About Oracle Coherence (and WLS) - weblogic

The Coherence functionality seems to based on clustering concept. Does this mean that, if I want to install WLS on my system for development use, I do not need the Coherence component that comes with WLS ?

Correct, it is not required to use WLS.

This may help to answer the question:
Coherence is now on the same "release train" as WebLogic, starting with version WebLogic version 12.1.2 (which is the second point release of the WebLogic "12c" major release version). So from now on, Coherence and WebLogic versions are in sync, and the two products are tested and certified together.
Coherence is "physically" included as part of some WebLogic installers. Coherence can be purchased as a separate product (three editions: Standard, Enterprise, Grid), or it can be purchased as part of the WebLogic Suite product (which comes with Enterprise Edition, but can be upgraded to Grid Edition).
WebLogic now has a free developer license available, and that free developer license covers Coherence development as well. (Previously, customers had to pay for a developer license, mainly AFAICT because that is how the database was licensed. We are glad to have fixed this!)
WebLogic can be used without Coherence. Coherence can be used without WebLogic. And both products can also be used together, using Coherence*Web for session management, WebLogic Active Cache for simple caching use cases, or Coherence Containers for full-blown, deployable, life-cycle managed, multi-tier data grid applications that are integrated with Java EE applications on WebLogic.
I hope this helps to clarify the possible options that you have.
For the sake of full disclosure, I work at Oracle. The opinions and views expressed in this post are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of my employer.

Related

Websphere Migration from was7 to was9

Planning to Migrate the Websphere from 7.0 to 9 and 8.5 to 9.
Can anyone help me getting the detailed Process
Migration here is "In place". (Migration will be done on the same servers, where the old Installation are in)
if at all any migration tools need to be used, please provide the clear info on them.
any documental references, or any video references for the questioner is appreciated.
OS used : RHEL
CUrrent version: WAS 7x and 8.5
Migrating to : WAS 9.0
It sounds like you're in the very beginning stages of doing this migration. Therefore, I highly recommend you take some time to plan this out, especially to figure out the exact steps you'll be taking and how you'll handle something going wrong. For WebSphere, there is a collection of documents from IBM that discuss planning and executing the upgrade. Look around there for documentation on the tools and step by step guides for different kinds of topologies. The step by step guide for an in place migration of a cell is here.
You should make sure to take good backups before you start the process so you can restore back to before the migration if you need to.
In addition to doing the upgrade, an important part is to also make sure your applications are going to work on the new version if you haven't already. IBM provides this tool to scan applications and identify potential issues that developers will have to fix. There is documentation for the tool at that link as well.
If you are in the planning phase, I'd strongly suggest you to consider migrating to WebSphere Liberty instead of traditional WAS v9. All these migration tools (toolkit for binaries, Eclipse migration toolkit) support both migration scenarios.
Choosing Liberty might be a bit more work at the beginning, but you will gain more deployment flexibility and speed up future development. Liberty is also much better fitted for any cloud/containers environments, as it is much more lightweight, so in the future, if you would like to move to containers, it would be much easier.
Check this tutorial Migrate traditional WebSphere apps to WebSphere Liberty on IBM Cloud Private by using Kubernetes, although it shows the steps to migrate to Liberty on ICP, beginning is the same - analyzing of the application whether they are fit for Liberty and migrating. If you don't have access to IBM Cloud or ICP, you can use stand alone version of the Transformation Advisor that was released recently - IBM Cloud Transformation Advisor.
Having said all that, some apps include old or proprietary traditional WebSphere APIs and in that case it may be easier and cheaper to temporary migrate them to WAS v9, and modernize in the future.

OpenShift Origin vs OpenShift Enterprise

I'm searching for a main difference between OpenShift Origin and OpenShift Enterprise. I know that the first is open source and the latter is the commercial version. Have OpenShift Enterprise got other features compared to the open source version?
Thanks in advance.
Update 3/21/2018: If you find this old answer of mine in the future, Enterprise is called "OpenShift Container Platform" now.
The community version goes faster, but with change comes some risk. If you would like to be an early adopter Origin could be your choice. Note: support is best effort by the community, but I have found very helpful people on IRC and on the project's github page.
Link: https://github.com/openshift/origin
The enterprise version has the advantage of professional support for your money. While you won't get features as early, in exchange there is focus on stability and streamlining. This may be important for enterprises. Some solutions / examples may not work exactly the same way. For example application templates, utilities come as part of packages for RHEL users. It also comes with some entitlements for things like RHEL and CloudForms integration.
I tried installing a one master, one node small cluster with both, and found them just as good.
In short, stability or early adoption. Oh, and bugfixes.
Personally I prefer to go with Origin, as you can monitor the state of the project yourself and you are not forced to jump on every coming train. Update when suitable.
OpenShift Origin is the open source community version of OpenShift Enterprise. In order to understand what this means, you need to understand what open source software is - computer software developed via a competitive collaborative model from many individual sources. Origin updates as often as open source developers contribute via git, a version control system, sometimes as often as several times per week.
OpenShift Enterprise 3integrates with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and is tested via Red Hat's QA process in order to offer a stable, supportable product for customers who want to have their own private or onsite cloud. Enterprise might update around every six months, maintaining stabilization across minor updates. Providing timely professional support for each query they have from installation/POC to the production.

TRAC host that allows plugin customisation

My research and development environment calls for a heavily customised TRAC with a corresponding subversion repository and a binary file store (e.g. WebDAV).
I have my eye on at least 10 plugins that I would like to use (from integration with time tracking software, to specialist mathematics/code rendering). I'd also like to write my own plugins.
I am looking for a commercial host that will allow me to self-manage my TRAC plugins. I've looked into (and contacted) a few of the commercial providers from the TRAC Commercial Services list, including:
Project Locker
Repository Hosting
SVN Repository
Project Locker have described that they do a code review of plugin requests and handle it on their end (unspecified time period). Repository Hosting have said that they "will probably not add support for that in the near future". SVN Repository have said "you won't be able to install any new plugins" and have suggested one of their VPS accounts instead.
Short of managing my own VPS or dedicated server, does anybody know of a commercial SVN/TRAC host who allows paying customers to install their own plugins? I would have thought a chroot environment would have made this a no-brainer!
(Note: this was originally posted on programmers but was down-voted and I was advised to move it here. Quoting from their FAQ: implementation issues or programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead))
You'll probably find a hard time finding what you're looking for because as Craig mentioned in his comment, the concept of commercial hosting services typically revolves around limiting a customer's ability to customize. Keeping things relatively uniform means that the hosting company can manage systems and deploy automated updates much more easily and won't have to worry about their scripts breaking because of something odd that one customer installed or re-configured.
If you want to be able to install and configure plugins at will, I highly recommend going the VPS route and managing the server yourself. It's easier than you might expect (I was thrown into this situation and was pleasantly surprised). You can start with something like the Bitnami Trac stack, which is a virtual machine image that has a Linux OS plus Trac and all of the support tools (database, webserver, etc) set up and ready to go. If you use that as a starting point, all you should have to do is customize your Trac settings and install your plugins.
If you really don't want to have anything to do with the management aspect, remember that you can always go the VPS route and contract out the administration work separately. It might be easier if the hosting provider and the system admin come from the same company, but it's not a requirement. Given the flexibility and customization that you need, this might be a more realistic option.

Glassfish in a production environment?

Do you use Glassfish 2 or v3 in a production environment?
Do you find it robust?
Have you ever been able to find a complete set of documentation?
What do you do when you find that Glassfish ignores J2EE standards, like class and anotation scanning?
Glassfish is Sun's reference standard for a J2EE app server. V3 supports the new 3.1 standard. However, it is only a preview. It is currently scheduled to be released on Dec 10, 2009. Of course, it can always be dangerous to be a very early adopter in a production environment. Currently V3 doesn't support JMS or clustering, for example, but they should be in the final release.
I've used V2 in production for about 3 years and I personally like it. The web admin console makes it very easy to manage (http://localhost:4848, admin, adminadmin), and the performance is good. Here's one example, where someone benchmarked Glassfish: Blog. Of course, you should search for more examples and your YMMV. Here's a Sun document for Glassfish to help Tomcat User.
One last thing that I would add is that Sun ships, and integrates, both Tomcat and Glassfish in their Java IDE Netbeans so you can easily switch between the two app servers to test your particular app.
GlassFish Server V3 or V2 can be used in production environments but the number of users should be less than 1500. Its not very robust and scalable during high load. If used for simple applications GF works perfectly fine, as it is the reference implementation of Java EE standards by Sun which only server to be a guide to other vendors of application servers.
For more complex and high load applications, its better to go to IBM WebSphere Application Server. That's the most robust app server I have seen in my 15 yrs of experience.
Do I use GF in production? no.
Do I find it robust? yes, but I do not tax it very hard.
Have I ever found a complete set of documentation? I think so... the GlassFish v2.1 docs and the GlassFish v3 docs (http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/prod/gf.entsvr.v3?l=en&a=view)
What do I do when GlassFish ignores the J2EE standards? I file an issue here: https://glassfish.dev.java.net/issues/
Do I use in production? Yes. (Now, using 3.0.1)
Is it robust? Yes. But my point of view is from someone that likes to follow the server's developers community and can try some tricks.
What about documentation? The official one is really good, and the developers blogs are a great plus (http://blogs.oracle.com/theaquarium/). What is maybe far from other communities, at the moment, is the collective experience material (like forums), but I think the mail lists are good enough (http://glassfish.java.net/public/mailing-lists.html).

Enterprise SSO & Identity management / recommendations

We've discussed SSO before. I would like to re-enhance the conversation with defined requirements, taking into consideration recent new developments.
In the past week I've been doing market research looking for answers to the following key issues:
The project should should be:
Requirements
SSO solution for web applications.
Integrates into existing developed products.
has Policy based password security (Length, Complexity, Duration and co)
Security Policy can be managed using a web interface.
Customizable user interface (the password prompt and co. screens).
Highly available (99.9%)
Scalable.
Runs on Red Hat Linux.
Nice to have
Contains user Groups & Roles.
Written in Java.
Free Software (open source) solution.
None of the solutions came up so far are "killer choice" which leads me to think I will be tooling several projects (OWASP, AcegiSecurity + X??) hence this discussion.
We are ISV delivering front-end & backend application suite. The frontend is broken into several modules which should act as autonomous unit, from client point of view he uses the "application" - which leads to this discussion regrading SSO.
I would appreciate people sharing their experience & ideas regarding the appropriete solutions.
Some solutions are interesting
CAS
Sun OpenSSO Enterprise
JBoss Identity IDM
JOSSO
Tivoli Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign-On
Or more generally speaking this list
Thank you,
Maxim.
What about FreeIPA?
"FreeIPA is an integrated security information management solution combining Linux (Fedora), 389 (formerly known as Fedora Directory Server), MIT Kerberos, NTP, DNS. It consists of a web interface and command-line administration tools."
If you focus on web applications, check out http://oauth.net/.
CAS has strong adoption, user-base, and a strong lead (who recently switched jobs, but is still comitted to the project). It is straightforward to integrate (if you're comfortable writing Java code/configuring Spring beans), and can do all your requirements, noteably:
SSO solution for web applications.
YES
Integrates into existing developed products.
YES (though some cleaner than others - but many modules are available for major products, and it supports common standards (SAML, OpenID).
has Policy based password security (Length, Complexity, Duration and co)
*YES - can easily be implemented, and some extensions to integrate with LDAP (probably the most common user store) are supported
Security Policy can be managed using a web interface.
NO - though one could be build fairly simply - if you're comfortable with development, and given that this is likely to be a non-trivial project, I'd recommend considering this a non-blocker given that the product is open-source
Customizable user interface (the password prompt and co. screens).
YES - easily customized through some basic HTML/CSS editing
Highly available (99.9%)
YES - both reliable, and can support multiple node/failover scenarios easily
Scalable.
YES - used in many high-traffic environments both intranet and internet
Runs on Red Hat Linux.
YES
Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-On is not what you're after - it requires a Windows executable to be deployed. Oracle Access Manager is closer to what you're after (though it's not free or Java-based).
The major commercial players in the Identity and Access Management (IAM) market space are CA, Oracle, IBM, Sun and Novell. None of these are free solutions but they have many of the features that you are looking for.
For free software, I recommend DACS: The Distributed Access Control System. I know that one department where I work has implemented this with great success. It doesn't have as many features the commercial IAM products but otherwise is a good solution.
I have used Tivoli Access Manager backing onto Websphere and IIS boxes - the way it writes access information into the page headers is very useful. On the downside, I didnt find the DB2 Ldap backend very scalable or reliable, and you know with IBM this isn't going to come cheap.
Also the asynchronous paths (junctions) used to identify different servers is a bit of a hack really eg http://mysite/myserver/myapp - a very bad idea and not thought through very well.