Configuration Template Builder WL8.1 does not work

Question

Hello,
     After spending nearly 2 days now trying to get a Configuration Template
built, I've concluded this simply does not work. Has anyone used the
Config Template builder to package a semi-complex application on top of WLI?
     I'm trying to have 2 of my applications, the JMS and JDBC resources,
and a WLI event generator packaged up for easy deployment to someone
else's server configuration. The problem with this is that there are
required resources for WLI, namely a database. The Pointbase database
included for WLI does not get included in the template automatically.
There are also some flat-out bugs:
If you choose to include a resource adapter "application", such as
jms-xa-adp.rar, the template builder does not bundle this in the
template and deploy it correctly. The template builder restricts you to
putting applications in the relative path starting at ./
For jms-xa-adp.rar, its original location is in $WL_HOME/server/lib, and
the template builder defaults to put it in ./lib of your template.
However, when you create a domain with the template, jms-xa-adp.rar does
not get placed in your ./lib directory. This causes you to then go and
manually edit your config.xml to point back at $WL_HOME/server/lib or to
manually copy jms-xa-adp.rar into your ./lib directory (which the
template mechanism should do for you).
Relative paths in the config.xml file require you to execute the config
builder from the directory of the domain you are making a template for.
The template builder should instead be smart enough to realize that
relative paths in the config.xml file are relative to the directory that
the config.xml is in, not the one you are running the template builder
from. You'll get an error when trying to create the template cause it
won't find the resources if you're not in that directory.
If anyone has successfully used this to package a WLI application in a
template, please share your experiences and how to do so. In the
meantime, I'm claiming there is no way to nicely package up a server
configuration for a WLI app in Weblogic, and this is a big shortcoming.
Weblogic needs a simple transferrable way of creating server
configurations (it tries to do this with the template, but that is
failing). With JBoss, for example, you simply copy your server directory
into another installation. This doesn't work with Weblogic unfortunately
because it puts hard-coded paths in the config.xml file.
Thanks

Answer 1

Russ,
     Thank you for the detailed responses. The only one I'm currently
struggling with still is the #5, with the scripts between the two. One
of the major benefits of using a J2EE App Server is supposed to be the
portability between servers. I find it disconcerting that BEA Weblogic
restricts me to the platform I created the domain on by creating
platform-specific startup/shutdown scripts for only the platform created
on. It's understandable that a script converter would be difficult, but
at least both the .sh/.cmd files should be created from the first time
you make a domain. If the user only wants one or the other, they can
delete the appropriate one. It's also understandable that the
users/deployers shouldn't have to manually convert a startup/shutdown
script to take the domain to a different box.
     JBoss clearly has BEA beat on ease of deployment here. Their model is
the concept I'm thinking of: you have some generic startup/shutdown
scripts that can load a platform-independent server configuration. You
truly can copy directories as-is between JBoss installations.
     I was hoping to package up a server domain for use on any of the
supported platforms, but since I don't have the time to manually convert
the startup/shutdown scripts, I'm going to have to tell people it's only
for Solaris now.
     Hopefully BEA can fix this in a future SP. There's no need for this
platform-dependency. Also, if the Windows version can generate both
scripts at creation time, then the Solaris should be able to do this as
well (or at least give you the option).
Thanks again for the replies
russ wrote:
Hi Steven,
I have several comments and questions about your last two posts. I will try to
address them in order.
1) "The Pointbase database included for WLI does not get included in the template
automatically."
     By default the template builder only includes the *.cmd and *.sh files in the
template from your domain directory. If you begin building with an existing
domain template all files that were in the template will get included. This was
done because there is no way for the builder to automatically determine all the
files that are required by your template/domain and we steered away from recursively
including all files from the directory so that unused files were not needlessly
included. We can extrapolate some files based on the application paths in the
config.xml, but the rest is left up to the template builder to be aware of what
is needed for their domain to run. So, if you need the Pointbase *.dbn and *.wal
files included in your template just select these files on the ?Add Files? panel
of the template builder and add them to the ?Domain Directory?.
2) ?If you choose to include a resource adapter "application", such as jms-xa-adp.rar,
the template builder does not bundle this in the template and deploy it correctly.?
     The template builder considers application files to be in two categories: Imported
or Internal. When you are at the ?Add Applications? panel of the builder you
will see a checklist of all the applications that are in the domain you selected.
On the right hand side there are two text fields. The top one displays the application
path as it is currently set in the config.xml of that domain. The bottom field
will be different depending on what category the application falls into. As you
click on each application in the list, you may notice that the bottom field may
change from an editable field titled ?Imported Application Path? to a non-editable
field titled ?Internal Application Path?. The difference between the two categories
is that an ?Imported? application?s files will be included in the template jar.
An ?Internal? application?s files will not be included in the template jar because
they are considered internal to the weblogic installation. The jms-xa-adp.rar
should fall into the internal category and should not get included in your template.
     From what you are describing it sounds like the builder attempted to import that
application when it should not have. In an attempt to recreate the problem you
are seeing I deployed that Connector Module through the WLS console and ended
up with an application path of ?C:\bea\weblogic81\server\lib? where ?C:\bea\weblogic81?
is my WL_HOME (a.k.a. USER_INSTALL_DIR). If I then attempt to build a template
from this domain, the builder recognizes this as an internal path and does not
include it inside my template. If the current application path you had looks
different from the one above, that may explain why the builder was attempting
to import it. What was the value of the ?Current Application Path? for that application
deployment?
3) ?Relative paths in the config.xml file require you to execute the config builder
from the directory of the domain you are making a template for.?
     The builder is ?smart? enough to determine relative paths. You should not have
to invoke it from the domain directory you are working with. There is a known
bug in the WebLogic Platform 8.1.1.0 release of the template builder that will
cause it to not find files with relative paths in your domain directory if the
application path in the config.xml is just a ?.?. If this is the case, you should
see a FileNotFoundException when you attempt to create the template. This will
be fixed in SP2 and you can work around this problem by changing those paths to
?./? instead. If this was not the case, what was the path the wizard choked
on?
4) ?Looking through the config file, it seems that it's all of the WLI components
that have absolute paths in the config file. In addition, BEA_WLS_DBMS_ADK has
an absolute path, not sure if that is WLI or WLS. ?
     BEA_WLS_DBMS_ADK is an integration application. If you created the original
domain using the configuration wizard most of the applications in an integration
enabled domain will reference paths inside of you installation directory or ?internal?
paths. For instance, I used the wizard to create a ?Basic WebLogic Integration
Domain?. The path for that application in this domain is: ?C:\bea\weblogic81/integration/adapters/dbms/lib/BEA_WLS_DBMS_ADK.ear?
where ?C:\bea\weblogic81? is my WL_HOME or USER_INSTALL_DIR. When I load this
domain into the builder it shows this application as ?internal? and the ?Internal
Application Path? is "$USER_INSTALL_DIR$/integration/adapters/dbms/lib/BEA_WLS_DBMS_ADK.ear".
This will be set as the path value of this application in the config.xml that
will be included in the template you build. When you later use the Configuration
Wizard on this template it will substitute the $USER_INSTALL_DIR$ to the value
of the installation directory of the machine you are creating it on.
     If you were to Change these to relative paths, as Mark previously suggested,
it will only work if you copy the domain directory to the same location relative
to your installation directory on the target machine. Also, if you copy the domain
in this manner you will more than likely run into problems with your start/stop
scripts and be forced to hand modify all the paths contained within. The configuration
wizard tries to alleviate these problems and make the configuration entirely portable.
This gives the user who creates the domain from your template the ability to
put it anywhere they want regardless of the paths in the config.xml.
5) ?However, there is another major problem with the Template Builder: it only
includes the startup/shutdown script for the platform you create the template
on. ???I built the template on Solaris with the UNIX scripts. However, I tried
to create a new config on Windows with this template, and the scripts were not
converted to .bat files!?
     As I stated previously, the builder will only include *.cmd and *.sh scripts
into your template by default. If you created the domain on a unix platform using
the configuration wizard it will not extract the *.cmd files since these aren?t
considered to be useful on unix. If you were then to attempt building a template
from this domain and take it onto a windows platform, it will obviously be missing
any windows scripts. Conversely, the wizard will extract *.sh scripts on windows
because they can still be useful if a user has an MKS or Cygwin type environment
installed. The config wizard and template builder do not have the ability to convert
scripts. The builder will only include existing scripts that are in your domain
directory and automatically determine any necessary string substitutions that
will be needed. Please note that since WebLogic is only supported on the NT/2K/XP
versions of windows you will find that the wizards use ?.cmd? files and not ?.bat?
files since these are more commonly associated with Win 95/98/ME.
     I will be happy to answer any more questions you may have and would also like
to take a look at your domain configuration to try and get a better understanding
of the problems you are encountering.
thanx,
russ