Deploy versioned artifacts to Oracle WebLogic

This topic covers the Deploy WebLogic server (WLS) plugin, which allows you to manage deployments and resources on an Oracle WebLogic server. With this plugin, you can deploy multiple versions of the same application at the same time, which is known as a side-by-side deployment or versioning.

Artifact versioning properties

Artifact versioning involves several properties on the artifact configuration item (CIs):

• versioned: Indicates that the artifact is versioned
• versionIdentifier: The artifact version (not needed if automatic versioning is enabled)
• automaticVersioning: Indicates that the plugin should automatically version the artifact
• manifestVersionProperty: The property in the artifact's manifest file that the plugin can use to automatically derive its version
• versionExpression: A FreeMarker expression that the plugin uses to derive the version

Explicitly set the version

To explicitly set the version, use the versionIdentifier property. The plugin will use this value when deploying, updating, or undeploying the application.

Use automatic versioning

If you do not want to set the version explicitly, you can use automatic versioning wherein the plugin derives update version numbers automatically. If automaticVersioning is set to "true" or if versionIdentifier is blank, the plugin will automatically version the artifact.

There are two methods for deriving the version:

• The plugin uses the version as defined in Deploy. For example, for Applications/MyApp/1.0, the version would be MyApp-1.0.

• The plugin gets the version from the manifest file.

  • manifestVersionProperty identifies the variable in the artifact's manifest file that defines its version. By default, this is Extension-Name. If this variable has a value, then the plugin uses the CI's versionExpression property to derive the version.

  • versionExpression is a FreeMarker expression that the plugin uses to derive the version. By default, it produces a version as follows:

    • If the Specification-Version or Implementation-Version variable is present, that variable is used
    • If both Specification-Version and Implementation-Version are present, Specification-Version@Implementation-Version is used

tip

If the artifact's manifest uses the Extension-Name variable, the name of the artifact CI should match its value.

You can set CI properties in the manifest of a deployment package (DAR file) before importing it, on the CI in the Repository, or in the properties of a mapped deployed. For more information about CI properties, see the WebLogic Plugin Reference.

Changing CI property defaults

The manifestVersionProperty CI property defaults to "Extension-Name". You can change the default in the wls.WarModule.manifestVersionProperty property in the XL_DEPLOY_SERVER_HOME/conf/deployit-defaults.properties file.

By default, versionExpression uses the following FreeMarker expression to calculate the version:

     [#ftl]${manifestAttributes["Specification-Version"]}[#if manifestAttributes["Implementation-Version"]??]@${manifestAttributes["Implementation-Version"]}[/#if]

You can change the default in the wls.WarModule.versionExpression property in the XL_DEPLOY_SERVER_HOME/conf/deployit-defaults.properties file.