For the Techies: Is it WLS11g or WLS10.3 or WLS10.3.1?

Question

Hello,
IMHO Oracle caused a lot of confuison with the naming of WLS.
It first seems WLS11g is purely marketing and technically it is very close to WLS10.3...
but I disagree, since e.g. namespaces have changed and the look and feel of the admin console as well. Remember the L+F which did not even change from WLS9 to WLS10?
So why isn't simply named WLS11 technically as well?
Why on earth is the default installation under C:\Oracle\Middleware\wlserver_10.3 and not even 10.3.1 ??
Do any of the big companies install this under 10.3? Or 10.3.1?
Do you stick with your installation to existing naming conventions such as /bea/wls103 and /bea/wls11 or do you start to use
/Oracle/Middleware even if you are only interested in Weblogic?
Another related question. I remember the was a bug when changing the product installation folders under BEA_HOME.
Is this gone for sure now? Then I could change that at least.
And yes, I understand this is of no concern if all you do is install it on your laptop.
thanks for your input,
B.

Answer 1

To elaborate on James reply...
WebLogic Server 11gR1 is the branded version of the release. However the underlying technical version as embedded in product registry files and other internal usage is WLS 10.3.1.
Here is why we adopted this approach.
- Fusion Middleware 11gR1 is the umbrella release, and Fusion Middleware 11gR1 products are integrated with/built on WLS. So 11gR1 was adopted as the WLS version from a marketing/branding perspective.
- WLS 11gR1 provides new capabilities for existing WLS users, but to a significant degree those capabilities derive from integration of WLS with other Oracle products and technologies (e.g. improved RAC support, AQ JMS integration, Coherence integration, etc) vs. core WLS changes from WLS 10.3. From the perspective of a WLS 10gR3 (aka 10.3) customer, WLS 11gR1 should be regarded as a maintenance release. We therefore labeled this version technically as a double dot (10.3.X) release, and supported capabilities like upgrade installation which have historically been associated with maintenance releases. Our intent is to simplify, facilitate and encourage adoption of WLS 11g by WLS users, including WLS 10.3 users.
Default Middleware Home directories (i.e. C:\Oracle\Middleware) were chosen based on standard directories for installing with Fusion Middleware products built on WLS. It would not have made sense to default to C:\BEA, and we changed it to something that made sense from a Fusion Middleware perspective. The default Product Home name (i.e. wlserver_10.3) uses the same convention used in prior WLS maintenance releases - only two decimals are used in the name. For example if you installed WLS 10.0 and WLS 10.0.1, both used wlserver_10.0 as the default product home name. So we have not changed anything here.
You should be able to change the defaults. So for example, if there were a reason to change these names to some pre-existing WLS installation directory naming convention, you should continue to be able to use those naming conventions (you may want to consider whether adoption of other Fusion Middleware products would affect those naming conversions). I agree with James that you should have a specific reason for changing the product directory name as we are using the same defaults as in the past. If you have had problems in the past, it may make sense to accept the default and avoid whatever those problems were.