Beehive Integration in WebLogic Server 9.0
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Beehive Applications
What Is a Beehive Application?
Beehive is an open source J2EE programming framework designed to make the most difficult J2EE programming tasks easier.
Where the traditional J2EE programmer would use complex APIs and configuration files, the Beehive programmer uses "metadata annotations," also known simply as "annotations." Annotations dramatically simplify the J2EE code and allow non-experts to create J2EE applications. Annotations stand in for common, boilerplate coding tasks. Instead of learning the complex J2EE API, developers can set properties on their code using metadata annotations.
Annotations are a new feature in Java, added in the J2SE 5.0 version of the language. For background information about annotations, please see http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/index.jsp and http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=175.
Beehive ships with three main components:
- NetUI Page Flow
A web application framework built on Apache Struts. Page Flows centralize application logic and state in Java "controller" classes. An integrated set of JSP tags is provided, as well as integration with JavaServer Faces and with raw Struts applications.
- Java Controls
A lightweight component framework that helps programmers encapsulate application logic and leverage metadata annotations into their programming model. Developers can create custom controls or use the pre-built system controls. The Beehive system controls provide access to these common J2EE components: database, EJB, JMS, and web services.
- Web Services
An implementation of JSR 181, an annotation-driven programming model for web services. For more information about the JSR 181 specification, please see http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=181.
The diagram below shows a typical Beehive application. The application has three basic components:
- Apage flow web application providing access for end users over the internet
- Aweb service interface providing in-machine access to application resources
- Two controls (database and EJB) providing access to backend resources
Apache Beehive Documentation
Beehive is a project of the Apache Software Foundation. The version of Beehive that is installed on your computer during the installation of WebLogic Server does not necessarily correspond to the version currently documented on the Apache website. To see the full, current Apache Beehive documentation, refer to http://beehive.apache.org.
A copy of the Beehive documentation from the Apache site is installed on your computer when WebLogic Server is installed. This documentation corresponds to the version of Beehive on your computer. To read this documentation, navigate to
<WEBLOGIC_HOME>\beehive\apache-beehive-incubating-1.0m1\docs\docs
and double-click on the file index.html in that folder.
Note: The version of Beehive shipped with WebLogic Server 9.0 does not include the web service metadata sub-project. Consequently, the web service metadata documentation has not been included and hyperlinks to the removed documentation content are broken.
Running the WebLogic Server/Beehive Integration Samples
Samples Architecture
WebLogic Server contains three interconnected Beehive samples. These samples demonstrate how to build progressively more complex applications based on a simple web service. The simple web service, called creditRatingApp, at the core of these samples takes a nine-digit Social Security number and responds with a credit rating. The remaining two samples are more complex client applications of this basic web service.
These three samples, named creditRatingApp, bankLoanApp, and customerLoanApp, are described in creditRatingApp, bankLoanApp, and customerLoanApp, respectively.
Locating the Samples
The samples documented here are located on your system in
<WEBLOGIC_HOME>\beehive\weblogic-beehive\samples.
creditRatingApp
This sample is a stateless web service (built using JSR 181 web service annotations) that takes a nine-digit Social Security number and responds with a credit worthiness rating. The following two samples are clients of this web service.
bankLoanApp
This sample is an application that evaluates a loan seeking customer. Given the customer's Social Security number, the application will (1) return an interest rate appropriate for that customer's credit rating and (2) decide whether or not a customer should be given a loan of a specified amount.
The application consists of a conversational (stateful) web service consisting of a start and a finish method. The start method takes a Social Security number and returns an interest rate based on the customer's credit rating. The start method acquires the customer's credit rating by calling the creditRatingApp web service described in creditRatingApp. The credit rating is then passed to a local EJB, which calculates the appropriate interest rate.
The finish method determines whether the customer may borrow a specified amount. This method takes a float value and returns a boolean value. This method also checks a database to see if the customer has borrowed money in the past.
Because this application relies on a database connection, to run this application, you must first create the necessary database. Details on creating the necessary database are described in step 3 in Running the bankLoanApp Application.
The Java source for this web service is located at
bankLoanApp\src\services\pkg\bankLoanConversation.java.
customerLoanApp
This sample is a web application interface on the bankLoanApp sample described in bankLoanApp. It provides JSPs from which users can make requests of and view responses from the bankLoanApp.
Running the Beehive Samples
To run the samples, you must first create a Beehive-enabled server domain, then you must build and deploy the three samples in the following order: creditRatingApp, bankLoanApp, customerLoanApp.
Creating a Beehive-enabled Domain
To create a Beehive-enabled server domain, follow these steps:
Click Next on each page of the wizard without changing any of the default values, except for the following changes:
On the second page (labeled Select Domain Source), place a check in the checkbox next to "Apache Beehive."
On the third page (labeled Configure Administrator Username and Password), in the User password field, enter
weblogic.
<BEA_HOME>\user_projects\domains\base_domain\startWebLogic.cmd
<BEA_HOME>\user_projects\domains\base_domain\bin\setDomainEnv.cmd
Running the creditRatingApp Web Service
To build and deploy the creditRatingApp:
Running the bankLoanApp Application
- To create the necessary backend database, visit the URL http://localhost:7001/bankLoanWeb and click the link Create the Table. After the table has been created, click Return to index.
ant clean build pkg.exploded deploy.exploded
Running the customerLoanApp
To build and deploy the customerLoanApp:
- To test the web application, visit the URL http://localhost:7001/customerLoanWeb.
ant clean build pkg.exploded deploy.exploded
