JPA Persistence: Spring 3.0.5 on WebLogic 10.3.4.0

JPA Deployed on Spring

DISCLAIMER: This page reflects investigation into how ORM/JPA developers can use the Java Persistence API (part of Java EE 5/6) and the Spring Framework inside existing WebLogic and Spring releases. It does NOT imply any formal certification from SpringSource, IBM, RedHat or Oracle on any technical details or configuration within this document.

This content is undergoing an expansion as of 20101220 in enhancement # 332953 from an EE enthusiast.

Enabling JPA2 on WebLogic 10.3.5.0

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/web.1111/e13720/using_toplink.htm#CIHDJHHI

Purpose
A portion of enterprise development uses the Spring framework which is an alternative to traditional JEE/EJB distributed transactions(1.0), local transactions (2.0) and transactional SE frameworks (3.0). Spring has grown into as large a framework as JEE6 from its original goal of providing a simpler less verbose enterprise MVC framework. The spring framework can be used in conjunction with or as a replacement for EJB 3.1 technologies.
This document is for Spring developers that wish to use EclipseLink JPA as their persistence provider or for Spring developers that are migrating from another ORM/JPA provider.
An open source persistence provider framework can be the JPA or ORM provider for Spring beans in Spring based applications.
The API provided by the Spring framework can range from using the dependency injection (DI) features along with the Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) support - all the way to using declarative transactions and management of remote resources.
In this tutorial page we will concentrate on providing support for developers and projects that wish to use JPA with Spring applications and we will demonstrate a very simple web application that uses a JTA or local RESOURCE_LOCAL persistence unit and use Spring's @Autowired, @Controller, @RequestMapping, @Repository and possibly the '''AOP''' @Aspect and @Around annotations as required.

JPA Enterprise Application running on Spring inside WebLogic Server
As most enterprise applications that use Spring will do so via a web application - instead of a Web/EJB EE combination - we will concentrate on Web (WAR) applications.
WebLogic offers the following services to Spring applications

Runs Spring 2.5.3 applications out of the box
Provides a simplified deployment model surrounding the Application Context - we will also use this.
Provides Spring DI and AOP support to non-Spring applications
Provides spring MBeans for runtime configuration details - We will verify this shortly
Provides a WebLogic console extension to view Spring beans

The primary use case we will prototype for this tutorial is one where the application uses Spring (either managing its' own local transactions, or using the transaction manager in WebLogic for distributed transactions) as the enterprise container on WebLogic Server. WebLogic currently support Spring 2.5.3 and Dependency Injection using Spring in non-Spring applications via the open source Pitchfork project.
Therefore theoretically we should be able to use Spring AOP and other DI annotations in our application without any extra configuration - we will verify this.
A secondary use case will be migration of a SpringSource Tool Suite 2.5.0.M3 (based on Eclipse 3.6 and Apache Tomcat 6.0.20) based native Hibernate project to one that uses EclipseLink JPA.

JEE and Spring correspondence
Spring can be used in parallel with formal EE specification technologies like IIOP Remote Session Beans and Transactions or as an alternative to them using Spring's remote RMI/JAX-RPC/WS proxying and declarative transactions/rollback support.
However, Spring does not provide native distributed transaction support or native ORM support - in both these cases JEE must be used.

Distributed transactions via transactions that occur across remote session bean methods
ORM persistence is provided via JPA using either http://www.eclipselink.org or www.hibernate.org as the provider - or via native ORM for either of these persistence providers.

Using the Spring framework as the EE container allows the user to run enterprise applications on simple JSR-154 Servlet containers like Tomcat, Jetty, WebSphere CE, Spring TC or Spring DM/Virgo
The spring framework treats all EE artificts as Spring Beans.

Architecture
There are 3 standard tiers to our web application.

presentation/view layer (JSP/JSF pages)
controller layer (Controller Servlet)
integration/data-access layer (Spring beans)

The cross-cutting concerns are

The data model (Entities)
Logging
Transaction Management (Spring beans)

We will be using standard JPA Entities for our data model domain objects.
The domain objects will be managed by Spring beans that act as Data Access Objects between our Entities and the persistence store

Installation

WebLogic 10.3.4.0
Oracle WebLogic http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/ias/downloads/fusion-certification-100350.html officially supports Spring 2.5.x - we will be verifying this July 2008 statement in the http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/ias/downloads/oracle-wls-certification-10gr3-matr-129284.xls System Requirements and Supported Platforms for Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3 spreadsheet - page 2.
In WebLogic 10.3.3.0 there exists 3 spring jars in the modules directory - these are internally wrapped API that support the 2.5.3 version of Spring as indicated. We may upgrade these to work with Spring 3 as long as we do not encounter issues between 2.5.3 and 3.0 dependency injection. The http://www.springsource.com/products/pitchfork/pitchfork-faq pitchfork jar is part of the combined Oracle and SpringSource open source project for metadata translation of http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=250 JSR-250 annotations for both WebLogic ans Spring - started by Rod Johnson of Interface21 and Michael Chen of BEA under both the Apache and EPL licenses.
WebLogic has used Spring as its AOP (Aspect Oriented Programming) engine since June 2005 to provide support for DI (Dependency Injection) of resources and functionality in a Proxy' implementation on the server that contains a reference to the actual business object (Bean or EJB). The container uses Spring AOP to bytecode weave - at runtime - the proxy so that cross-cutting concerns can be architected properly. By instrumenting a business object at runtime using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect-oriented_programming AOP we are able to provide dynamic functionality before and after a client operation in support of pre and post operations for transactions and security for example.
http://oss.oracle.com/projects/pitchfork/ com.bea.core.repackaged.springframework.pitchfork_1.3.0.0_2-0.jar
com.bea.core.repackaged.springframework.spring_1.1.0.0_2-5-3.jar com.bea.core.weblogic.spring.instrument_1.2.0.0.jar
The notable thing about using the '''com.bea.core''' namespace is that it will not confict with any com.springsource Spring versions shipped with Spring EAR applications.
From what I can see there is a bit of history on Spring and WebLogic cooperation
The wlserver_10.3/server/lib/weblogic-spring.jar contains WebLogic specific integration with the above 3 spring jars
The wlserver_10.3/server/lib/console-ext/spring-console.jar contains WebLogic specific http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12839_01/web.1111/e14453/enable_console_ext.htm#CIHCAIBE integration with the WebLogic admin console

WebLogic 10.3.3.0 Default Spring Support
If you try to deploy a Spring framework based application - you will see the following CNFE (ClassNotFoundException) or similar depending on what Spring JSR-250 annotations or XML markup you use.


_21-Dec-2010 3:52:51 o'clock PM EST_ _Error_ _HTTP_ _BEA-101371_ _There was a failure when processing annotations for application F:\wse\view_w35e\org.eclipse.persistence.example.jpa.spring.weblogic.enterpriseWeb\WebContent. Please make sure that the annotations are valid. The error is org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet_ 

_21-Dec-2010 3:52:51 o'clock PM EST_ _Error_ _Deployer_ _BEA-149265_ _Failure occurred in the execution of deployment request with ID '1292964771051' for task '1'. Error is: 'weblogic.application.ModuleException: Failed to load webapp: 'springhypercube''

weblogic.application.ModuleException: Failed to load webapp: 'springhypercube'

at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppModule.prepare(WebAppModule.java:393)

at weblogic.application.internal.flow.ScopedModuleDriver.prepare(ScopedModuleDriver.java:176)

at weblogic.application.internal.flow.ModuleListenerInvoker.prepare(ModuleListenerInvoker.java:199)

at weblogic.application.internal.flow.DeploymentCallbackFlow$1.next(DeploymentCallbackFlow.java:517)

at weblogic.application.utils.StateMachineDriver.nextState(StateMachineDriver.java:52)

Truncated. see log file for complete stacktrace

Caused By: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet

at weblogic.utils.classloaders.GenericClassLoader.findLocalClass(GenericClassLoader.java:297)

at weblogic.utils.classloaders.GenericClassLoader.findClass(GenericClassLoader.java:270)

at weblogic.utils.classloaders.ChangeAwareClassLoader.findClass(ChangeAwareClassLoader.java:64)

at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:307)

at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:248)

In my case, this is because of the standard Spring DispatchServlet which replaces your own FrontController, FacesServlet or StrutsController - single point of control in web.xml

FrontController

org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet

contextConfigLocation

/WEB-INF/servlet-config.xml

The reason that the '''org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet''' class cannot be loaded by WebLogic is either that it is unavailable or that there is another version in the classpath (not likely or we would get a ClassCastException).

The DispatcherServlet is inside org.springframework.web.servlet-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
You therefore need to distribute the Spring jars or place them on the server as explained in the section

Systematic Inclusion of Spring libraries in WebLogic
The goal is to get the latest Spring 3.0.5 working with the latest WebLogic 10.3.4.0. Hopefully we do not need to revert to using the supported Spring 3.5.3 or 3.5.6 versions.
The following ClassNotFoundExceptions are being eradicated one at a time usually be easily matching the class with the appropriate 1 of 20 Spring module. It would be nice to use some sort of OSGI support for dynamic module loading - we are only using PDE at this point.

org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet is in org.springframework.web.servlet-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
org.apache.commons.logging.Log is in commons-logging.jar
org.springframework.web.util.UrlPathHelper is in org.springframework.web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext is in org.springframework.context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
org.springframework.beans.factory.ListableBeanFactory is in org.springframework.beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
org.springframework.core.io.support.ResourcePatternResolver is in org.springframework.core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar

Alright, we are now deployed and at the point where we are looking for the persistence unit - which is not properly configured yet.

Caused By: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: No persistence unit named 'spring' is available in scope springhypercube. Available persistence units: []
at weblogic.deployment.ModulePersistenceUnitRegistry.getPersistenceUnit(ModulePersistenceUnitRegistry.java:132)
at weblogic.deployment.BasePersistenceContextProxyImpl.(BasePersistenceContextProxyImpl.java:39)

We are currently running on a modified server (so we do not have to ship the Spring modules with the EAR/WAR) with the following change to $WLS_Server/wlserver_10.3/common/bin/commEnv.cml:151

set SPRING_CP=C:/opt/spring305/dist
set WEBLOGIC_CLASSPATH=%SPRING_CP%/org.springframework.web.servlet-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar;C:/opt/spring3/commons-logging.jar;%SPRING_CP%/org.springframework.web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar;%SPRING_CP%/org.springframework.context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar;%SPRING_CP%/org.springframework.beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar;%SPRING_CP%/org.springframework.core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar;%JAVA_HOME%\lib\tools.jar;%WL_HOME%\server\lib\weblogic_sp.jar;%WL_HOME%\server\lib\weblogic.jar;%FEATURES_DIR%\weblogic.server.modules_10.3.4.0.jar;%WL_HOME%\server\lib\webservices.jar;%ANT_HOME%/lib/ant-all.jar;%ANT_CONTRIB%/lib/ant-contrib.jar

Spring 3 Download

If you are not using Spring STS - download the http://www.springsource.com/download/community Spring 3.0.5 jars
http://s3.amazonaws.com/dist.springframework.org/release/SPR/spring-framework-3.0.5.RELEASE-with-docs.zip
Spring Integration with Eclipse
1) If you wish to customize spring support in eclipse - enable the '''Spring project nature''' via the context menu off our Web application

2) And manually enter the jars below...
Instead of picking individual jars - just add everything from the dist directory to your in-Web lib directory, or directly on the server on either your domain lib or the modules dir of the server.
\user_projects\domains\base_domain\lib
\modules

C:\opt\spring305\dist>dir /B
Library-SymbolicName: org.springframework.spring
Library-Version: 3.0.5.RELEASE
Library-Name: Spring Framework
Import-Bundle: 
 org.springframework.aop;version="[3.0.5.RELEASE, 3.0.5.RELEASE]",
 org.springframework.asm;version="[3.0.5.RELEASE, 3.0.5.RELEASE]",
 org.springframework.aspects;version="[3.0.5.RELEASE, 3.0.5.RELEASE]",
 org.springframework.beans;version="[3.0.5.RELEASE, 3.0.5.RELEASE]",
 org.springframework.context;version="[3.0.5.RELEASE, 3.0.5.RELEASE]",
 org.springframework.context.support;version="[3.0.5.RELEASE, 3.0.5.RELEASE]",
 org.springframework.core;version="[3.0.5.RELEASE, 3.0.5.RELEASE]",
 org.springframework.expression;version="[3.0.5.RELEASE, 3.0.5.RELEASE]",
 org.springframework.jdbc;version="[3.0.5.RELEASE, 3.0.5.RELEASE]",
 org.springframework.jms;version="[3.0.5.RELEASE, 3.0.5.RELEASE]",
 org.springframework.orm;version="[3.0.5.RELEASE, 3.0.5.RELEASE]",
 org.springframework.oxm;version="[3.0.5.RELEASE, 3.0.5.RELEASE]",
 org.springframework.transaction;version="[3.0.5.RELEASE, 3.0.5.RELEASE]",
 org.springframework.web;version="[3.0.5.RELEASE, 3.0.5.RELEASE]",
 org.springframework.web.servlet;version="[3.0.5.RELEASE, 3.0.5.RELEASE]",
 org.springframework.web.portlet;version="[3.0.5.RELEASE, 3.0.5.RELEASE]",
 com.springsource.org.aopalliance;version="[1.0.0, 1.0.0]"
org.springframework.web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
org.springframework.web.portlet-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
org.springframework.web.servlet-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
org.springframework.web.struts-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar

Where the following '''classpath variables''' need to be defined

SPRING_AOP=org.springframework.aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_ASM=org.springframework.asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_ASPECTS=org.springframework.aspects-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_BEANS=org.springframework.beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_CONTEXT=org.springframework.context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_CONTEXT_SUPPORT=org.springframework.context.support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_CORE=org.springframework.core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_EXPRESSION=org.springframework.expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_INSTRUMENT=org.springframework.instrument-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_INSTRUMENT_TOMCAT=org.springframework.instrument.tomcat-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_JDBC=org.springframework.jdbc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_JMS=org.springframework.jms-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_ORM=org.springframework.orm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_OXM=org.springframework.oxm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_TEST=org.springframework.test-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_TRANSACTION=org.springframework.transaction-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_WEB=org.springframework.web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_PORTLET=org.springframework.web.portlet-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_SERVLET=org.springframework.web.servlet-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
SPRING_STRUTS=org.springframework.web.struts-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar

Spring Integration with WebLogic

There are several options for getting the Spring framework enabled for your Spring WAR in WebLogic Server. I have ordered them in decreasing impact on the WebLogic server config and increasing application managed state.

Option 1: Spring library jars highest in WEBLOGIC_CLASSPATH var in commEnv.cmd script - in use
This option will override anything on the server and deployed WAR's (except prefer-application-packages overrides). It will deal with most classLoader and CNFE issues. Later we may want to refactor how the Spring modules are packaged to minimize server impact.

Option 2: Spring library jars in WebLogic modules directory

Option 3: Spring library jars in WebLogic Domain lib directory

Option 4: Spring library jars in shared separate EAR library

Option 5: Spring library jars deployed with EAR APP-INF/lib directory using '''prefer-application-packages''' override

Option 6: Spring library jars deployed with WAR lib directory

Eclipse 3.6 Setup
Standard Eclipse 3.6 EE
Spring must be configured as follows.
SpringSource Tools Suite 2.5.1
Spring will run out of the box on Apache Tomcat 6.0.20
JNDI Datasource Setup
EclipseLink JAR
Spring JARs

Create Enterprise Projects
*Possible configurations of the projects are...
*Using the default http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12839_01/web.1111/e14453/simplified_configuration.htm#BABBJEDI WebLogicJtaTransactionManager
SC1: WAR only project with entities/beans inside war jar.
SC2: WAR only project with entities/beans inside separate domain jar.
SC3: EE EAR project with entities/beans inside the war project
SC4: EE EAR project with entities/beans inside separate ejb.jar project
SC5: EE EAR project with entities/beans inside separate domain jar project

Object Model
Following Scenario SC3 we will place our entities inside
Dependency Injection
@Controller

@Autowired

@RequestMapping

@Repository

@Transactional

Declarative transaction management - like http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=220 JSR-220 / http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=318 JSR-318 EJB 3.0/3.1 transactional stateless and stateful session bean annotations via the javax.ecj.SessionSychronization package updated for non-remote calls (2.0) and non-EE (SE) clients in (3.0)

Web.xml
The version of the xmlns:web namespace must be 2.5 not 2.4
Add a persistence-ref for this application managed persistence unit

persistence/em

spring

org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.PersistenceProvider
The SPI file javax.persistence.spi.PersistenceProvider containing the text org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.PersistenceProvider must be placed at the root of where the entities/beans are off of META-INF/services

Persistence.xml
servlet-config.xml
application-config.xml
If you were using a Hibernate SessionFactory for ORM you could describe your entities in the AnnotationSessionFactoryBean bean element to match the class elements from persistence.xml - if auto-discovery was not enabled

Transaction Manager Configuration
If we use the default WebLogicJtaTransactionManager we get the following Spring beans by default when the application context is wrapped in a parent proxy by WebLogic
   ref="transactionManager" - a subclass of org.springframework.transaction.jta.jtaTransactionManager
Configuration MBeans
On WebLogic Server we get the following Spring beans by default when the application context is wrapped in a parent proxy.
Both of these MBeans should be running off the platform MBeanServer - I will need to verif this.
   ref="editMBeanServerConnection"
   ref="runtimeMBeanServerConnection"

Servlet Client
Start Server
Publish EAR
Console Output
Browser Output

Change Log
20101220 - start tutorial using Spring 3, SpringSource Tool Suite 2.5.0, AspectJ 1.6 weaver at 3019.

References