Tuesday, September 29, 2015

How to use WLST as a Jython 2.7 module

WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) in WebLogic Server 12.1.3 uses Jython version 2.2.1 (based on Python 2.2.1). This can be an important limitation when using WLST. Many modules are not available for 2.2.1 or are difficult to install. See here for an example. WLST however can be used as a module in Jython 2.7. This allows you to use all kinds of nice Jython 2.7 goodness while still having all the great WLST functionality available.

To just name some nice Jython 2.7 features:

  • pip and easy_install can be used to easily add new modules
  • useful new API’s are available such as xml.etree.ElementTree to allow XML processing, the multiprocessing module to use multiple threads and the argparse module to make parsing of script arguments easy.

In this article I’ll describe how you can use WLST as a Jython 2.7 module in order to allow you to combine the best of both worlds in your scripts.

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Create a release of artifacts. Automate adding Maven dependencies

"Continuous Delivery (CD) is a software engineering approach in which teams keep producing valuable software in short cycles and ensure that the software can be reliably released at any time." (from here)

Software artefacts are developed using a build pipeline. This pipeline consists of several steps to provide quick feedback on software quality by means of code quality checks, automated tests, test coverage checks, etc. When the software is done (adhering to a Definition of Done (DoD)), it is released. This release as a whole is then tested and promoted until it reaches a production environment. In the meantime, work on a next release has already started. This process is shown in the below image. This is a minimal example (especially on the test part). In the below image, you can see there are 3 releases in progress. This is only in order to illustrate the process. You should of course try to limit the number of releases which are not in production to reduce the overhead of fixes on those releases.