1 Introduction and Roadmap

The following sections describe the contents and organization of this guide—Deploying Applications to Oracle WebLogic Server:

Document Scope and Audience
Guide to This Document
Standards Compatibility
Deployment Terminology
Related Documentation
New and Changed Features in This Release

Document Scope and Audience

This document is a resource for:

Administrators who want to deploy Java EE applications or application modules to WebLogic Server instances or clusters. It is assumed that you are working in a production environment, which is generally characterized by multiple WebLogic Server instances or clusters running on multiple machines. It is also assumed that you have one or more application module archive files that have been tested and are ready to deploy on a production server.
Developers who may need to deploy an application in a development environment, package an application for delivery to an administrator or deployer, or create and export the configuration of an application for deployment to a testing, staging, or production environment

Guide to This Document

This chapter, Chapter 1, "Introduction and Roadmap," describes the organization of this document and highlights new deployment features introduced in this release of WebLogic Server.
Chapter 2, "Understanding WebLogic Server Deployment," provides an overview of deployment features used in WebLogic Server.
Chapter 3, "Preparing Applications and Modules for Deployment," explains how to prepare application and module files for deployment to WebLogic Server.
Chapter 4, "Configuring Applications for Production Deployment," describes how to configure an application for deployment to a specific WebLogic Server environment.
Chapter 5, "Exporting an Application for Deployment to New Environments," describes how to export an application's WebLogic Server deployment configuration to a custom deployment plan, which administrators use in deploying the application into non-development environments.
Chapter 6, "Deploying Applications and Modules with weblogic.Deployer," describes basic and advanced techniques for deploying applications to WebLogic Server.
Chapter 7, "Auto-Deploying Applications in Development Domains," describes how to quickly deploy an application to a standalone server (Administration Server) for evaluation or testing in a single-server development environment.
Chapter 8, "Redeploying Applications in a Production Environment," explains how to safely update, redeploy, and reconfigure applications that you have deployed to a production environment.
Chapter 9, "Managing Deployed Applications," describes common tasks that an Administrator performs when managing deployed applications and modules.
Appendix A, "weblogic.Deployer Command-Line Reference," provides a complete reference for the weblogic.Deployer tool syntax.
Appendix B, "weblogic.PlanGenerator Command Line Reference," describes how to use the weblogic.PlanGenerator utility to create a basic deployment plan.

Standards Compatibility

WebLogic Server implements the Java EE 5 specification. Java EE 5 includes a deployment specification, JSR-88, that describes a standard API used by deployment tools and application server providers to configure and deploy applications to an application server.

WebLogic Server implements both the JSR-88 Service Provider Interface (SPI) plug-in and model plug-in to comply with the Java EE 5 deployment specification. You can use a basic Java EE 5 deployment API deployment tool with the WebLogic Server plug-ins (without using WebLogic Server extensions to the API) to configure, deploy, and redeploy J2EE applications and modules to WebLogic Server. See Compatibility Statement for WebLogic Server.

Deployment Terminology

The following WebLogic Server deployment terms are used throughout this document:

application—One or more software programs, used collectively by an end user to perform computing tasks.
application installation directory—A WebLogic Server directory structure designed to help organize deployment files and generated deployment configuration artifacts for an application or module. Also referred to as an application root directory.
application module—An XML document used to configure JMS or JDBC resources. An application module can be one of the following types:
- standalone— Resources are bound to the global JNDI tree.
- application-scoped—Bundled as part of an Enterprise application and scoped within the application itself.
application version—A string value that identifies the version of a deployed application. Compatible applications that use version strings can use the WebLogic Server production redeployment strategy.
deployment configuration—The process of defining the deployment descriptor values required to deploy an application to a particular WebLogic Server domain. The deployment configuration for an application or module is stored in three types of XML document: J2EE deployment descriptors, WebLogic Server descriptors, and WebLogic Server deployment plans.
deployment descriptor—An XML document used to define the J2EE behavior or WebLogic Server configuration of an application or module at deployment time.
deployment plan—An XML document used to define an application's WebLogic Server deployment configuration for a specific WebLogic Server environment, such as development, test, or production. A deployment plan resides outside of an application's archive file and contains deployment properties which override an application's existing WebLogic Server deployment descriptors. Use deployment plans to easily change an application's WebLogic Server configuration for a specific environment without modifying existing deployment descriptors. Multiple deployment plans can be used to reconfigure a single application for deployment to multiple, differing WebLogic Server environments.
distribution—The process by which WebLogic Server copies deployment source files to target servers for deployment.
production redeployment—A WebLogic Server redeployment strategy that deploys a new version of a production application alongside an older version, while automatically managing HTTP connections to ensure uninterrupted client access.
staging mode—The method WebLogic Server uses to make deployment files available to target servers in a domain. Staging modes determine whether or not files are distributed (copied) to target servers before deployment.

New and Changed Features in This Release

For a comprehensive listing of the new WebLogic Server features introduced in this release, see What's New in Oracle WebLogic Server.