Objectives
The Oracle Application Server solution areas and product components are discussed to explain the installation type that are necessary for your business goals. The key solution areas addressed by Oracle Application Server are as follows:
• J2EE, Web services, and Internet applications
• Creating personalized portals
• Wireless-enabled applications
• Accelerating performance with caching
• Providing Business Intelligence for the Web
• Managing and securing Web infrastructure
Oracle Application Server: Overview
Oracle Application Server is a complete and integrated platform to develop, deploy, and administer Internet-based applications. Oracle Application Server addresses the following solution areas:
HTTP Server, J2EE, and Web Services
• The Oracle HTTP Server functions as the HTTP interface for all the Oracle Application Server components.
• Oracle Application Server is built on the J2EE framework. It enables you to design, develop, and deploy dynamic Web sites, portals, and transactional applications by using familiar languages and technologies.
• Oracle Application Server also provides comprehensive Web services to expose business functions to authorized parties over the Internet from any Web device.
Portals
• You can use Oracle Application Server to build, deploy, and maintain self-service and integrated enterprise portals. Oracle Application Server enables self-service content management and publishing, wizard-based development, and deploying, publishing, and consuming Web services on an extensible framework.
Oracle Application Server: Overview (continued)
Wireless
• OracleAS Wireless provides a simplified development and deployment of applications in a wireless environment. In addition, OracleAS Wireless includes wireless services, such as e-mail and location-based services that simplify wireless-enabling applications and portals.
Caching
• OracleAS provides a Web caching solution with the unique capability of caching both static and dynamically generated Web content. OracleAS Web Cache significantly improves the performance and scalability of heavily loaded Web sites. In addition, the Web cache provides a number of features to ensure consistent and predictable responses. These features include page fragment caching, Edge Side Includes (ESI) and Edge Side Includes for Java (JESI) support, compression, dynamic content assembly, Web server load balancing, Web cache clustering, and failover.
Business Intelligence
• Using the Oracle Application Server business intelligence features, you can dynamically serve personalized content recommendations to both registered and anonymous visitors as they browse your site; perform dynamic, ad hoc query reporting and analysis using a standard Web browser; and publish high-quality, dynamically generated reports on a scalable, secure platform.
Integration
• Using Oracle Application Server, you can integrate enterprise applications, trading partners, and Web services, and provide query and transaction access to many non-Oracle data sources.
Availability and Scalability
• Oracle Application Server provides a flexible deployment model that allows you to architect your system for high availability and scalability.
Management and Security
• Oracle Application Server provides a set of management facilities to simplify Web site administration. You can:
- Use the Application Server Control to configure and monitor OracleAS instances to optimize them for performance and scalability. When you need to use the command line interfaces, you can use DCMCTL to perform configuration management, and OPMNCTL to perform process management.
- Use encrypted secure sockets layer (SSL) connections, user and client certificate-based authentication, and single sign-on across all applications
- Implement an LDAP directory that provides a single repository and administration environment for user accounts
OracleAS Middle-Tier Components and Solutions
Oracle Application Server provides several components that help you develop, deploy, and administer your Internet-based applications. These components and the solution areas they address are highlighted in the slide. In this lesson, you will be introduced to some of the important components of Oracle Application Server such as Oracle HTTP Server, OracleAS Containers, OracleAS Web Cache.
Later in the course, you will also learn about Oracle Application Server components that are used to administer Oracle Application Server, such as OracleAS Infrastructure, OracleAS Process Monitoring and Notification System, and Distributed Configuration Manager.
OracleAS MapViewer is a J2EE service for rendering maps using spatial data that is managed by Oracle Spatial.
Oracle Application Server Terminology
OracleAS Installation The set of executables and configuration files that are created at the time of OracleAS installation
OracleAS Instance An operational OracleAS installation that runs some of the OracleAS components such as OHS, OC4J, etc.
OracleAS Infrastructure A combination of Metadata Repository, directory server, and Single Sign-On server
Metadata Repository A preseeded Oracle database that contains metadata required by Oracle Application Server instances
Directory Server Defines a hierarchical view of an organization’s employees, units, and other resources
OracleAS Farm A collection of OracleAS instances sharing the same configuration repository. The repository can be OracleAS Metadata Repository or a file-based repository.
OracleAS Cluster A collection of OracleAS Instances in the same Farm, with identical application deployments and functioning as a single unit.
Oracle HTTP Server
Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) is the underlying deployment platform and provides a Web listener for OracleAS Containers for J2EE (OC4J) and the framework for hosting static and dynamic pages and applications over the Web. Oracle HTTP Server is based on Apache, and has been enhanced with the following additional modules:
• mod_plsql: Routes requests for stored procedures to the database server
• mod_perl: Routes PERL requests to the PERL interpreter
• mod_fastcgi: Supports persistent CGI processes
• mod_oc4j: Routes communication between Oracle HTTP Server and OracleAS Containers for Java (OC4J)
• mod_oradav: Supports file- as well as database-distributed authoring and versioning
• mod_ossl: Enables strong cryptography for Oracle HTTP Server, and enables the server to use SSL.
• mod_osso: Routes requests to the Single Sign-On server
This is not a complete list, and some of the modules will be discussed in detail later.
With Oracle Application Server, developers can choose familiar languages and technology to build Web sites and applications, including Java, XML, PL/SQL, PERL, C, C++, and Distributed Authoring and Versioning (DAV).
OracleAS Containers for J2EE
The J2EE platform that is provided in Oracle Application Server uses a multi-tiered distributed application model that divides application logic into components according to function.
A container provides the run-time support for J2EE application components. Containers provide a federated view of the underlying J2EE APIs to the application components.
OracleAS Containers for J2EE (OC4J) is a J2EE server implementation that runs on a standard Java Virtual Machine (JVM). OC4J has the following J2EE containers:
• The Web Container that has:
- A servlet container
- A JSP container
• An EJB container that has
- Session Beans
- Entity Beans
- Message-Driven Beans
The J2EE concepts are further explained in Appendix D.
OracleAS Web Services
You can use Web Services to expose your applications in a manner you choose so that they can receive formatted instructions over the Web.
A Web service is a discrete business process that:
• Exposes and describes its functionality and attributes in Web Services Description Language (WSDL)
• Uses the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) registries to allow other services to locate a service on the Web such as the translation or currency converter service
• Allows remote services to invoke a service using standard Internet protocols
• Returns a response to the requesting application over the same protocol
OracleAS Web Services provide support for developing and deploying Web services.
OracleAS Web Services run as servlets in the OC4J servlet container. OracleAS Web Services support both Remote Procedure Call (RPC) style exchange and message-oriented, or Document Style exchange.
OracleAS Enterprise Portal
Portals allow clients to access information through any Web browser. This information usually comes from different data sources that the portal combines into a single entry point. Portals also support personalized views, so that each user or user group can customize both the content and the appearance of the portal to suit individual preferences and requirements.
OracleAS Portal is a Web-based tool for building and deploying e-business portals. It provides a secure, manageable environment for accessing and interacting with enterprise software services and information resources. It enables you to efficiently manage, access, and interact with information by enabling you to create portal pages.
OracleAS Portal has an extensible framework that integrates information components called portlets. The portlets are Web-based resources such as Web pages, applications, business intelligence reports, and syndicated content feeds within standardized, reusable information components.
OracleAS Portal interface provides an organized, consistent view of the business information, Web content, and applications that each user needs.
OracleAS Portal self-service publishing features allow authorized users to post and share any kind of document or Web content with other users anywhere in the world.
Wireless-Enabled Applications
Mobile users increasingly rely on wireless devices for communication while away from the office. OracleAS Wireless enables enterprises and service providers to efficiently build, manage, and maintain wireless and voice applications. OracleAS Wireless also provides:
• Geographic modeling that turns existing applications into location-based applications
• E-mail and directory modules to access corporate e-mail and directory applications:
- mWallet supports mobile commerce transactions and tracking.
- Mobile E-mail supports accessing IMAP and POP e-mail.
- Mobile Directory supports access to LDAP directories.
- Mobile Calendar provides schedule and appointment management.
- Instant Messaging supports exchanging instant messages from mobile devices.
• Open platform standards for simple development and easy integration with existing applications
• Tools to turn applications into voice applications accessible from non-Web phones
- Service Designer helps developers manage applications.
- Content Development Tool helps the end user to increase his mobile experience.
- Help Desk provides support to end users.
- System Monitor helps manage the OracleAS Wireless environment.
OracleAS Reports Services
Developers can build and publish sophisticated, high-quality reports from any source, with unlimited data formatting, and deploy them seamlessly on Oracle Application Server.
Both developers and users can access OracleAS Reports Services from any browser, because all report definition files are stored on the OracleAS middle-tier. Reports Services leverages middle-tier load balancing and caching to provide high volumes of reports, without excessive demands on limited resources.
Users can also link to published reports from OracleAS Portal. Depending on the report configuration, it can be generated on demand or scheduled for a specific time or at a specific interval and stored on the middle tier for rapid retrieval.
Reports Services can generate reports in HTML for Web publishing, in PDF to enable high-quality viewing and printing, or in XML to communicate data to XML-aware tools or Web sites.
Regardless of format, OracleAS can ensure secure distribution of reports by allowing only specific database roles to access the report, and validating user credentials against a Single Sign-On server and Oracle Internet Directory (OID).
OracleAS Discoverer
OracleAS Discoverer is a tool with an ad hoc query, reporting, analysis, and Web publishing capabilities. Discoverer works with any OLTP or data warehouse and supports Oracle Applications.
With Discoverer, business users at all levels of the organization can gain immediate access to information from data marts, data warehouses, and online transaction processing (OLTP) systems. You can rapidly view information in customizable summary formats, drill down to detail views, and perform complex calculations on data, including analytic functions available in the Oracle database.
OracleAS Discoverer is available in two types of clients:
• Discoverer Plus, which runs as a Java applet and features user-defined queries and reports
• Discoverer Viewer, which runs in a browser and provides casual users with access to predefined queries and drill-down reports
OracleAS Web Cache
OracleAS Web Cache functions as a front end for the application servers. The first time that OracleAS Web Cache receives an HTTP or HTTPS request, it forwards the request to an HTTP server for processing. Web Cache stores the response in memory based the defined caching rules so that it can respond directly to future requests.
Web Cache understands HTTP headers, including cookies, and makes caching decisions based on administrator or application-defined rules.
To invalidate the cache, administrators can specify expiration policies or applications can send an HTTP invalidation message.
Deploying the Web cache before a farm of application or HTTP servers enables clustering, surge protection, and Web server load balancing, so that cache misses are directed to the most available, highest-performing origin Web server.
Accelerating Performance with Caching
OracleAS Web Cache can render the service from a Web site faster by reducing unnecessary hits on the other middle-tier and back-end components.
Furthermore, deploying Web Cache helps to reduce your hardware and administration costs. In a distributed environment, you can deploy Web Cache on machines at remote sites instead of deploying multiple HTTP servers. As a result, many requests can be handled locally by Web Cache, avoiding middle-tier and back-end processing, as well as slower throughput on WANs.
Web Cache accelerates delivery of both static and dynamic contents.
Web Cache also provides load balancing, by distributing cache miss requests according to the relative capacity of each HTTP server.
Multiple instances of Web Cache, called cluster members, can operate as one logical cache. They communicate with one another to request cacheable content that is cached by another cache cluster member and to detect when a cache cluster member fails.
To enable cache clusters to function as a single unit, you need to setup a load balancer.
Oracle Application Server Management
The primary tool for managing Oracle Application Server, as well as your entire Oracle environment, is Oracle Application Server.
The Oracle Enterprise Manager Application Server Control is installed with every instance of Oracle Application Server and immediately provides you with the management tools that you need to monitor and administer a single Oracle Application Server instance, a farm of application server instances, or an Oracle Application Server cluster.
In addition to Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle Application Server provides command-line interfaces to several key management technologies. The command-line tools can help you automate your management procedures with scripts and custom utilities. The two most important command-line tools are the following:
• opmnctl, which provides a command-line interface to Oracle Process Management Notification (OPMN)
• dcmctl, which provides a command-line interface to Distributed Configuration Management (DCM)
OracleAS Infrastructure
OracleAS Infrastructure provides centralized services that are related to the product metadata, identity management, and configuration management.
OracleAS Infrastructure provides centralized identity management services, configuration information, and data repositories for middle-tier installations. The key features that middle-tier instances typically use are the following:
• Product Metadata Service: Product Metadata Service provides all of the metadata that the middle-tier instances require. It is bundled as part of the OracleAS Infrastructure. Product Metadata is looked up by middle-tier OracleAS instances for the successful execution of applications. Product metadata is not accessed directly by the customer applications.
• Security Service: Security Service provides a consistent security model for all Oracle Application Server applications. It also provides a single source of identity metadata that contains all administration and user privileges.
Oracle Internet Directory and Security
Oracle Internet Directory (OID) is an LDAP server that can be used to store all of the credentials required for the enterprise. Oracle Internet Directory offers comprehensive and flexible support for directory access control. This includes entry-level, attribute-level, and prescriptive access control, to provide varying levels of security to fit enterprise and service provider needs.
OID implements three levels of user authentication:
• Anonymous
• Password-based
• Certificate-based, using secure sockets layer (SSL) for authenticated access and data privacy
The Web-based Delegated Administration Service (DAS) enables application administrators to delegate user management tasks such as granting or restricting access to a specific directory attribute, entry, group, or naming context to application users.
After OID is deployed, organizations can use OracleAS Single Sign-On to provide a single point of validation for user credentials. After users sign on successfully, their credentials are automatically retrieved from OID when they launch any Oracle partner application.
Securing the Web Infrastructure
For network encryption and authentication, Oracle Application Server provides a comprehensive suite of security services, including OracleAS Single Sign-On. The Single Sign-On server validates user credentials against Oracle Internet Directory, an LDAP directory service.
Also, secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption can be used to protect these transactions against malicious intrusion.
Oracle Application Server: Quick Tour
A good starting point to get familiar with and learn about features of Oracle Application Server is to access the Quick Tour. You can find the Quick Tour in the Oracle Application Server documentation library. The Oracle Application Server documentation library is available:
• On a separate CD in the Oracle Application Server CD pack
• On Oracle Technology Network Web site at
http://otn.oracle.com/products/ias/index.html
