Interview with Mike Lehmann from Oracle at UKOUG TEBS 2009

05 Jan 2010 by Simon Haslam (in General)  |  Comments (0)

At the UKOUG TEBS conference in Birmingham last month we were very fortunate that Oracle sent over Mike Lehmann from Canada to present. Mike is very senior figure - you'll see him talking about application server and related technologies (often whilst doing demos) supporting Thomas Kurian at the big events. Given that 2009 was such a significant year for Fusion Middleware I thought it would be good to interview Mike to ask about upgrades to OFM 11g and what he can see in his "application server crystal ball". Having never recorded a podcast before it was quite a learning experience!

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Retrospective: Oracle Application Server 4.0

31 Dec 2009 by Simon Haslam (in Install & Upgrade)  |  Comments (1)

Yes, you read the title correctly - for a little "end of of the noughties" light relief, this article is about Oracle Application Server 4.0, released a decade ago at the end of 1999.

 

Whilst my first encounters with Oracle middleware were Oracle Web Application Server 3.0 (WAS) in about 1998, it wasn't until the end of 2000 that I got my hands on a production installation. This was a dot-com startup company who had a Oracle Application Server 4.0 (OAS) cluster, backed by a two node OPS database, and all running on Sun Enterprise hardware. Therefore I have a special fondness for OAS as it has set the stage for my work over the best part of 10 years.

Oracle's early middleware server products were:

• Web Application Server 3.0 - released in 1997.
• Oracle Application Server 4.0 - released at the end of 1999.
• Oracle 9iAS Release 1 (9.0.1) - released in 2001. This now uses Apache as the web listener and OC4J as the Java server (following the acquisition of the Orion product).
  
• Oracle 9iAS Release 2 (9.0.2) - released summer 2002. This was a very big release as it was the first version to include an infrastructure tier (along with a accompanying patch CD from Day 1). The release notes ran to 42(!) pages and it's fair to say it was difficult to install...

I don't know what came before WAS 3 - WAS 2 presumably... Around this time were also the first versions of WebDB, which subsequently morphed into Oracle Portal, though Application Express went full circle by reverting to the simpler WebDB-style architecture. Anyway, 9iAS R2 became the foundation of the product set right up to the significant re-engineering effort that went into Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g as released in July 2009.

Installation

Whilst I don't use this blog for detailed 'click this, click that' articles (I hope that most of my readers can read the manuals), but for a bit of fun I thought I'd reinstall OAS 4.0. Blogs hadn't reached critical mass in 1999 so there's a good chance this may be the only post you'll find on the topic!

So, out of Veriton's extensive CDROM library (a filing cabinet, with rather more emphasis on 'cabinet' than 'filing'!), I found Oracle Application Server v4.0.8.1.0 for Sun SPARC Solaris2.x. This comes one one disk which includes all the options ('cartridges' in OAS parlance) and documentation.

Disk Trivia: The WAS disks had a colour image on them but some time before OAS was released this was replaced by the black jumble of Oracle letters which has been used for all subsequent Oracle media packs as far as I'm aware. The photo on the right shows the WAS 3.0, OAS 4.0 Beta and OAS 4.0 disks - the eagle-eyed might even spot that on the WAS 3.0 disk I crossed out Windows NT and marked it as Solaris (the two were labelled incorrectly from the factory).

So, first things first - where's the installation guide?

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UKOUG Tech & EBS Conference - Middleware Stream Suggestions

27 Nov 2009 by Simon Haslam (in Events)

 

Well, the UKOUG Technology & E-Business Suite annual conference has come around again quickly and starts on Monday. Each day has 14(!) streams running in parallel, focussed on database, development, middleware, business intelligence and E-Business Suite. For middleware enthusiasts this year there is 1 dedicated stream on Monday and 2 each on Tuesday and Wednesday... and lots of good stuff to see!

If you are able to attend it's well worth planning your sessions in advance - many is the time I've been to a conference and only noticed a session I would have liked to have seen afterwards. You can also build up a personalised agenda online and then use it to print a list of your sessions. Note: it handily allows you to pick more than one session for a given time slot so if you're undecided you can choose on the day.

So, on to the middleware content. There are Oracle Middleware Keynotes at the start of all three days - so even if you're only attending one day you'll hear strategic information from the people at the top! Let's start with those:

• Monday: OFM 11g: Functional Highlights and Business Value Drivers - John Aisien
  
• Tuesday: Fusion Middleware Application Server Strategy - Update to 11g and beyond - Mike Lehmann
• Wednesday: Oracle SOA Suite 11g: Overview and roadmap - Hugo Brand
  

I won't go through all the presentations on the agenda, but just pick out some that should be well worth attending:

Rule Based Event Processing for Congestion and Pollution Monitoring: This caught my eye it describes a protoype for a practical implementation of the new CEP functionality in SOA 11g (which I've still not got my head around yet!)

Tales from the WebLogic Front Line: I'm looking forward to this session which sounds like it will be full of war-stories!

Building Dynamic Oracle Application Server Environments with Oracle VM: Mike first presented this at the September UKOUG AS & MW SIG - it's a great introduction to OVM (a product increasingly relevant to middleware administrators) and Mike tells me he's been updating it for the latest release.

Authentication, SSO, and Authorisation for WebLogic Server Applications: This looks like how we integrate WebLogic with Oracle's Identity Management products.

Managing Oracle Connection in WebLogic with RAC and Data Guard: Alex is a very bright guy and this is bound to have some good demonstrations.

WebLogic Suite 11g - A look under the hood: all the latest and greatest WLS stuff from senior product management!

OPSS Introduction and best practices: unfortunately I'm not going to be able to get to this session as it clashes with ADF EMG. OPSS is the evolution of what was going to be JPS (in OC4J-based OFM 11g) and BEA's CSS and is the foundation for implementing security in 11gR1. Well worth finding out more.

I'm giving a couple of sessions readers might like too:

• Masterclass - WebLogic Server for Oracle Application Server Administrators: I will be explaining all the important new concepts, along with demonstrating an installation of OFM 11g starting from an clean OS and ending up with a deployed ADF app (i.e. comparable to an OAS Web and Java install type). As the title suggests, I will try to compare the OFM 11g/WebLogic way of doing things with OAS (especially 10.1.3) throughout, to hopefully show that much of what you already know about OAS will help with WLS. I'll also highlight some of the nice new WebLogic features too! No previous experience of WebLogic is required.
• Getting the best out of Hardware Load Balancers: the first session purely about hardware load balancers at an Oracle conference? Quite possibly.
  

There are several round-table discussion sessions at the conference. For exmaple, you might like:

• Application Server and Middleware Roundtable: come along for an informal round-table chat about any App. Server questions or issues you want to get off your chest.
• ADF Enterprise Methodology Group: Grant Ronald, Sten Vesterli and others will be along to talk about best practices in ADF development and deployment. All welcome.
  

Finally for the Twitter-ers out there, there's a #ukoug_tebs hash tag as well as ones for each session (e.g. #tebs_123 for session 123) and tweets will be displayed on a big screen in the reception area... you have been warned !

I look forward to seeing any readers of this blog - so do drop by and say hello!

ADF Dynamic Tabs Shell Template: Relevance for New Projects

17 Nov 2009 by Simon Haslam (in ADF)

At OpenWorld one of the new features touted for PS1 was promised to assist building Fusion-style applications, based on Oracle's own development experience. Immediately this sounded interesting! I must admit I was thinking it would be something like the old af:PanelPage component in 10.1.3, but in fact it is a new template supplied with ADF, called 'Dynamic Tabs Shell'. Now when I say 'template' I'm not really doing it justice - it's more of a 'power-template' complete with its own backing bean to provide functionality accessible from your web page (e.g. via EL). My interest in this feature is primarily from two angles: development team productivity: can use of this template make it quicker to build interfaces? embodiment of best practice: given that the people behind this have probably been heavily involved with Fusion Apps, can we look into the template to understand the best way to do things? Documentation for the template (including a worked example) is covered by the Oracle UI Shell Functional Pattern. It's quite a long article though so takes time to digest.

Before getting into too much into detail, let me pull out a few key sentences from the above document, that describe the intended purpose of the template:

"The most salient behavior supported by the UI Shell is dynamic tabs. The tabs are dynamic in that they are rendered and dismissed upon demand by the user. Developers can ramp up quickly and easily to create a rich client UI promoted by Oracle's User Experience teams." 

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What's New in Fusion Middleware 11gR1 PS1 & WebLogic 10.3.2?

13 Nov 2009 by Simon Haslam (in Install & Upgrade)

What's new? Good question! I stumbled into a whole load of new downloads for OFM 11gR1 PS1 this morning, including WebLogic 10.3.2, but have been unable to find out anything much about them. Whilst I had been expecting new versions of JDeveloper/ADF (see my comment a couple of days ago) and SOA, I didn't know we were getting the whole stack!

I spoke to a chum in Oracle Support who says apparently the WLS update is a minor release (with some fixes) but is primarily there to support changes for Patch Set 1 in the other middleware products runing on top of WebLogic. There was also an interesting comment from someone in Oracle on this OTN thread: http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=986264 suggesting that documentation is on its way.

Here's the list of the new OFM 11gR1 PS1 (i.e. 11.1.1.2) products:

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