Creating Weblogic 9.2 Cluster (With Remote Managed Servers) with WLST

Overview

This section describes how to setup a WebLogic 9.2 cluster on Linux servers using the BEA WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST). WLST is a scripting tool installed with WebLogic that allows for command-line configuration of the WebLogic server. The set of scripts provided here along with these instructions will allow you to setup a WebLogic cluster in your environment with ease.

Clustering Scripts Setup

In preparation for running the WLST scripts to create a cluster, you will need to download the WLST Clustering Scripts (ZIP, 7KB) and unzip it to a directory. After that, configure the environment variables in all of the scripts to match your environment. A description of the variables that will need to be set can be found in the section Environment Variables to Configure in the WLST Scripts. After that, copy the files to the servers that you will be using in the cluster. You will then need to navigate to this directory on a server to execute any of the scripts on that server.

Steps to Create the WebLogic Domain and Setup the Cluster

On the Server hosting the AdminServer:

Create a domain with AdminServer and a cluster of two managed servers

	WL_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh createcluster.py DOMAIN_NAME CLUSTER_NAME
Start the node manager and AdminServer	WL_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh startadminserver.py DOMAIN_NAME
Setup JDBC Data Source	WL_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh createjdbc.py t3://AdminServerIP:AdminServerHttpPort CLUSTER_NAME
Pack the domain	WL_HOME/common/bin/pack.sh -managed=true -domain=DOMAIN_PATH -template=DOMAIN_TEMPLATE -template_name=DOMAIN_TEMPLATE_NAME

On all servers not hosting the AdminServer:

Unpack the domain	Copy DOMAIN_TEMPLATE from the server hosting the AdminServer to the same directory on all other servers that are apart of the cluster and then execute the following command on the servers to create the base domain: WL_HOME/common/bin/unpack.sh -domain=DOMAIN_PATH -template=DOMAIN_TEMPLATE
Enroll the node manager with AdminServer and then start it	Execute the following command on the servers to setup the node managers and start them: WL_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh enrollnodemanager.py t3://AdminServerIP:AdminServerHttpPort DOMAIN_NAME

On the Server hosting the AdminServer:

Deploy the Elastic Path code to the cluster	WL_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh deploy.py t3://AdminServerIP:AdminServerHttpPort DEPLOYMENT_NAME APPLICATION_PATH CLUSTER_NAME
Start the cluster	WL_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh startcluster.py t3://AdminServerIP:AdminServerHttpPort CLUSTER_NAME

Additional Useful Scripts

To create another server in the cluster, execute this command after step 1	WL_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh createmanagedserver.py DOMAIN_NAME CLUSTER_NAME
To shut down server ServerName	WL_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh stopserver.py DOMAIN_NAME ServerName
To remove a deployment	WL_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh undeploy.py t3://AdminServerIP:AdminServerHttpPort DEPLOYMENT_NAME

Descriptions of Constants Used in Setup Steps

BEA_HOME	The BEA Home directory where files common to all BEA products are stored (eg. /opt/bea/)
WL_HOME	The WebLogic Server product installation directory (eg. /opt/bea/weblogic92/)
AdminServerIP	The IP address of the server that the AdminServer is on
AdminServerHttpPort	The port for the AdminServer to listen to http requests on
DOMAIN_NAME	The name of the clustered domain to be created (eg. epclusterdomain)
DOMAIN_PATH	BEA_HOME/user_projects/domains/DOMAIN_NAME (the path to the clustered domain)
DOMAIN_TEMPLATE	The filename of the domain template to be created or accessed (eg. BEA_HOME/user_templates/epclusterdomain_managed.jar)
DOMAIN_TEMPLATE_NAME	The descriptive name of the domain template to be created (eg. "EP Clustered Domain")
CLUSTER_NAME	The name of the cluster to create (eg. wlsCluster)
DEPLOYMENT_NAME	The name for the deployment of Elastic Path application code (eg. epsf_cluster_deployment)
APPLICATION_PATH	The path to where the Elastic Path application has been setup (eg. /home/build/ep_weblogic/com.elasticpath.sf/)

Environment Variables to Configure in the WLST Scripts

BEA_HOME	The BEA Home directory where files common to all BEA products are stored (eg. /opt/bea/)
WL_HOME	The WebLogic Server product installation directory (eg. /opt/bea/weblogic92/)
JAVA_HOME	The root directory of the Java JDK install that is used to run WebLogic (eg. /opt/j2sdk)
AdminServerIP	The IP address of the server that the AdminServer is on
AdminServerHttpPort	The port for the AdminServer to listen to http requests on
AdminServerHttpsPort	The port for the AdminServer to listen to https requests on
AdminServerPassword	The password used to connect to the AdminServer as default user weblogic
Machine1IP	The IP address of the server hosting the first managed server in the cluster
Machine1Name	The machine name of the server hosting the first managed server in the cluster
Server1HttpPort	The port for the first managed server to listen to http requests on
Server1HttpsPort	The port for the first managed server to listen to https requests on
Server1Name	The name to use for the first managed server in the cluster (eg. epServer1)
Machine2IP	The IP address of the server hosting the second managed server in the cluster
Machine2Name	The machine name of the server hosting the second managed server in the cluster
Server2HttpPort	The port for the second managed server to listen to http requests on
Server2HttpsPort	The port for the second managed server to listen to https requests on
Server2Name	The name to use for the second managed server in the cluster (eg. epServer2)
JdbcName	The descriptive name of the JDBC data source (eg. EP)
JndiName	The JNDI name of the JDBC data source (eg. jdbc/epjndi)
Url	The JDBC connection URL (eg. jdbc:oracle:thin:@11.11.1.111:1111:ep)
JdbcDriverName	The name of the JDBC driver (eg. oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver)
DbUserName	The username for accessing the database
DbUserPassword	The password for accessing the databas

Stripping XML Namespaces using XQuery

A lot of the times I had found people complaining about unneccessary namespaces that flood their xml. Offcourse namespaces are very important but during certain times when we have to process complex and large xmls using XPath it becomes necessary to strip the namespaces. Here is a demonstration of a small XQuery code that is used to strip any samespaces from an XML input.

(:

=====================================
Description: xquery to remove namespaces from an xml
@author Arun Pareek
=====================================
$Resource/XQUERY/stripNamespace.xq  $

:)

declare variable $inputRequest as element() external;
declare function strip-namespace($inputRequest  as element()) as element()
{
element {xs:QName(local-name($inputRequest ))}
{
for $child in $inputRequest /(@*,node())
return
if ($child instance of element())
then strip-namespace($child)
else $child
}
};

document
{ strip-namespace($inputRequest )}

Before explaining the code let me give a small example of how this piece of code works.

Input XML with Namespaces

<TestXML xmlns:sp-en="sch.soap.org">
<ZBAPI_COIB.ZBUR xmlns:sp-en="sch.soap.org">
<I_OUTPUT xmlns:sp-en="sch.soap.org"/>
<RETURN xmlns:sp-en="sch.soap.org">
<item xmlns:sp-en="sch.soap.org">
<TYPE xmlns:sp-en="sch.soap.org">S</TYPE>
<CODE xmlns:sp-en="sch.soap.org"/>
<MESSAGE xmlns:sp-en="sch.soap.org"/>
<LOG_NO xmlns:sp-en="sch.soap.org"/>
<MESSAGE_V1 xmlns:sp-en="sch.soap.org"/>
</item>
<item xmlns:sp-en="sch.soap.org">
<TYPE xmlns:sp-en="sch.soap.org">S</TYPE>
<CODE xmlns:sp-en="sch.soap.org"/>
<MESSAGE xmlns:sp-en="sch.soap.org"/>
<LOG_NO xmlns:sp-en="sch.soap.org"/>
<LOG_MSG_NO xmlns:sp-en="sch.soap.org">000000</LOG_MSG_NO>
<MESSAGE_V1 xmlns:sp-en="sch.soap.org"/>
</item>
</RETURN>
</ZBAPI_COIB.ZBUR>
</TestXML>

And the Output of the Xquery is

<TestXML>
<ZBAPI_COIB.ZBUR>
<I_OUTPUT/>
<RETURN>
<item>
<TYPE>S</TYPE>
<CODE/>
<MESSAGE/>
<LOG_NO/>
<MESSAGE_V1/>
</item>
<item>
<TYPE>S</TYPE>
<CODE/>
<MESSAGE/>
<LOG_NO/>
<LOG_MSG_NO>000000</LOG_MSG_NO>
<MESSAGE_V1/>
</item>
</RETURN>
</ZBAPI_COIB.ZBUR>
</TestXML>

As you can see the code is very much self-explanatory. The Xquery snippet expects an xml input to it. The Xpath entity crawls through each of the elements in the input and returns just the child elemnt and discards the namespace. A very much similar to recursive fucntions in C/C++.

Enjoi :-)