Upgrading Vista to Windows 8 on Virtual Box

I still have an old Windows Vista license which I installed on an Oracle Virtual Box machine. However it performs so poorly that it is hardly usable, even on a modern quad core CPU system. Yesterday Microsoft offered an Upgrade from several Windows versions, including Vista, to Windows 8 Pro for 29,90  Euro. I decided to try an upgrade.

We will look at the download and installation process. We actually install the German version of Windows 8 and provide the screens of the dialogs.
Windows8_on_VBox.pdf (2,3 MB)

Installation of Oracle Linux 5.8 on Virtual Box 4.1 with Guest Additions

Today I wanted to install Oracle Linux on virtual box, which I need for some testing systems. Since the installation and especially the setup of the guest additions were not as smooth as I expected, I decided to share the information.

InstallingOracleLinux58.pdf (1.5 MByte)

WS-Security unveiled

One of the more complex examples that ship with WLS is a WS-Trust based authentication of a web service using SAML assertions. This example is quite easy to setup and run and the example’s documentation gives a basic understanding of what is going on. But we want to look deeper and shed light on the complexity that is hidden behind SSL, WS-Trust and SAML authentication. In a first step we separate the scenario from the example server and integrate it into eclipse, to create an isolated laboratory environment for further investigation. We will use Wireshark to analyze the actual flow of messages on the wire. We even look inside the SSL streams to identify the WS-Trust tokens and SAML assertions as they are passed between the participants.

WS-Security_unveiled.pdf (1,35 MB)

Updated Links

Text file containing the output from building and running the project:

http://andreaswittmann.de/weblogic-corner/WS-Security_unveiled/saml_bearer11ssl.output.txt

WLS example documentation as PDF:

http://andreaswittmann.de/weblogic-corner/WS-Security_unveiled/WLS_Example_SAML_Bearer11ssl.pdf

Eclipse project file:

http://andreaswittmann.de/weblogic-corner/WS-Security_unveiled/saml_bearer11ssl.zip

Toolbox: The Mini-IDE

This part of the toolbox series introduces the Mini-IDE project. It is designed to instantly setup a weblogic server together with a small sample application. It provides everything to setup and run the example in less than five minutes. Despite its simplicity, it contains everything to build and deploy a Java EE web application, relying on not more than a WLS installation. It can easily be modified and used in analysis situations or as a starting point for proof of concepts. In environments where access is restricted to shell usage, we provide a distribution method based on copy and paste via the clipboard. 

Mini_IDE.pdf (1.23 MB)  

OEPE JavaEE Lab Tutorial for JSF

We want to look at a simple tutorial from the Oracle web site which demonstrates how to
develop a simple JSF web application with Eclipse and the Oracle Enterprise Pack for
Eclipse. Since this tutorial is targeted to WLS 10.3 there are some modifications to be made,
in order to run it with WLS12c and OEPE 12c. We take a brief look at the example itself and
point out the changes.

OEPE_JSF_Intro.pdf (93 KB)

OEPE Hands on Labs for WLS 11g

After some frustrating moments, trying to quickly going through the OEPE 11g Hands-on-Labs for Web-Services on WLS12c, I spent some time with problem analysis and eventually confirmed that the labs still run with the latest versions of WLS and Eclipse. We will present a graphical overview of each lab and  note some required changes for the version OEPE 12c.

OEPE_Hands-on-Labs.pdf (925 KB)

Setting up a WLS-Webservice Example in Eclipse

I like the API Examples that ship with WLS because they contain a level of complexity that is just enough to demonstrate the technology slice at hand. In other words, they are kept very simple. Therefore they are an excellent starting point for small test applications that can be used in very complex environments. We want to look at the Example: “Creating a Web Service from an Existing WSDL File”. We demonstrate how to quickly integrate it into Eclipse with full support of code completion, context sensitive help and on-the-fly compilation support. 

WLS12c_WS_from_WSDL.pdf (1,49 MB)