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BEA WebLogic Server 5.1 Release Notes:   Previous topic   |   Next topic   |   Contents

This section contains upgrade information for the WebLogic Server 5.1 release. See Upgrade Notes for BEA WebLogic Server 5.1 and Known Issues with BEA WebLogic Server 5.1 for information about additional changes and known problems.

The changes described in this section are relative to the previous release of WebLogic Server, version 4.5.

For information on platform support, see WebLogic Platform Support.

The classpath and command line used to start WebLogic Server have changed in this release. The changes are discussed in detail in Installing and Setting Up WebLogic Server.

You cannot use startup scripts or shortcuts that you used with previous versions of WebLogic Server with this verison. New scripts are included with this release. You can can modify them for your environment. For more information, see Starting WebLogic Server using scripts.

To start the server statically (without the WebLogic Server classloaders that enable the hot deploy feature) set the weblogic.system.enableStaticStartup Java system property to true on the java command line to start WebLogic Server:

-Dweblogic.system.enableStaticStartup=true

This may require changes to the scripts used to start the server with Microsoft SDK for Java, AS/400, MVS, and possibly other platforms or Java Virtual Machines (JVMs).

The WebLogic GUIs have cosmetic changes.

The WebLogic Console has been upgraded. There are no upgrade issues.

The EJB Deployment Wizard has been upgraded and renamed to EJB DeployerTool (weblogic.ejb.ui.deployer.DeployerTool).

The following native Windows NT programs have changed their names:

t3config is now wlconfig
t3server is now wlserver
t3console is now wlconsole

If you have scripts that invoke these programs, you must edit the scripts to use the new names. Documentation for these programs is in Windows convenience programs .

The names of the Administrative Servlets have changed:

• T3AdminEvents is now AdminEvents

• T3AdminClients is now AdminClients

• T3AdminServlets is now AdminServlets

Java2 Enterprise Edition Upgrade Notes

WebLogic Server 5.1 supports the Enterprise Java Beans 1.1 specification. Existing EJBs based on the EJB 1.0 specification must be upgraded to run with WebLogic Server 5.1, as per the EJB specification. See Upgrading EJBs to WebLogic Server Version 5.1 for instructions.

The EJB Deployment Wizard has been upgraded and renamed to EJB DeployerTool.

In previous WebLogic Server versions, the isolation level for EJBs could be defined at the method-level, as required by the EJB 1.0 specification. In the EJB 1.1 specification, there is no such requirement, and the isolation level can be set only at the bean level.

Internally, WebLogic JMS uses database tables to store the state of durable subscribers. In WebLogic Server version 5.1, the structure of the JMS tables has changed. Your existing tables are automatically upgraded to the new structure when they are first accessed by the server. Once the tables have been upgraded, you cannot revert the tables to the previous version.

For more information, please see Using WebLogic JMS.

WebLogic Server 5.1 now supports the JNDI 1.2 specification. There are no upgrade issues.

WebLogic Server now supports the JSP 1.1 specification.Updated JSP documentation is available in Using WebLogic JSP .

There are no RMI upgrade issues.

WebLogic Server now supports the Servlet 2.2 specification. There are no upgrade issues. Previous servlets should continue to work properly. For more information, please refer to section 1.7 of the Servlet 2.2 specifications.

Servlet 2.2 deprecates the methods getValue(), getValueNames(), setValue(), and removeValue(). These methods have new equivalent methods intended to improve the API naming consistency. The deprecated methods are supported in the 5.1 release, but you are advised to update your servlet code.

In addition, the constructor methods of UnavailableException have been replaced with simpler signatures. Again, see section 1.7 of the Servlet 2.2 specification.

For more detailed information, see Using WebLogic HTTP Servlets .

New features in WebLogic Server 5.1 make developing custom alternative security realms easier. An alternative realm installed with the weblogic.security.realmClass property is now hosted by a new built-in realm, CachingRealm. Custom realms should be written to extend the new AbstractListableRealm or AbstractManageableRealm, which are designed to work with CachingRealm. The Windows NT, LDAP, and RDBMS realms have been modified to use the new CachingRealm and AbstractListableRealm, as does the new UNIX realm. No upgrade procedures are required.

If you are using a custom realm or a modified version of the RDBMSRealm from a previous release, your realm should continue to work properly. However, we recommend that you update your realm to use the new CachingRealm scheme and take advantage of tunable caching and other new features.

The RDBMSRealm database schema has not changed, but that realm is no longer dependent on the DefaultRealmExtender and CachingRealm examples.

See the index to WebLogic Server security documentation at.

The jdbcKona/Sybase and jdbcKona/MSSQLServer JDBC type 2 drivers are no longer included with WebLogic Server. If you require connectivity to a Sybase database, you can use the jConnect pure-Java type-4 driver from Sybase, which is bundled with WebLogic Server. jConnect is also available free from Sybase.

WebLogic jDriver for Oracle (formerly called jdbcKona/Oracle) is now available in several versions. The one you use depends on your Oracle client installation, the version of the Oracle API you will use to connect to the Oracle server, and your platform. You must place the appropriate file in your system's path or shared library path for this driver to function properly. Unlike previous releases of WebLogic Server, which had a shared library in the default path, you must now set up your shared library and path variables explicitly. For instructions on setting these options, see the section Setting your path and client libraries.

WebLogic jDriver for Oracle is not available on all platforms in this release.and the section of these release notes.

For more information on using jDriver for Oracle, see Using WebLogic jDriver for Oracle.

These pure-Java type 4 JDBC drivers are distributed separately from WebLogic Server. They are now called WebLogic jDriver for Informix and Weblogic jDriver for Microsoft SQL Server, respectively.

WebLogic jDriver for Informix and Weblogic jDriver for Microsoft SQL Server use a new XML licence format. For more information, see the installation guides for these drivers.

For JDBC additional documentation, see WebLogic JDBC Options

WebLogic Server is designed to work both with Java 1.1 and Java 2. BEA tests WebLogic Server with both environments. BEA recommends that you use a version of the Java developers kit that we have certified for your hardware platform.

The Java 1.2 Runtime Environment (JRE) for Windows is included in the WebLogic Server Windows InstallShield distribution.

Please see our Platform Support document,, and Running WebLogic with the Java 2 SDK.

Note: Windows NT only: The JRE mentioned above does not include classes that are required for use with certain tools such as the EJB compiler (ejbc). To use these tools you must install a JDK to use with WebLogic Server. For details and instructions see Installing using the InstallShield distribution.

A special library is required by WebLogic Server and WebLogic COM to support RMI with the Microsoft SDK for Java. rmiForMs.zip is installed in the lib subdirectory by the InstallShield installer. This library is not included in the .zip file distribution. rmiForMs.zip must be added to the WebLogic Server classpath when starting WebLogic Server using Microsoft SDK for Java. This is done for you automatically if you start the server using the startWebLogic.cmd script, which is provided in the WebLogic Server distribution directory.

If you are using Microsoft SDK for Java as your JVM and will also be using RMI, you must add the following to your Java system classpath when starting Weblogic Server:

weblogic/lib/rmiForMs.zip 

where weblogic is the directory in which you installed WebLogic Server.

This release only supports JDK 1.1.8 on Hewlett-Packard machines.

O'Reilly Website Pro is no longer supported for use with the ISAPI plugin. For more information on the ISAPI bridge, see Installing MS-IIS-WebLogic Server Plugin.