere in the future bot not in the 12c family!

Have fun using it! Planned at December the 5th available for download.