Oracle DBA Tips Corner      Return to the Oracle DBA Tips Corner.

Installing OC4J

by Jeff Hunter, Sr. Database Administrator

Introduction

The following article provides the steps necessary to install and verify OC4J (9.0.3) Standalone.

Oracle9iAS Containers for J2EE (OC4J) is a J2EE-compliant application server. Applications residing in OC4J are completely portable and can therefore be deployed to any J2EE-compliant application server.

OC4J is written entirely in Java and can execute on the Java 2 Software Development Kit (J2SE) virtual machine. The latest release of OC4J, 9.0.3, provides a fully J2EE 1.3 certified environment.

The core components (or technology areas) of OC4J (9.0.3) are:

JDBC 2.0	Java Database Connectivity
JNDI 1.2	Java Naming and Directory Information
Servlet 2.3	Java Servlet API
JSP 1.2	JavaServer Pages
EJB 2.0	Enterprise JavaBeans
RMI-IIOP	Remote Method Invocation (RMI) over the OMG IIOP standard
JTA 1.0 and JTS	Java Transaction Management API and Java Transaction Service
JMS 1.0	Java Message Service
JavaMail 1.2	Java Mail API
JAF 1.0	JavaBeans Activation Framework
JAXP 1.1	Java API for XML Processing
JAAS 1.0	Java Authentication and Authorization Service
JCA 1.0	Java Connector Architecture (Connecting EJBs and enterprise applications)

OC4J Overview

OC4J is based on technology licensed from Ironflare Corporation, which develops the Orion server--one of the leading J2EE containers. Although OC4J is integrated with the Oracle9iAS infrastructure, the product and some of the documentation still contains some reference to the Orion server.

For development environments or simple business needs, Oracle provides OC4J Standalone - complete with documentation.

For larger environments, Oracle also provides Oracle9iAS Enterprise Edition. This version includes the following software components:

• Oracle HTTP Server
• Oracle9iAS Containers for J2EE
• Oracle9iAS Portal
• Oracle9iAS Reports Services
• Oracle9iAS Discoverer
• Oracle9iAS Clickstream Intelligence
• Oracle9iAS Personalization
• Oracle9iAS Forms Services
• Oracle9iAS Wireless
• Oracle9iAS Web Cache
• Oracle9iAS Unified Messaging
• Oracle9iAS Security
• Oracle Internet Directory
• Oracle Enterprise Manager

OC4J is installed within Oracle9iAS with the goal of managing J2EE enterprise systems. Oracle9iAS Enterprise Edition can manage multiple clustered OC4J processes. When using Oracle9iAS Enterprise Edition, you cannot locally manage your OC4J process using the admin.jar tool or by hand editing a single OC4J process' configuration files.

NOTE: OC4J Standalone is purely for standalone purposes. This version CANNOT be used to replace the OC4J running in ANY existing Oracle9iAS Installation.

Downloading OC4J

You can download the stand-alone version of OC4J from Oracle Technology Network (OTN) at either:

http://otn.oracle.com

or directly from:

http://otn.oracle.com/software/products/ias/htdocs/utilsoft.html

Prerequisites and Environment Variables Settings

Java2 Standard Edition

Before installing OC4J, you will first need to install Java2 Standard Edition release 1.3.1 or 1.4. Java2 Standard Edition (J2SE) can be downloaded from http://java.sun.com.

Environment Variables

After installing J2SE, ensure to set the following environment variables:

Environment Variable	Value
JAVA_HOME	The location of the Java2 Standard Edition SDK installation.
PATH	Should include the bin directory of the J2SE SDK.

Installing OC4J 9.0.3 Standalone

The installation of OC4J is nothing more than unzipping the OC4J download file (oc4j_extended.zip) into a directory. For the purpose of this document, assume we want to install OC4J to the /u01/app/oracle/product/oc4j903 directory and set the environment variable $OC4J_HOME to that location:

  % cd /u01/app/oracle/product
  % mkdir oc4j903
  % cd oc4j903
  % mv oc4j_extended.zip /u01/app/oracle/product/oc4j903
  % jar -xvf oc4j_extended.zip
  % rm oc4j_extended.zip
  % OC4J_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/oc4j903; export OC4J_HOME

NOTE  (Solaris Users) - You will be unable to start or install oc4j when trying to unzip the oc4j_extended.zip file using the Solaris unzip utility. If you attempt to use the unzip utility, no execute permissions for any user on the unzipped files and directories will exist. The workaround is:

Use command: jar -xvf oc4j_extended.zip instead of using command unzip.
   - or -

Go to $OC4J_HOME and issue command: chmod -R u+x *

The default HTTP web server port is 8888. If there are any conflicts or you want to change the port number, go to the $OC4J_HOME/j2EE/home/config directory. Open the file http-web-site.xml file and change 8888 to another port.

Before starting OC4J, you will need to update the administrative password with the following command from the $OC4J_HOME/j2ee/home directory:

  % cd $OC4J_HOME/j2ee/home
  % java -jar oc4j.jar -install
  Auto-unpacking /db/u01/app/oracle/product/oc4j903/j2ee/home/applications/dms0.war... done.
  Auto-unpacking /db/u01/app/oracle/product/oc4j903/j2ee/home/applications/dms.war... done.
  Enter an admin password to use: manager
  Confirm admin password: manager
  Installation done

You will be prompted to enter the password after issuing the command. This command will actually modify the administrative user called "admin". The command will rewrite the $OC4J_HOME/j2ee/home/config/principal.xml configuration file with the new password for the admin user.

NOTE  (Windows Users) - Another OC4J installation problem I have ran into is a missing log and/or persistence directory. If you are unable to start or install OC4J, you may have to manually create the following directories:

  C:\> mkdir %OC4J_HOME%\j2ee\home\log
  C:\> mkdir %OC4J_HOME%\j2ee\home\persistence

Starting / Stopping OC4J

To start OC4J, enter the following command from the prompt:

  % cd $OC4J_HOME/j2ee/home
  % java -jar oc4j.jar

Point your web browser to the following URL to test the installation of OC4J:

  http://localhost:8888

To stop OC4J, use the -shutdown option of the admin.jar tool. Open another terminal window and enter the following command:

  % cd $OC4J_HOME/j2ee/home
  % java -jar admin.jar ormi://localhost admin manager -shutdown