WebLogic 11g EAR EJB Classpath and class loaders

Question

All,
I have been having issues migrating Spring based EJB applications from OC4J to WebLogic 11g (10.3.1). I have been in communication with Oracle who has suggested a work around however I am keen to see if anyone else can suggest a solution.
The application is dependant on stateless session EJB beans that communicate with a Spring managed service tier to perform the business logic and database access. PitchFork is used to inject the Spring managers into the EJB’s using the spring-ejb-jar.xml configuration file. Note originally I was using the SpringBeanAutowiringInterceptor however I could not get this to work. See WebLogic 11g and Spring beens injected into EJB for details.
When the application is deployed packaging all the dependant jars within the APP-INF\lib folder I get a verity of errors from the following InvalidClassException, NoSuchMethodError, AbstractMethodError and IllegalArgumentException. I am using Spring 2.5.3 to match the supported WebLogic version. Note within the EAR application.xml the library-directory is set to APP-INF/lib. The issue appears to be Spring, PitchFork, commons-logging and aspectj libraries are being loaded form WebLogic and do not have visibility on jars within the application or have been modified when bundled for WebLogic. An example of this is the PitchFork jar within WebLogic has been changed excluding the spi package resulting in java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.springframework.jee.spi.PitchforkUtilsImpl errors.
Moving the jars to the domain library path does not resolve any of the issues. I have been unable to successfully deploy the application picking up the application jars using the prefer-application-packages configuration.
Oracle has advised me to deploy the libraries into the WebLogic system classpath by modifying the startWebLogic command to load the libraries into the classpath. I am concerned that modifying the system classpath will result in an unstable WebLogic server as I will be replacing modified jar files packages with WebLogic (such as PitchFork). This will also limit the applications that can be deployed within the server as each application must use the same libraries and versions (as the application ibraries are leing ignored).
Has anyone else hit this issue and corrected it? Can anyone think of an alternative solution?
Regards
Neil

Answer 1

Hi,
I am in the process of updating the tracking bug# 331569 with copies of the eclipse EAR/WAR projects and the EAR for these scenarios. Here are some details on how I got past the 2nd CCE on the org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.PersistenceProvider class (not the javax one)
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=331569
Essentially an SE persistence unit running both JPA 2.0 api and the 2.0 XSD schema work fine. I will next retest the EE case with variations of the 3 types of injection on the SSB or Servlet.
Update: There are 3 (possibly 4) issues here (all of these may become obsolete when the next WLS version ships)Initially I got the same 2.0 schema error and the ClassCastException on org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.PersistenceProvider
It turns out that my import of the 2 eclipse projects from my bug # 296271 for WebLogic 10.3.2.0 lost their facets(specifically the dynamic web facet) because I associated them with a different WebLogic 10.3.3.0. - this caused the CCE I was experiencing like Sri.
Anyways, after creating an EAR/Web project combination from scratch in eclipse associated with the 10.3.3.0 instance - I predeployed/deployed/ran fine - even with the 2.0 schema - in SE bootstrap mode (no EE yet).
Reproduction Procedure:
redoing project from scratch as I noticed that the war was not at the root of the ear - it was a jar in the app-inf/lib dir - my imported eclipse project was not referenced correctly as a web module facet- create empty EAR and WAR project with references
- download and open my EAR and WAR project code from bug # 296271
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=296271
- do essentially all the steps in the page below (I paraphrase for re-verification)
http://wiki.eclipse.org/EclipseLink/Development/JPA_2.0/weblogic#DI_1.1:_Alternative_3:_Application_Level_Shared_Library_-InUse
- copy applicationService, entity and FrontController servlet code into new projects
- create persistence.xml and MANIFEST.MF manifest in src\META-INF
- update manifest
Class-Path: APP-INF/lib/eclipselink.jar
APP-INF/lib/javax.persistence_2.0.0.v200911041116.jar
- copy both javax.persistence 2.0 and eclipselink 2.x jars to APP-INF/lib
- change ordering of WebLogic library modules classpath reference (javax.persistence 1.0) to ear reference (2.0 version)
- update web.xml with servlet tags
- update weblogic.xml with new context root
- make the persistence unit name the same in persistence.xml and ApplicationManagedService
- update weblogic-application.xml with prefer-application-packages overrides
<wls:prefer-application-packages>
<wls:package-name>javax.persistence.*</wls:package-name>
<wls:package-name>org.eclipse.persistence.*</wls:package-name>
</wls:prefer-application-packages>
- enable server redirect logging
<!-- new for 10.3.3.0 http://wiki.eclipse.org/EclipseLink/Examples/JPA/Logging#Server_Logging -->
<property name="eclipselink.logging.logger" value="DefaultLogger"/>
- start WebLogic 10.3.3.0
- deploy (run on) server from eclipse or export ear to auto deploy directory
1) JPA 2.0 XSD usage on 10.3.3.0
- I reproduced this issue with a bad EAR
- was able to use the 2.0 schema within the WAR-only application managed EAR
persistence.xml<persistence version="2.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/persistence_2_0.xsd">
<!-- persistence version="1.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/persistence_1_0.xsd"-->
<persistence-unit name="example2" transaction-type="JTA">
<provider>org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.PersistenceProvider</provider>
<jta-data-source>localJTA</jta-data-source>
<class>org.eclipse.persistence.example.business.Cell</class>
<shared-cache-mode>NONE</shared-cache-mode>
<properties>
<property name="eclipselink.target-server" value="WebLogic_10"/>
<property name="eclipselink.logging.level" value="FINEST"/>
<property name="eclipselink.target-database" value="Derby"/>
<!-- new for 10.3.3.0 http://wiki.eclipse.org/EclipseLink/Examples/JPA/Logging#Server_Logging -->
<property name="eclipselink.logging.logger" value="DefaultLogger"/>
<!-- property name="javax.persistence.jdbc.driver" value="org.apache.derby.jdbc.ClientDriver"/>
<property name="javax.persistence.jdbc.url" value="jdbc:derby://127.0.0.1:1527/dataparallel;create=true"/>
<property name="javax.persistence.jdbc.user" value="APP"/>
<property name="javax.persistence.jdbc.password" value="APP"/-->
<!-- turn off DDL generation after the model is stable -->
<!-- property name="eclipselink.ddl-generation" value="drop-and-create-tables"/>
<property name="eclipselink.ddl-generation.output-mode" value="both"/-->
</properties>
</persistence-unit>
</persistence>
2) CCE on JPA provider implementation class
Error instantiating the Persistence Provider class org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.PersistenceProvider of the PersistenceUnit example2: java.lang.ClassCastException: org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.PersistenceProvider
- I reproduced and fixed this one (was Eclipse project facet issue) - EAR was wrong
- was able to run JPA 2.0 code fine on an SE PU (predeploy/deploy together)
- EE injection should not work but I will post an example EAR anyway
log[EL Example]: enterprise: JPA 2.0 Metamodel: MetamodelImpl@56287508 [ 3 Types: , 1 ManagedTypes: , 1 EntityTypes: , 0 MappedSuperclassTypes: , 0 EmbeddableTypes: ]
3) CCE on JPA spec interface class
- I could not reproduce this one
Re: WebLogic 11g EAR EJB Classpath and class loaders
Error processing persistence unit PT of module pt: Error instantiating the Persistence Provider class org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.PersistenceProvider of the PersistenceUnit PT: java.lang.ClassCastException: org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.PersistenceProvider cannot be cast to javax.persistence.spi.PersistenceProvider
4) CCE on fallback Kodo JPA provider (if an invalid say 2.1 JPA XSD schema is referenced)
java.lang.ClassCastException: kodo.persistence.PersistenceProviderImpl
at javax.persistence.Persistence.findAllProviders(Persistence.java:186)
java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: javax/persistence/EntityManager.getMetamodel()Ljavax/persistence/metamodel/Metamodel;
- reproduced by using the 1.0 javax.persistence jar (but named as the 2.0 one in APP-INF/lib)
- fixed by using either the 1.0 or 2.0 JPA XSD schema and using the correct 2.0 spec jar
thank you
/michael