Navigating the WebLogic Platform Directory Structure

After WebLogic Server has been installed, the next task is to become familiar with the WebLogic Server directory structure that has been created on your machine. Understanding the directory structure enables you to become familiar with WebLogic Server environment and the location of key directories and files you will need for starting WebLogic Server as well as refining your domain environment setup information. The following sections provide a description of the key aspects of the WebLogic Server 7 directory structure.

The BEA Home Directory

During the installation of WebLogic Server, you specified a location for the BEA Home directory. The role of the BEA Home directory is to serve as a central root directory for all installed BEA products on your machine and also to provide a central directory area for commonly shared files such as the Java Development Kit (JDK) and license files.

Note

The BEA Home directory is referenced within command line scripts using the %BEA_HOME% environmental variable.

Table 10.2 provides a description of the files and directories that are installed by default within the BEA Home directory.

Table 10.2. The Files and Directories Underneath the BEA Home Directory

Directory or File	Description
jdk131	A directory containing the Java Development Kit (JDK) version 1.3.1_02, which provides the JVM and tools for compiling and debugging Java applications.
logs	A directory containing a history file of installation and de-installation of WebLogic Platform software components .
user_projects	A domain container directory which is used to store your application domain directories. A detailed description of this directory is described in "The Domain Container Directory" section of this chapter.
utils	A directory containing utilities that are used to support the installation of all WebLogic Platform software components. For example, the utils.jar file supports the UpdateLicense utility.
weblogic70	The WebLogic Platform directory contains files shared by the entire WebLogic Platform software stack, as well as product-specific folders for each WebLogic Platform software component. A detailed description of this directory is described in "The WebLogic Platform Directory" section of this chapter.
license.bea	An XML-format license file that contains the license keys for all licensable WebLogic Platform software components.
registry.xml	An XML-format registry file that contains a persistent record (of all WebLogic Platform software components installed on your system). BEA recommends this file should not be manually edited as any improper information can adversely affect future installation, maintenance upgrade, and de-installation tasks .
UpdateLicense	A command file (Windows NT/2000) or a shell script (Unix) utility that updates the license.bea file with new license sections for the installed WebLogic Platform software components.

Even though there is no enforcement to have only one BEA Home directory on your machine or even install BEA products within the BEA Home, it is beneficial from a central software management and maintenance perspective. However, a scenario where more than one BEA Home is recommended is when you need multiple independently maintained WebLogic Platform environments to reside on the same machine, for example development, test, and production environments.

The Domain Container Directory

The domain container directory ( user_projects by default) is a new directory structure that is provided as a location for storing the applications you build and deploy to WebLogic Server. The intent of this new directory structure is to separate your application code from the WebLogic Server software code. In previous releases of WebLogic Server, domains were created within the directory structure of the WebLogic Server installation, including application code for each domain. By default, the domain container directory is created underneath the BEA Home directory and should contain the application domains you created using the Configuration Wizard earlier in this chapter, for example the myDomain domain. The domain container directory can be created anywhere on your file system as long as the application files it contains have location access to the JDK and WebLogic Server software files.

If you decide to manually create your domain directories, as opposed to using the Configuration Wizard, you are recommended to use the myDomain directory as a starting point because it contains the generic domain template configuration files you will need to configure a default WebLogic Server environment. Any new domains you create should use the following directory structure:

 BEA_HOME\  user_projects  \  your_domain_name  

where

• BEA_HOME is the root installation directory for WebLogic Platform.

• user_projects is the name of your domain container directory.

• your_domain_name is the name of your new domain, which must be named the same as the WebLogic Server domain you are deploying the application to.

As a best practice, you should not modify the contents of the myDomain directory.

The subdirectories of the mydomain directory are described in Table 10.3.

Table 10.3. The Files and Directories Underneath the BEA Home Directory

Directory	Description
applications	A directory containing the J2EE deployed application files (.ear, .war, and .jar file). If WebLogic Server is started with the auto deployment option enabled for a domain, WebLogic Server will auto-poll the application's directory for new or modified application files and automatically load them in to WebLogic Server as soon as they have been recognized as compliant. In order for this auto-deployment to function, you will need to name this directory "applications".
userConfig	A directory used for storing security- related information for your domain.
logs	A directory used for storing all log files related to the domain.
myserver	A directory that is created for each WebLogic Server running in the domain to store their serve-related logs. The name of these log directories must be identical to the names of the WebLogic Servers they support.

Also, within your root domain directory, you should have the following resident files:

• The SetEnv script to set up your environment for development with WebLogic Server. This script simply calls the setWLSEnv.cmd script under your BEA_HOME\WL_HOME\server\bin directory, which is configured to your environment during the WebLogic Server installation. You can execute this file to set your Java environment to include your domain if you are doing any development.

• Scripts to start the WebLogic Servers in your domain ( startXXX.cmd ).

• The configuration file ( config.xml ) for the domain, which contains the configuration information for your entire domain. This file should not be edited directly.

• The fileRealm.properties file, which is used to store username location information and access control lists for the domain.

• The SerializedSystemIni.dat file, a salt (hash) file that is used to encrypt user passwords for your domain.

Note

To strengthen the encryption of passwords, a random string (salt) is concatenated to the password, which is then passed through a hash function to generate a password file.

The WebLogic Home Directory

WebLogic Platform has its own directory area, which by default, is located within the BEA Home directory. This directory is referenced in scripts using the %WL_HOME% variable.

Table 10.4 contains a description of each of the directories in the WebLogic Home directory.

Table 10.4. A Description of the WebLogic Home Directory

Directory or File	Description
common	A directory of common files shared by WebLogic Platform software components, including template .jar files used in the Configuration Wizard during the creation of WebLogic Server domains.
samples	A directory that contains a subdirectory of sample applications, which are organized by the installed WebLogic Platform software components. If you have installed the WebLogic Server examples, this directory will contain the examples and petstore domains. Through the sample code and resources associated with these domains, you can learn by example the development efforts and composition of a J2EE application deployed on WebLogic Server.
server	A directory containing the WebLogic Server software, including any supporting third-party software components such as JDBC drivers.
uninstall	A directory containing the software code to de-install the installed WebLogic Platform software components.
workshop	A directory containing the WebLogic Workshop application and documentation files (Optional).

If you opted to install the WebLogic Server examples (refer to Figure 10.2), the installer also creates the Petstore and Examples domains. These sample domains are located in the WL_HOME \samples\server\config directory, where WL_HOME is the root directory of your WebLogic Platform installation files.

The Petstore domain provides the application and configuration files for running the Java Pet Store 1.3, a sample J2EE reference application that showcases the main features of the Java 2 platform. The Examples domain provides the application and configuration files to demonstrate a variety of features using WebLogic Server. Both these sample domains are configured as standalone servers.