Upgrade Weblogic 12.2.1.3 To 12.2.1.4

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Thisquick start upgrade is intended to help you evaluate upgrading your Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.6 applications to Oracle WebLogic Server 12.2.1.4. For detailed information about performing this upgrade, see the previous chapters of this guide.

WebLogic Server 10.3.6 has been a widely adopted release of WebLogic Server, successfully meeting user requirements for many years. However, Oracle encourages customers to upgrade to a more current release of WebLogic Server at this time.

The following list describes some of the primary changes between Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.6 and Oracle WebLogic Server 12.2.1.4 that may affect your applications and configurations when performing an upgrade. You should familiarize yourself with these changes.

If you want to continue using a per host Node Manager configuration, then after the domain reconfiguration you must manually reconfigure Node Manager as described in Completing the Node Manager Configuration.

The following issues are among the most commonly cited issues when upgrading, and are listed below for convenience. For a complete list of issues, see Known Issues and Workarounds in the Oracle WebLogic Server Release Notes for 12.2.1.4.0.

The amount of native memory that can be used for class metadata in JDK 8 is by default unlimited. To maximize performance, use the option MetaspaceSize to put an upper limit on the amount of native memory used for class metadata.

When using the Reconfiguration Wizard to perform this evaluation upgrade, the Reconfiguration Wizard will create new start scripts for the domain upgraded to Oracle WebLogic Server 12.2.1.4. These start scripts will reference the new JDK 8 version you have installed and referenced when upgrading your domain using the Reconfiguration Wizard.

Any customizations to start scripts in the Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.6 domain will not be present in the start scripts generated for the upgraded domain. You may need to re-apply customizations applied to the start scripts for the Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.6 domain.

The Java Virtual Machine (JVM) limits the amount of code to 65536 bytes per Java method, post upgrade. Therefore, when redeploying applications after upgrading to Oracle WebLogic Server 12.2.1.4.0, if the JSP files are embedded with too many scriptlets, the compiler fails to optimize the code, causing the deployment to fail with CompilationException.

The Java class org.apache.commons.fileupload.disk.DiskFileItem in the WebLogic Server bundled Apache Commons FileUpload jar file no longer implements java.io.Serializable in order to prevent the potential security vulnerability.

Oracle may have introduced new certifications that are not reflected in the table above. In addition, some of the technologies in the table may no longer be supported by the technology vendor. Please consult the applicable vendor documentation.

You may need to configure WebLogic Server to limit the lowest supported versions of SSL and TLS that are enabled for SSL connections. Oracle recommends using TLS V1.2 or later in a production environment.

If SSL communications that worked properly in WebLogic Server 10.3.6 start failing unexpectedly, see Troubleshooting Problems with Certificate Validation. The SSL certificates may need to be renewed or replaced after an upgrade.

For detailed information about renewing an expired or expiring SSL certificate configured on Oracle WebLogic Server, see SSL Certificate Validation in Administering Security for Oracle WebLogic Server.

If you plan to use the RDBMS security store in a WebLogic domain, Oracle recommends that you create a new domain in which the RDBMS security store is configured. If you have an existing domain in which you want to use the RDBMS security store, you should create the new domain, and then migrate your security realm to it. Oracle does not recommend "retrofitting" the RDBMS security store to an existing domain.

When you use the Reconfiguration Wizard to upgrade the WebLogic Server 10.3.6 domain to 12.2.1.4, the same AES 128-bit encryption used for the source 10.3.6 domain is used in the upgraded 12.2.1.4 domain. However, newly created WebLogic Server 12.2.1.4 domains are created using AES 256-bit encryption, which is more secure than AES 128-bit encryption and recommended in production.

After validating the single-server domain upgrade using the Reconfiguration Wizard, and after validating that applications run properly in the upgraded domain, Oracle recommends that you create the 12.2.1.4 production domains using AES 256-bit encryption. This may be accomplished, for example, by using the Domain Template Builder to create a domain template from the upgraded domain, and using the Configuration Wizard or WLST Offline to create a new domain with AES 256-bit encryption.

Use the upgrade roadmap to identify the procedure required to upgrade your Oracle WebLogic Server application environment. An upgrade of WebLogic application environment is complete when you upgrade, configure, and deploy your WebLogic application environments.

This document describes the upgrade process for Oracle product installations that include only WebLogic Server. If your installation includes other Oracle Fusion Middleware products, prior to beginning the upgrade, refer to Planning an Upgrade of Oracle Fusion Middleware and the upgrade guides for each Fusion Middleware product in your installation.

Before upgrading your WebLogic application environment, plan the upgrade path. Planning the upgrade path includes generating an inventory of the application environment, verifying the supported system configurations, reviewing the compatibility information of application environment, and creating an upgrade plan.

Supported configurations (for example, JDK versions, Operating System versions, Web server versions, and database versions) have changed for WebLogic Server 14.1.1.0.0. You may be required to upgrade your environments to the supported versions of these and other products.

As of WebLogic Server 10.3.3, the evaluation database available from the installation program that is provided for use by the sample applications and code examples, and as a demonstration database, is Derby. Derby is an open source relational database management system based on Java, JDBC, and SQL standards. For more information about Derby, see

If you are using an Oracle OCI database driver and want to change to use a Thin database driver, you must remove the server property (as illustrated below) from the generated JDBC module. For example:

The Oracle Thin Drivers are installed with WebLogic Server and are ready for use. For more information about using these drivers, see JDBC Drivers Installed with WebLogic Server in Administering JDBC Data Sources for Oracle WebLogic Server.

Most existing WebLogic Server applications can be run without modification in the new WebLogic Server 14.1.1.0.0 application environment. However, you should review WebLogic Server 14.1.1.0.0 Compatibility with Previous Releasesto determine whether any feature changes affect the applications in your environment.

Oracle does not recommend upgrading an application environment that is currently deployed in production. Instead, you should upgrade your application environment while it is under development or test and execute standard procedures for quality assurance and performance tuning before promoting the upgraded environment to production.

If your application is complex, for example, if it includes multiple clustered domains and a large number of deployed applications, you may choose to upgrade the components of the application environment in stages.

If you plan to use the RDBMS security store in a WebLogic domain, Oracle recommends that you create a new domain in which the RDBMS security store is configured. If you have an existing domain in which you want to use the RDBMS security store, you should create the new domain, and then migrate your security realm to it. Oracle does not recommend "retrofitting" the RDBMS security store to an existing domain. See Managing the RDBMS Security Store in Administering Security for Oracle WebLogic Server.

Before you start the upgrade process, you should verify whether there are any upgrade compatibility issues that apply to your applications. You then shut down all running server instances and back up the application components in your domain.

It is not necessary for WebLogic Server applications to be undeployed before upgrading the domain. In most cases, WebLogic Server applications can be run without modifications in the new WebLogic Server 14.1.1.0.0 application environment. To determine whether any features changes affect the applications in your environment, review the compatibility information in WebLogic Server 14.1.1.0.0 Compatibility with Previous Releases. Note that if you use deprecated or removed APIs in the application, you might encounter warnings or exceptions at run time.

Note: The Domain Upgrade Wizard, which automatically backed up the domain being upgraded, is no longer provided with WebLogic Server. You must manually back up your domain directory prior to upgrading the domain.

If it is important for you to maintain a record of all messages that are logged, back up the log files. As log files can be large, you may want to delete them to conserve disk space if it is not important to retain them.

Before upgrading your application environment, you must install the Oracle WebLogic Server 14.1.1.0.0 products that you require on each computer in the domain. For more information about installing Oracle WebLogic products, see Installing and Configuring Oracle WebLogic Server and Coherence.

The specific upgrade steps you perform depend upon whether you are upgrading from WebLogic Server 10.3.0 or earlier, whether other Fusion Middleware products are installed, and whether Managed Servers are installed on remote machines.

To upgrade your application environment to the latest version of WebLogic Server, you may first need to upgrade to 10.3.6. You then back up the domain, upgrade the Administration Server host machine, configure the Node Manager, and upgrade each Managed Server instance.

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