JDeveloper 10.1.3 ServiceUpdate 5 Available

A new Service Update for JDeveloper 10.1.3 is available via "Check for Updates".

Please note that this is not applicable for the JDeveloper 10.1.3.1 Developer Preview.

This is the fifth Service Update (SU5) for JDeveloper 10.1.3.0.4. It fixes some commonly-encountered critical issues. We recommend that all customers apply this Service Update. This Service Update requires that Service Update 1 has been installed. Please ensure that JDeveloper Service Update 1 is already installed before installing Service Update 5.

Keep the 'home' Instance Clean

We sometimes sees people deploying applications to the default 'home' OC4J instance within the Oracle Application Server. Even though this will work, it is a better practice not deploying any Applications to this Instance, and leave this one alone. We have some internal use of this instance, and it is not ment for regular Application deployments. Therefore; please create a new OC4J instance and use this for your own Application deplyoments.

RuleAuthor Fails to Start with Strange Error Message

An interesting problem that has appeared recentley is that I've seen the RuleAuthor fail with an exception:

java.io.FileNotFoundException: Could not find RuleHome.uix.uix

on a few occasions recently. It is possible to get to the login screen, but once you have logged in, this error appears.

It turned out; that this was caused by that the Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) was started by using apachectl instead of via OPMN. This led to inconsistency between the OHS to OC4J mapping in the mod_oc4j mappings. Could be worth keeping in mind...

Developer's Preview of Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3.1.0) for the Oracle SOA Suite Out Now

A Developer's Preview of Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3.1.0) Developer Preview for the Oracle SOA Suite is now out on OTN.

It is available for download at: http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/ias/soapreview.html

Developer's Preview of Oracle JDeveloper 10g 10.1.3.1 Out Now

A Developer's Preview of Oracle JDeveloper 10g (10.1.3.1.0) is now out on OTN.

It is available for download at: http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/jdev/htdocs/soft10131studio.html

How do to Make JDeveloper Keep the Wrapper Code for EJB's for Debugging Purpose

Sometimes it is useful to have the wrapper code for EJB's for debugging. This code is not generated by default, but you can have JDeveloper generate it for you.

The wrappers are not generated during compilation, but during deployment. The easiest way to get hold of them is to run the EJB in the embedded OC4J server, this will cause a deployment to take place, and the wrappers will be generated.

You also need to set a switch for them to be generated. To do this you go to Project Properties -> Runner, and add the following switches:

-DKeepWrapperCode=true -DWrapperCodeDir=d:\tmp

and the wrapper code will be generated into whatever directory you specified with the -DWrapperCodeDir switch.

Incremental Deployment using JDeveloper & OC4J

In the JDeveloper online help and in the OC4J Deployment Guide 10.1.3, the option to use virtual directories is mentioned. This feature can be used to implement incremental deployment using JDeveloper & OC4J.

Here is how it works:
The element 'virtual-directory' adds a virtual directory mapping for static content. This is conceptually similar to symbolic links on a UNIX system. The virtual directory enables you to make files in the "real" document root directory available to the application, even though the files do not physically reside in the Web application WAR file.


Here is an example:

1. Start JDeveloper & a standalone OC4J Server (10.1.3 versions).
2. Create a new Workspace in JDeveloper, with 2 empty projects.
3. In Project 1, create a new HTML page.
4. Create a new WAR deployment profile for Project 1, set the J2EE Context to 'foo'.
5. Deploy the application to the standalone OC4J server.
6. Ensure that you can access the HTML file from a browser.
7. In Project 2, create a new JSP file.
8. Add the deployment descriptor orion-web.xml to Project 2. Add this line to that file:

<virtual-directory virtual-path="/foo" real-path="D:\oracle\oc4j1013\j2ee\home\applications\webapp1\webapp1" />

You need, of course, to alter the real-path to where your first application has been deployed. You could also have placed the files directly somewhere on the server, and referenced this directory here instead of creating a Project and deploying them.

9. Create a new WAR deployment profile in Project 2, set the J2EE Context to 'fuu'.
10. Deploy the application to the standalone OC4J server.
11. Ensure that you can access the JSP file from a browser.
12. Now you will be able to access the HTML file by using:

http://localhost:8888/fuu/foo/untitled1.html

13. Alter the JSP in Project 2 and re-deploy Project 2. Notice that you can still access the HTML file from the above URL without having to re-deploy also these files.

JDeveloper 10.1.3 SU4 Available

The Service Update 4 (SU4) for JDeveloper 10.1.3 is available. Use 'Help' -> 'Check for Updates' from within JDeveloper to download and install it.

Configuring a 2:nd OC4J Instance for ADF use within an Oracle Application Server

When you setup a second OC4J instance within an Oracle Application Server 10.1.3 it won't have the ADF Libraries configured, this means that if you deploy an ADF application to this instance, it won't work. Further, there is no option neither within JDeveloper nor with the ADF Installer to configure this second instance for use with ADF, so what to do in this situation? Answer: You'll just have to do some manual configuration.

Assuming that you have created the 2:nd OC4J instance by using the createInstance command, you then need to update the files server.xml and application.xml for this instance with some additional configuration before starting it.

Both of these files are located in the directory:

 <ORCALE_AS_HOME>/j2ee/<INSTANCE_NAME>/config

Open them with your favourite editor.

Add the following entries:

server.xml
==========

<shared-library name="oracle.expression-evaluator" version="10.1.3" library-compatible="true">
 <code-source path="../../../jlib/commons-el.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../jlib/oracle-el.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../jlib/jsp-el-api.jar"/>
</shared-library>

<shared-library name="adf.oracle.domain" version="10.1.3" library-compatible="true">
 <code-source path="../../../BC4J/lib"/>
 <code-source path="../../../jlib/commons-cli-1.0.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../mds/lib/concurrent.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../mds/lib/mdsrt.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../jlib/xmlef.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../jlib/commons-el.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../jlib/oracle-el.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../jlib/jsp-el-api.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../BC4J/jlib/adfmtl.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../BC4J/jlib/adfui.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../BC4J/jlib/jdev-cm.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../BC4J/jlib/adf-connections.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../BC4J/jlib/dc-adapters.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../ord/jlib/ordim.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../ord/jlib/ordhttp.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../jlib/ojmisc.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../lib/xsqlserializers.jar"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.xml"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.jdbc"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.cache"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.dms"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.toplink"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.sqlj"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.ws.core"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.ws.client"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.xml.security"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.ws.security"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.ws.reliability"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.jwsdl"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.http.client"/>
</shared-library>

<shared-library name="adf.generic.domain" version="10.1.3" library-compatible="true">
 <code-source path="../../../BC4J/jlib/bc4jdomgnrc.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../BC4J/lib"/>
 <code-source path="../../../jlib/commons-cli-1.0.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../mds/lib/concurrent.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../mds/lib/mdsrt.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../jlib/xmlef.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../jlib/commons-el.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../jlib/oracle-el.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../jlib/jsp-el-api.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../BC4J/jlib/adfmtl.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../BC4J/jlib/adfui.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../BC4J/jlib/jdev-cm.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../BC4J/jlib/adf-connections.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../BC4J/jlib/dc-adapters.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../ord/jlib/ordim.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../ord/jlib/ordhttp.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../jlib/ojmisc.jar"/>
 <code-source path="../../../lib/xsqlserializers.jar"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.xml"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.jdbc"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.cache"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.dms"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.toplink"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.sqlj"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.ws.core"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.ws.client"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.xml.security"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.ws.security"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.ws.reliability"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.jwsdl"/>
 <import-shared-library name="oracle.http.client"/>
</shared-library>

<application name="bc4j" path="../../../BC4J/redist/bc4j.ear" start="true" />

application.xml
===============

<imported-shared-libraries>
 <import-shared-library name="adf.oracle.domain"/>
</imported-shared-libraries>

Please also verify that the file jdev-cm.jar exists in the location pointed by the line:

 <code-source path="../../../BC4J/jlib/jdev-cm.jar"/>

If this file does not exists there, just copy it from your JDeveloper installation to this location.

When you now start the 2:nd instance you will be able to deploy ADF applications also to this instance.

JDeveloper Release 9.0.4.3 Out

The 9.0.4.3 maintenance release is now out. For information of bugs fixed in this release, please refer to:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/htdocs/904/9043_fix_list.html

It can be downloaded from OTN at the URL:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/htdocs/jdevlic.html?http://otn.oracle.com/software/products/jdev/htdocs/soft9043.html


For reference, here is the current list of the latest releases of the JDeveloper versions:

9.0.4.3
9.0.5.2
10.1.2.1
10.1.3 SU3