BEA WebLogic 6.0 sp 1

These installation instructions have been verified on RedHat Linux, but shou ld be easily adaptable to any platform that Weblogic runs on.

As with any Expresso installation, we recommend that if you have problems wi th Weblogic installation you try installing the "expresso-complete" bundle, and verify that it is functional with it's included Tomcat server - this helps det ermine if the problem is with Weblogic configuration or with Expresso itself.

Please review the documentation from BEA on how to configure Weblogic and deploy a web application - Expresso is packaged as a web application, and may be deployed following these instructions: Weblogic Documentation . It is important, however, to un-jar the release .war file into the appropriat e deployment directory, and not to let Weblogic do this on it's own.

The steps involved are as follows:

  1. Install Weblogic according to the normal procedure supplied by BEA. Do not start the server.
  2. Assuming you installed in a directory "/home/weblogic" (if you didn't, then substitute as required), go to the directory /home/weblogic/wlserver6.0/config/mydomain (we're also assuming here that you chose the default "mydomain" name for your local domain. If you did not, substi tute as required).
  3. Edit the file "config.xml" in this directory, adding the following entry:

    <Application Deployed="true" Name="expresso" Path="./config/mydomain/applications" > <WebAppComponent Name="expresso" Targets="myserver" URI="expresso" /> </Application>

  4. Change the file "startWebLogic.sh" to make it executable (Weblogic install does not appear to do this by default). (e.g. chmod +x startWebLogic.sh)
  5. Change directory into the "applications" sub-directory (e.g. /home/weblogic /wlserver6.0/config/mydomain/applications in our example).
  6. Create a directory called "expresso" in this directory. Change into that ne w directory.
  7. Copy the expresso3-10-src.war file into this new directory (substituting the appropri ate version number of Expresso as required).
  8. Un-jar the file, e.g. issue the command "jar xvf expresso3-10-src.war".
  9. Delete the .war file, or move it elsewhere.
  10. Change directories back up to the /home/weblogic/wlserver6.0/config/mydomai n directory.
  11. Run the startWebLogic.sh file: You should see a number of lines printed to the console, ending with: DefaultInit: init com.jcorporate.expresso.core.misc.ConfigManager.config(ServletConfig):Expresso initialization complete . Or something very similar.
  12. Expresso is now installed and operational. You can verify this and access E xpresso by going to the URL: http://yourserver:7001/expresso/expresso/frame.jsp (Substituting the name of your server for "yourserver" here of course).

BEA WebLogic 5.1.0 sp 9

This section describes installation for WebLogic 5.1.0 sp 9 and Expresso 3.11. This process was tested under RedHat Linux 6.2, but should be easily adapted to any platform.

  1. Install WebLogic according to it's standard installation procedure. We'll assume for this section that Weblogic was installed in /home/weblogic. Substitute your directory accordingly.
  2. Create a directory "expresso-web" inside /home/weblogic.
  3. In this new directory, un-jar the contents of the Expresso .war file with a command like this: jar xvf expresso3-11-src.war
  4. Change back to /home/weblogic and edit the weblogic.properties file. Add a line like this to the end of the file:
    weblogic.httpd.webApp.expresso=/home/weblogic/weblogic/expresso-web
  5. Edit the startWebLogic.sh file (startWebLogic.cmd for Windows) and edit the PRE_CLASSPATH statement to read like this:
    PRE_CLASSPATH=/home/weblogic/expresso-web/WEB-INF/lib/log4j-core.jar:/home/weblogic/expresso-web/WEB-INF/xerces.jar
    Note that the class path seperator is ";" under windows, not ":".
  6. Start up Weblogic by running the startWebLogic.sh (or cmd) file. When you see the message saying that Weblogic is started, test your installation by going to the URL http://yourservername:7001/expresso/expresso/frame.jsp - you should see Expresso's start page. Substitute your server name and port number as required.

BEA WebLogic 5.1.0 sp 6

This section describes how to register Expresso as a web-application with the BEA WebLogic Application Server. This was tested running under Windows NT 4.0 and WebLogic 5.1.0 with service pack 6, and Expresso 3.0.

Of course, you should refer to the release notes and install documents for WebLogic first, to ensure you have WebLogic up and operational before attempting to install or configure Expresso.

JSP Enabled

Be sure that your Weblogic server has JSP pages enabled & working properly before attempting to run Expresso.

Only one Copy!

Make sure you only have *one* copy of the Expresso (and/or Expresso application) .class files on your system, or particularly in your classpath. If Weblogic tells you about a ClassCircularityException, multiple copies of .class files is likely the cause. Be sure that you have not left the .war file (if you've un-jar-ed it) in the classpath, for example!

Register the Application

In the directory where you installed Weblogic you should find a file called "weblogic.properties". Add to the end of the file a line like this:

weblogic.httpd.webApp.expresso=/usr/expresso

Substitute as appropriate the directory into which you have installed Expresso (the web-app directory) for "/usr/expresso".

You should re-start Weblogic to be sure the registration is recognized.

Depending on your configuration, you may need to add a file to the weblogic.policy file to grant property permission to the Expresso codebase. (You'll get an error about not being able to write a property if this is required): 

grant {
  permission java.util.PropertyPermission "*", "read,write";
};

Please report any difficulties or updates to this configuration example to support at support@jcorporate.com