WebLogic 12.1.2 Install – silent mode, console mode

Okay, well I decided to upgrade my WebLogic install knowledge tonight. I’ve got a few installs already to play with but thought I’d experience once more the joy that is the silent WebLogic install. Little did I know…

In WebLogic 12.1.2 we get some pretty big changes to the server installer:

• Installation is now via the Oracle Unified Installer.
• Install runs system requirement checks, warning if certain prerequisites are not met.
• Silent mode requires a -silent flag (not -mode=silent) and a response file.
• There is console switch or falling back to console for the installer – silent or gui only.

To get a response file you can run the GUI installer and click the ‘Save Response file’ button. Here is my response file from installing as a user oracle:

[ENGINE]

#DO NOT CHANGE THIS.
Response File Version=1.0.0.0.0

[GENERIC]

#The oracle home location. This can be an existing Oracle Home or a new Oracle Home
ORACLE_HOME=/home/oracle/Oracle/Middleware/Oracle_Home

#Set this variable value to the Installation Type selected. e.g. WebLogic Server, Coherence, Complete with Examples.
INSTALL_TYPE=WebLogic Server

#Provide the My Oracle Support Username. If you wish to ignore Oracle Configuration Manager configuration provide empty string for user name.
MYORACLESUPPORT_USERNAME=

#Provide the My Oracle Support Password
MYORACLESUPPORT_PASSWORD=

#Set this to true if you wish to decline the security updates. Setting this to true and providing empty string for My Oracle Support username will ignore the Oracle Configuration Manager configuration
DECLINE_SECURITY_UPDATES=true

#Set this to true if My Oracle Support Password is specified
SECURITY_UPDATES_VIA_MYORACLESUPPORT=false

#Provide the Proxy Host
PROXY_HOST=

#Provide the Proxy Port
PROXY_PORT=

#Provide the Proxy Username
PROXY_USER=

#Provide the Proxy Password
PROXY_PWD=

#Type String (URL format) Indicates the OCM Repeater URL which should be of the format [scheme[Http/Https]]://[repeater host]:[repeater port]
COLLECTOR_SUPPORTHUB_URL=

String.intern aka “I never knew that…”

Ok, so I’m trying to fill in any gaps in my java knowledge. First thing is going through my fairly comprehensive SCJP 1.5 study book. Mainly common stuff I’ve used enough of but the odd thing is of interest. Today I found the ‘intern’ method on Strings. I’ll explain.

The typical Java developer is aware of the following:

• Strings are immutable.
• Strings typically live in a String pool.
• Strings should be checked for equality using the equals method, not ‘==’.

You can create a String not in the String pool using the the following:

String foo = new String("bar");

What we typically want, though, is String reuse, via the String pool. An interesting method exists around Strings to ensure getting the String instance from the String pool, this method is ‘intern’. Here is the javadoc lifted from the JSE1.7 site:

Returns a canonical representation for the string object.

A pool of strings, initially empty, is maintained privately by the class String.

When the intern method is invoked, if the pool already contains a string equal to this String object as determined by the equals(Object) method, then the string from the pool is returned. Otherwise, this String object is added to the pool and a reference to this String object is returned.

It follows that for any two strings s and t, s.intern() == t.intern() is true if and only if s.equals(t) is true.

All literal strings and string-valued constant expressions are interned. String literals are defined in section 3.10.5 of the The Java™ Language Specification.

Here is a class to demonstrate with tests. It uses the System.identityHashCode(Object) method to show which object reference is being looked at.

import junit.framework.Assert;
import org.junit.Test;

public class StringTest {
	final String test = "test";
	@Test
	public void testStrings() {

		final String stackTest = "test";
		final String stackTest2 = new String("test");
		final String stackTest2Interned = stackTest2.intern();

		Assert.assertEquals("test", test);
		Assert.assertTrue("test" == test);
		Assert.assertTrue(stackTest == test);
		Assert.assertFalse(stackTest2 == test);
		Assert.assertTrue(stackTest2Interned == test);

		System.out.println("id of constant = " + System.identityHashCode(test));
		System.out.println("id of stackTest = " + System.identityHashCode(stackTest));
		System.out.println("id of stackTest2 = " + System.identityHashCode(stackTest2));
		System.out.println("id of stackTest2Interned = " + System.identityHashCode(stackTest2Interned));
	}
}