BEA's Product Line

Building on the functionality of WebLogic Server, BEA has created the following four software solutions that provide out-of-the-box functionality and, together with WebLogic Server, make up the WebLogic Platform.

BEA WebLogic Portal

Provides a foundation for Web applications, business processes, and information to work together to provide business functionality through a Web site. These Web applications are referred to as portlets. BEA WebLogic Portal provides a portlet foundation for developers to build on and offers many services to portlets including personalization, administration, and integration.

BEA WebLogic Integration

Provides both a GUI and an application framework to enable nonprogrammers to define business processes through workflows. When executed, these workflows invoke the services of existing application components such as Enterprise JavaBeans. After these business processes are modeled in its user-friendly GUI, BEA WebLogic Integration allows them to be executed manually, in response to an application-specific event, or through a configurable schedule.

BEA WebLogic JRockit

In February 2002, BEA acquired Appeal Virtual Systems AB, a company that creates Java Virtual Machines (JVM). In doing so, BEA now owns JRockit, a high-speed JVM created specifically for server-side Java applications. Server-side JVMs know that the applications they execute will run for long periods of time. Knowing this, the JVM spends time analyzing and optimizing the code it's executing. BEA ships a copy of JRockit with WebLogic Server 8.1 to ensure better performance over previous releases and other application servers.

BEA WebLogic Workshop

WebLogic Workshop is BEA's integrated development environment focused on building Web Services applications. The new version of Workshop, version 8.1, expands on the usability of Workshop to create Web services to all parts of enterprise application development. It contains graphical tools for creating PageFlow-modeled applications, BEA's version of the Model-View-Controller architecture, similar to Struts (covered in Chapter 19, "Working with Struts"). Features include a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) JSP editor and the ability to create your own custom controls. To learn more about WebLogic Workshop, log on to http://edocs.bea.com/workshop/docs81/index.html.