Posts Tagged oracle

Java EE Containers and Docker

Docker is an open platform for developers and sysadmins to build, ship, and run distributed applications. Given my long history with Java EE, it was natural for me to experiment the installation and deployment of popular Java EE containers using Docker.

Communities and Software vendors did not wait for me, and I discovered many prebuilt containers, ready to use.

The list below references official builds, i.e. the ones created and maintained by the software vendor. (by alphabetical list)

I also built my own Dockerfile for Glassfish.

Feel free to comment this post, I will update the list.  (Official builds only)

Enjoy !

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JDeveloper Major Release – 11.1.2

This week, Oracle released a major new version of JDeveloper IDE, version 11.1.2

What’s new ?

  • The plugin system has been revamped and is now based on OSGi
  • The startup time has been dramatically reduced.  (We will need to find another activity to allow us for a cup of coffee – or two – in the morning)
  • Integration with Maven 2
  • Support of JSF 2
  • And, for Mac users using OpenJDK 7, no more need to hack your Java installation to make the installer happy. (when using Apple’s provided JDK 1.6, you still have to follow these instructions)

You can download it from OTN.  Have a look at the release notes and the user documentation.

enjoy !

[UPDATE]

I have to admit that the startup time has improved much !  On my Macbook Pro (Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz / 4GB RAM – Apple JDK 1.6.0_24), a warm start gives the JDeveloper 20 secs to get the main Window. Weblogic seems to follow this path too with an impressive 11 secs to status [RUNNING].

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JDeveloper 11g PS4 is available

JDeveloper team released last week version 11.1.1.5, aka Patch Set 4.

This is a maintenance only release, no new feature has been added in this release. You can download it for free from Oracle Technology network.

Release Notes are available here

As usual, should you try to install it on Mac OS X, don’t forget to symlink classes.jar to rt.jar in your JVM installation, as per instructions on this blog (or from the official documentation)

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NetBeans 7.0 is available

NetBeans 7.0 is available for download.

The major new feature of this release is the support for the upcoming Java SE 7 specification, in particular project Coin (diamond operator, String in switch, multi catch for exceptions …).

Others new / improved features is the support for Maven 3, Git etc … and the support for GlassFish Application Server 3.1, Oracle Weblogic Server and Oracle database (simplified connection wizard, guided installation to JDBC driver, editing and deployment of stored procedures)

Download is free for everyone, release notes are full of details.

Enjoy !

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Solaris 11 Express on VirtualBox

I just downloaded and installed Solaris Express 11 on VirtualBox on my Mac and I was pleasantly surprised by the integration work done during these last two years.  Everything I tested is working out of the box, including screen resizing, a traditional paint point of Solaris + VirtualBox.

Beside paving the way toward Oracle Solaris 11 and being one of the first Oracle branded release of Solaris, there are many new functions for developers and system administrators.

I was particularly impressed by the extremely simple installation process, that started with OpenSolaris and is now live for all current and future Solaris users.  You can have a preview with this video.

You can also download a prebuilt Virtual Box VM, ready to use.

Give it a try !

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Oracle Enterprise Cloud Conference @ Luxembourg

Oracle Enterprise Cloud Summit

Develop Your Strategy and Roadmap for Cloud Computing Strategies

The cost and speed advantages of cloud computing are clear and compelling. But how do you actually move to cloud computing? To discover a practical approach to building your cloud foundation, join us for the Oracle Enterprise Cloud Summit.

During this half-day event, cloud experts will share real-world best practices, reference architectures, detailed customer case studies, and more. You’ll learn how to transform IT into a superior service provider with a strategy and roadmap for building, deploying, and managing an enterprise cloud.

Attend the Oracle Enterprise Cloud Summit to learn how to:

  • Build a state-of-the-art cloud architecture
  • Leverage your existing IT investments
  • Optimize your IT management processes

Whether you are considering a move to cloud computing or have already adopted a cloud.

AGENDA
8:30 Breakfast and Registration
9:00 Welcome
Pierre Henin, Managing Director, Oracle Luxembourg
9:15 Keynote : Your Roadmap to Enterprise Cloud Computing
Martijn Vlek, Senior Director – EMEA Middleware Solution Specialist Team
10:15 Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud : Revolutionizing Data Center Consolidation
Dieter Deramoudt, Senior Manager – Sales Consulting
11:00 BREAK
Track 1 Track 2
11:15 Infrastructure as a Service Enterprise Cloud Computing for Enterprises
Martijn de Jong, Product Marketing Manager
Five Essential Capabilities for Cloud Management
Mike Reys, Senior Sales Consultant
12:00 Oracle Exadata: Private Could Database Consolidation
Wim Van Asch, Master Principal Sales Consultant
Integrating your On-Premise Applications with Cloud Applications
Sébastien Stormacq, Principal Sales Consultant
12:45 LUNCH

Register Now !

This event is organized in collaboration with
itnation

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Installing VBox Guest Additions in a minimal Oracle Enterprise Linux config

Here is a tip to help you to save some time next time you will install Oracle Enterprise Linux as a guest OS in a Virtual Box system.

If, like me, you like to install the minimum set of components and then add whatever is required at a later stage, you will soon find that you can not install the Virtual Box Guest Additions : the installation procedure will complain for missing packages.

Actually, the installation procedure is compiling source code, hence it requires some development tools and the kernel header files. None of these are installed by default when you choose a minimal installation.

First Step : add Oracle repositories to YUM configuration (as root)

cd /etc/yum.repos.d
wget http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-el5.repo

Then ensure that the repositories are enabled, i.e. enabled=1 under [ol5_u5_base] and [el5_u5_base]

Second Step : install missing packages

sudo yum install gcc  make  automake  autoconf kernel-headers.i386 kernel-devel

Then you can proceed with normal VirtualBox Guest Additions installation.

Enjoy !

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Web Services Security with OpenSSO Security Token Service (STS)

I recently experimented with OpenSSO Secure Token Service, one of the rare component Oracle will migrate from Sun’s Identity Management Suite to Oracle’s IAM Suite.

An Open Source implementation is also available from ForeRock’s OpenAM.

To summarize, a Secure Token Service is a third-party broker where Web Services clients can authenticate and receive a security token to be sent to a Web Service Provider.  The Web Service Provider will, in turn, validate the token and to evaluate authentication and authorization decisions.

The best STS description / tutorial I found on the web is on a deprecated page of Microsoft’s MSDN.  If you don’t know about STS, I highly recommend to read this serie of articles.

After installing / setting up OpenSSO / OpenAM, you will be ready to configure the STS part.

There are three approaches to interact with STS Server

Approach #1 – STS’s WSDL definition

This is the platform agnostic approach.  Just rely on STS’s WSDL definition to generate whatever client code you will need.

Unfortunately, on Java SE 6, this approach fails because of incompatibilities in OpenSSO’s STS WSDL definition and JAX-WS.

ForgeRock’s community is tracking this issue under Bug ID 287 and Bug ID 306

Stay tuned on ForgeRock’s JIRA for more details on this approach.

Approach #2 : Using JAX-RPC and JSR 196 provider

JSR 196 is a SPI specification allowing to hook a filter inside a container.  This filter will be invoked for all incoming and outgoing JAX RPC call, allowing it to be used for logging or security purposes for example.

OpenSSO and OpenAM do provide a JSR 196 provider for web service authentication (JSR 196) and authorization (JSR 115).  This provider is able to work with an STS provider.  The provider is available as part of openssowssprovider.jar JAR file.

While a little cumbersome to configure, this approach is working out of the box.  As long as you strictly follow the documentation.  These troubleshooting steps will probably be useful as well.

However, this approach has a major drawback : it is JAX RPC based, i.e. quite old, now that the (Java) world has embraced JAX WS.  In other words, Oracle only supports this when the web service provider and the web service consumer are deployed into a GlassFish v2 instance.

So, if you want to use JAX WS, you will require a little more work.

Approach #3 – JAX WS

JAX-WS also provides hooks to intercept outgoing and incoming SOAP requests.  These hooks are named “Handler“.

The good news about Handlers is that they are web-app specific, unlike JAX-RPC JSR 196 provider which are installed at container level; hence for all your web applications.

You can think of an Handler as a Servlet Filter, dedicated to web service calls.  They can be part of a web app, to protect web services providers, or stand alone client, to protect web service consumers.  IBM has a very good documentation about using Handlers with JAX WS web services.

To test OpenSSO / OpenAM STS service with JAX WS handlers, I suggest you to read this tutorial.

All in all, this is an excellent step by step article, covering deployment in Tomcat, GlassFish and Websphere.

Unfortunately, you will soon realize that these step by step instructions are not working.

Problem #1 : Oracle removed the download link to openssowssagents.jar file.  Yes you read it right.  As of today, there is no binary distribution for the JAX WS Handlers and WSS Agents.  The JAR file is only available from ForgeRock.

Problem #2 : JAX-WS ClientHandler and ServerHandler are not included in openssowssagents.jar file.  So even, if you are downloading ForgeRock’s JAR file, you won’t get these two JAX WS handlers.

So the only solution is to download the source code and built it yourselves.  Building OpenSSO / OpenAM is not an easy task.  This product has many dependencies and historical (legacy) branches.  Anyway, your build will not be supported by Oracle nor ForgeRock.  For your convenience, here is a openssowssagents.jar file with the JAX WS classes included.

Should you have a valid support contract with Oracle and/or ForgeRock, do not hesitate to open a support case and see what / if /how they will handle this situation.

Enjoy !

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Coherence Plugin for NetBeans IDE

While working with Coherence, we might find convenient to start, stop and query Coherence cluster node directly from the IDE.

My colleague Andrew wrote a plugin to allow this.  In addition, the plugin takes care of generating the tedious boilerplate code required for object serialization.

Good Job Andrew !

You will have more details and a short documentation on Andrew’s blog.  And you can download the plugin from NetBeans’ plugin portal.

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Out of the box integration

One year ago, when I tried to run Oracle’s Enterprise Linux 5 within VirtualBox, I ran into many configuration issues to get folder sharing, mouse integration and full screen correctly working.

Today the story is different.

I just tried Enterprise Linux 5 update 4, with the latest VirtualBox 3.2.12.  Everything is working out of the box.  Everything.

I have to admit I am impressed how Oracle manage to integrate all its product line.

Enjoy !

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