WebLogic Server has proven native capability to provide HTTP session management for the web tier. WebLogic Server is able to provide session state management within WebLogic Server applications but not in a comprehensive fashion across multiple applications or across multiple heterogeneous application servers. This can be a challenge for customers who want to integrate applications that run on multiple application servers or domains. These applications may have been developed at different times by different departments and need to be integrated. These applications may even reside on different systems - Java, .net, native C/C++ infrastructure etc.

Secondly, WebLogic Server's in-memory state replication relies on the size of the JVM heap to store session state. Coherence*Web enables in-memory session state to grow to very large sizes independent of WebLogic Server JVMs as the state can be managed on a separate Coherence In-Memory Data Grid, unconstrained by JVM heap sizes.

The native integration of Coherence 3.4.2 with WebLogic Server 10.3 results in the following capabilities:

• Coherence 3.4.2 provides out of the box integration with WebLogic Server 10.3. This means that Coherence*Web is a deployment option on the WebLogic Server 10.3 platform that enables a tighter integration with WebLogic Server for Http Session management. It should be noted that the configuration of Coherence for WebLogic Server is likely to change in future releases as Coherence is even more tightly integrated into the WebLogic Server.
• Coherence*Web benefits applications that manage large HTTP Session State objects, when running into memory constraints due to storing HTTP Session object data, and/or have existing Coherence Cluster and would like to offload HTTP Session storage to a Coherence Cluster.

Note that Coherence*Web is not a replacement for WebLogic Server's in-memory HTTP state replication services.

With the Coherence 3.4.2 and WebLogic Server 10.3 integration customers benefit from:

• Improved fault-tolerance for the web-tier from ability to manage large http session state objects. Whereas WebLogic Server is able to provide session state persistence within the application server, Coherence*Web is able to extend it across application domains and application servers. Session state is now stored in Coherence cache(s) which can span multiple applications, multiple domains and heterogeneous application server environments (e.g. WebLogic Server and iAS).
• Improved performance for the web application from having the ability to load more user/application specific session data in-memory without having to worry about failure or data loss. With this capability more data is stored closer to the application, which results from improved performance (over having to fetch data from the backend systems).
• Improved deployment productivity from integration of WebLogic Server 10.3 and Coherence 3.4.2 out of the box. Customers who now want to use WebLogic Server and Coherence*Web together, do not need to instrument their web applications.

A global clothing retailer with over $15B in revenues operating more than 3000 stores worldwide, built its iconic casual brand on basics for men, women, and children, but over the years has expanded through the acquisitions and now owns multiple brands. The operations and management of these brands resided on different systems, on different domains and on different application servers, which worked fine for their physical stores.

With their online channel customers were required to treat different brands as different stores. So customers would have to check out and pay for one brand and then shop for the next brand and so on. This un-integrated customer experience resulted in low customer satisfaction. With Oracle Coherence, specifically Coherence*Web, the brand's were unified and resulted in an integrated customer experience. Data residing in-memory also improved website performance and reliability, resulting in significantly improved customer experience.

WebLogic Portal customers that are looking at further improving the responsiveness of their portal application should benefit from this enhancement. Also, WebLogic Portal customers who are predicting growth in traffic, but don't want to make a significant investment upfront - these customers are looking for a solution that will scale as they grow. Customers whose business continuity is at risk with legacy/backend systems that hold data and with unpredictable growth or demand, since these systems were not designed to support fast-growing high response web applications.

The native integration of Coherence 3.4.2 with WebLogic Portal 10.3 results in the following capabilities:

• Coherence 3.4.2 is now able to cache the portal framework. By doing so, the navigation structure of the site can be persisted in Coherence. Both the global site structure which is visible to all users, as well as user customized views of the portal (custom pages and portlets they added to the site) are cached which avoid repeat calls to the database where the configuration is stored.
• Coherence P13N (Personalization) Cache Provider provides hot-pluggable integration with WebLogic Portal and can be used to cache data for WebLogic Portal. The portal application does not need to change, since it continues to use WebLogic Portal's personalization cache API. WebLogic Portal will automatically discover the Coherence Cache Provider and transparently use it to cache data.

With the Coherence 3.4.2 and WebLogic Portal 10.3 integration customers benefit from:

• Improved portal application responsiveness and scalability. Since the relevant data now resides closer to the applications (i.e. in-memory), the access and update is much faster. Since a native property of Coherence is that it scales linearly from 2 to 2000 servers, the application is able to scale predictably and easily as more users are added.
• Reduced Load on backend systems. Coherence cache now will be able to provide a cushion in the mid-tier to absorb unexpected load on backend systems. This minimizes risk of business continuity.
• Increased fault tolerance of portal application by leveraging Coherence for personalization cache data in WebLogic Portal, since with Coherence now the data is replicated across multiple nodes.
• Accelerate time to market with out of the box integration between Coherence and WebLogic Portal. No code development or change is required.

A leading global financial services firm with assets over $2 trillion with operations in more than 60 countries was looking to solve issues related to WebLogic Portal performance. The application was a dashboard that displayed account information. The dashboard would access the backend calling the backend for data that resulted in intermittent slow response, especially under high traffic scenario. Using Coherence*Web and Coherence as WebLogic Portal's personalization cache, the customer saw a 2X increase in their transaction rate as well as 60% reduced latency.

Oracle Coherence is a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware that enables organizations to predictably scale mission-critical applications by providing fast and reliable access to frequently used data. By automatically and dynamically partitioning data in memory across multiple servers, Oracle Coherence enables continuous data availability and transactional integrity, even in the event of a server failure. As a shared infrastructure, Oracle Coherence combines data locality with local processing power to perform real-time data analysis, in-memory grid computations, and parallel transaction and event processing.

Coherence*Web is an HTTP session management module dedicated to managing session state in clustered environments. Built on top of Oracle Coherence, Coherence*Web:

• Enables session sharing and management across different web applications, domains and heterogeneous application servers like Oracle WebLogic Server, IBM WebSphere, Tomcat, etc.
• Brings Coherence data grid's data scalability, availability, reliability and performance to in-memory session management and storage
• Supports numerous portal containers including Oracle WebLogic Portal
• Allows session state to be managed in the various caching topologies available in Coherence i.e. Replicated, Partitioned, Near Caching, Read-Through, Write-Through, Write-Behind and Refresh-Ahead Caching etc.
• Allows storage of session data outside of Java EE application server - freeing up application server heap space and enabling server restarts without session data loss
• Supports multiple advanced session models which define how the session state is physically managed, serialized and deserialized in the cluster
• Supports fine-grained session and session attribute scoping by way of pluggable policies.

There is no code change necessary for the use of Coherence*Web with WebLogic Server 10.3 or WebLogic Portal 10.3 only modifications to the configuration files and proper deployment of Coherence cache servers.

The upgrade process from Coherence 3.3/3.4 to 3.4.2 is straight-forward, simply replace the Coherence 3.3 or 3.4 binaries (i.e. coherence.jar and tangosol.jar) with the 3.4.2 binaries.

For WebLogic Suite customers, there is a convenient package offered by Oracle - Oracle WebLogic Suite - which bundles WebLogic Server 10.3 and Coherence 3.4.2 together*. If the customer licenses WebLogic Suite, then Coherence 3.4.2 will be offered along with WebLogic Server in this bundle.

However, if the customer purchases stand-alone license for WebLogic Server or WebLogic Portal, then customer has to separately purchase license for Coherence 3.4.2, stand-alone license for which is available for customers.

There are no bundles available from Oracle at this time that include WebLogic Portal and Coherence.

*WebLogic Suite also contains Oracle JRockit, iAS, and Oracle Enterprise Manager Diagnostics pack for OFM.

• For existing WebLogic Server customers not using WebLogic Server 10.3:

  These customers would firstly need to upgrade to WebLogic Server 10.3 to take advantage of Coherence 3.4.2 capabilities. Customers that have purchased license for WebLogic Suite, already have license for Coherence. These customers need to ensure they are using the correct Coherence version. For customers that do not have a license for WebLogic Suite, we recommend that they upgrade to this license and automatically get Coherence license with it. Alternately, these customers can also procure a stand-alone Coherence license.

• For existing WebLogic Server 10.3 customers:

  Customers that have purchased a license for WebLogic Suite, already have license for Coherence. These customers need to ensure they are using the correct Coherence version. For customers that do not have license for WebLogic Suite, we recommend that they upgrade to this license and automatically get Coherence license with it. Alternately, these customers can also procure a stand-alone Coherence license.

• For existing WebLogic Portal customers not using WebLogic Portal 10.3:

  These customers would firstly need to upgrade to WebLogic Portal 10.3 to take advantage of Coherence 3.4.2 capabilities. They will also need to upgrade to WebLogic Server 10.3, if they have not already done so. They would need to purchase WebLogic Suite or standalone Coherence 3.4.2 license.

• For existing WebLogic Portal 10.3 customers:

  These customers need to ensure they are using WebLogic Server 10.3. They would need to purchase WebLogic Suite or standalone Coherence 3.4.2 license.

Coherence 3.4.2 release details and discussions can be found on the Oracle technology network at https://www.oracle.com/middleware/technologies/coherence.html. Here you can also find technical information, user guide and documentation, how to guides etc.

Coherence 3.4.2 can be downloaded directly from the OTN download page: https://www.oracle.com/middleware/technologies/coherence-downloads.html