1 Introduction and Roadmap

This document describes Oracle WebLogic Server domains and how they are configured. A domain is the basic administration unit for Oracle WebLogic Server. A domain consists of one or more Oracle WebLogic Server instances (and their associated resources) that you manage with a single Administration Server.

The following sections describe the contents and organization of this guide—Understanding Domain Configuration for Oracle WebLogic Server.

Document Scope and Audience
Guide to this Document
Related Documentation
Samples and Tutorials
New and Changed Features in This Release

Document Scope and Audience

This document is written mainly for Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) system architects, application developers, and system administrators who are developing or deploying Web-based applications on one or more Oracle WebLogic Server domains.

The topics in this document are relevant during the design and development phases of a software project. This document does not address production phase administration, monitoring, or performance tuning topics. For links to Oracle WebLogic Server documentation and resources for these topics, see Related Documentation.

It is assumed that the reader is familiar with Java EE, basic concepts of XML, and general networking and application management concepts.

Guide to this Document

This chapter, Chapter 1, "Introduction and Roadmap", introduces the purpose, organization, and context of this guide.
Chapter 2, "Understanding Oracle WebLogic Server Domains" introduces Oracle WebLogic Server domains.
Chapter 3, "Domain Configuration Files" describes the configuration and directories that maintain the on-disk representation of a domain and its contents.
Chapter 4, "Managing Configuration Changes" describes change management features in Oracle WebLogic Server.

Samples and Tutorials

In addition to this document, Oracle provides code samples that are relevant to domain configuration and administration.

The WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) examples show how to automate the creation of domains using WLST. See "WLST Sample Scripts" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Oracle WebLogic Scripting Tool.
The Avitek Medical Records Sample Application is an Oracle WebLogic Server sample application suite that concisely demonstrates all aspects of the Java EE platform. To start this sample application, invoke the startWeblogic script in:
```
WL_HOME/samples/domains/medrec  
```
where WL_HOME is the directory in which you installed Oracle WebLogic Server.

New and Changed Features in This Release

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