Tuesday, 25 August 2009

Are your libraries targeted to the correct WLS managed server?

Recently we upgraded our Oracle WebLogic Server's from 10.3 to 10.3.1, and coincidentally migrated a JDeveloper ADF application 11g to 11gR1. ADF applications require a set of libraries that must be deployed to WLS before the ADF application can run, of which we completed successfully, or so we thought. This post documents a little trap for new players when configuring WLS and deployed applications.

On deploying our upgraded ADF 11gR1 application to our WLS 10.3.1 server with the updated ADF libraries, we hit an error on deployment from JDev. The logs showed the following results:
[08:54:26 AM] ----  Deployment started.  ----
[08:54:26 AM] Target platform is (Weblogic 10.3).
[08:54:39 AM] Entering Target Selection Dialog
[08:54:55 AM] Retrieving existing application information
[08:54:55 AM] Running dependency analysis...
[08:54:55 AM] Building...
[08:54:59 AM] Deploying 4 profiles...
[08:54:59 AM] Wrote Archive Module to C:\JDeveloper\mywork\CR123\trunk\CommonViewController\deploy\CommonViewController.jar
[08:54:59 AM] Wrote Archive Module to C:\JDeveloper\mywork\CR123\trunk\CommonModel\deploy\CommonModel.jar
[08:54:59 AM] Wrote Web Application Module to C:\JDeveloper\mywork\CR123\trunk\ViewController\deploy\App_ViewController.war
[08:55:00 AM] Wrote Enterprise Application Module to C:\JDeveloper\mywork\CR123\trunk\deploy\App_application1.ear
[08:55:04 AM] Deploying Application...
[08:55:06 AM] [Deployer:149191]Operation 'deploy' on application 'App_application1' is initializing on 'ADFServer'
[08:55:06 AM] [Deployer:149193]Operation 'deploy' on application 'App_application1' has failed on 'ADFServer'
[08:55:06 AM] [Deployer:149034]An exception occurred for task [Deployer:149026]deploy application App_application1 on ADFServer.: [J2EE:160149]Error while processing library references. Unresolved application library references, defined in weblogic-application.xml: [Extension-Name: adf.oracle.domain, exact-match: false], [Extension-Name: oracle.jsp.next, exact-match: false]..
[08:55:06 AM] Weblogic Server Exception: weblogic.management.DeploymentException: [J2EE:160149]Error while processing library references. Unresolved application library references, defined in weblogic-application.xml: [Extension-Name: adf.oracle.domain, exact-match: false], [Extension-Name: oracle.jsp.next, exact-match: false].
[08:55:06 AM] See server logs or server console for more details.
[08:55:06 AM] weblogic.management.DeploymentException: [J2EE:160149]Error while processing library references. Unresolved application library references, defined in weblogic-application.xml: [Extension-Name: adf.oracle.domain, exact-match: false], [Extension-Name: oracle.jsp.next, exact-match: false].
[08:55:06 AM] #### Deployment incomplete. ####
[08:55:06 AM] Deployment Failed
The last set of errors reveals that the server can't find the libraries that the deployed application are dependent on. To highlight them:
[08:55:06 AM] Weblogic Server Exception: weblogic.management.DeploymentException: [J2EE:160149]Error while processing library references. Unresolved application library references, defined in weblogic-application.xml: [Extension-Name: adf.oracle.domain, exact-match: false], [Extension-Name: oracle.jsp.next, exact-match: false].
[08:55:06 AM] See server logs or server console for more details.
[08:55:06 AM] weblogic.management.DeploymentException: [J2EE:160149]Error while processing library references. Unresolved application library references, defined in weblogic-application.xml: [Extension-Name: adf.oracle.domain, exact-match: false], [Extension-Name: oracle.jsp.next, exact-match: false].
Note how WLS is stating it can't find adf.oracle.domain nor oracle.jsp.next.

This confused us because we could actually see them installed under the deployments tab in the WLS console. However the error in the end was a simple one on our part.

On installing the updated ADF libraries we installed them into the WLS AdminServer managed server. Yet on deploying our application, we chose to deploy the application to a separate WLS managed server called ADFServer (seen in the logs). For the application to find the ADF libraries, they needed to be installed into the ADFServer as well.

To fix this, one option is to head to the WLS console, locate the libraries in the Deployment node, and on selecting each library, under the Targets tab, ensure to allocate the libraries to the correct managed server. Alternatively your other option is to deploy your application to the WLS managed server where the libraries are targeted/installed.

2 comments:

John Flack said...

Odd you should have this post today. Yesterday I faced a similar problem deploying to OC4J on AS 10.1.3. In my case, I was using a custom login module that I KNEW was on the server already. Ah, but the jar was in the library for the home instance, and the application was being deployed to the dev instance. A quick change to application.xml, and I was back in business.

Simon Haslam said...

And of course this is a good thing, albeit not so obvious what's wrong.

I personally think we'll see the separation again of the ADF libraries/release cycle from the main OAS/OFM server releases. The development/patching of ADF can be much more nimble, due to its smaller size and scope, than the main JEE stack. I'd argue that the ADF libraries shouldn't be bundled with OFM since you want to make a conscious decision which version to install (based on your development environment).