What Is WebLogic Workshop?

WebLogic Workshop 8.1 is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) from BEA for developing any enterprise application. Previously, you had to work with a variety of tools to develop applications. There were tools for developing portal applications, tools for developing business process applications, and various IDEs for developing J2EE applications. Many of these tools were developed by BEA, and some were developed by other vendors ; integrating across applications within a platform was cumbersome at best. The simple process of developing portal applications that used workflows was difficult at best and often impossible .

With WebLogic Workshop 8.1, you need to use only one tool, whether you're developing a simple J2EE, Portal, or Integration application. With Workshop 8.l you can do the following:

• Develop Web applications.

• Create sophisticated business processes.

• Present new functionality in user portals.

• Make services available within a global Web community via Web services.

• Create custom combinations of Web applications, Web services, and Portal and Integration services.

Best of all, WebLogic Workshop makes J2EE easier for J2EE and non-J2EE developers alike. Those who need to develop, debug, test, and deploy J2EE applications will find WebLogic Workshop an excellent environment. The Workshop Framework can generate all the standard "plumbing" code previously coded by hand, and developers have to worry only about custom business logic. For example, if you're writing a client to use an Enterprise JavaBean (EJB), you would have to know all the different Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) APIs. However, in Workshop, all the JNDI code is generated for you and made accessible via easy-to-use properties at development time and runtime.

Another key area is support for industry best practices. The WebLogic Workshop Framework uses the most up-to-date best practices to build applications. For example, Struts, a current J2EE implementation of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) concept, is the underlying page navigation engine. Other features to extend Workshop are also available.

WebLogic Workshop can be used to create the following:

• Simple J2EE Web applications to be deployed on WebLogic Server

• Portal applications to be deployed on WebLogic Portal

• Business process applications to be deployed on a WebLogic Integration server

• An enterprise application containing all the preceding features deployed on a WebLogic Platform server

These applications and the business logic components built with Workshop follow the J2EE standard.