Weblogic - log file monitoring with Elastic

When developing a central logging solution, with for example Elastic, and you are applying this on a WebLogic centric environment you will have to understand how the WebLogic logging is being done in a cluster configuration. If done in the wrong manner you will flood your Elastic solution with a large number of double records.

In effect, each Weblogic server will generate logging, this logging is written to a local file on the operating system where the Weblogic server is running. Additionally the log file is being send by the Weblogic server logger process to the Domain Log Broadcaster. All messages with the exception of the messages marked as debug will be send through a filter to the domain logger on the Weblogic admin node.

The Domain Logger on the admin server takes the log records from all nodes in the cluster and the logging from the admin server and push this into a single consolidated domain log file (after filtering). Additionally the local log files are also written to a local server log file.

When using FileBeat from Elastic you will have to indicate which files need to be watched by FileBeat. In general there are a couple of options.

1. Put the domain log file under watch of Elastic FileBeat and have all the records being written to this file send to Elasticsearch.
2. Put all the individual Server Log Files under watch of Elastic FileBeat and have all the records being written to this file send to Elasticsearch.

When applying option 1 you run into the issue of missing log records as filtering is (can) be applied in the chain of events. Additionally, if you use option 1 and the administrator node is having an issue and is unable to send the log entries you will not be able to see this in Elasticsearch or Kibana.

A better option is to use option 2 even though this will require you to install the File Beats on multiple servers.

Oracle Linux - digging into YUM repository XML data

Everyone using Oracle Linux will have used, at one point in time, the yum command to install additional tooling required. For most, it will be simply consuming yum to get new things in or to update the distribution while connected to the public YUM repository from Oracle and everyone who is using it will see that new data is being fetched to ensure you have proper information on the latest versions available. for those wondering what is inside of the data that is being fetched, you can simply have a curious look inside of the xml files that your machine is gathering.

To make things more easy, yum is using XML that is stored on the yum server and it will use this meta data whenever you request an update or want to do an installation. There is however a wealth of information in the files you might not be aware is available.

Even though there are commands that will help you get this information out in a clean format, it is good to also have a look at the more raw form in case you want to build your own logic around it. As an example, we will be downloading the other.xml.gz file for Oracle Linux 7 from the Oracle Public YUM repository server.

if we extract the file and start exploring the content of the file you will see a lot of information is available. The below screenshot shows the information of one package, in our case the source package for jing-trang. we use jing-trang just as an example for no specific reason, it is a schema validation and conversion based on RELAX NG.

If we now start to explore the content of this specific package we have obtained from the other.xml.gz file we downloaded from the Oracle Linux YUM repository we see that a lot of information is available.

Interestingly we see that for example all the changelog information is available and we can see who the developer is. Having stated that, the developer or rather author is somewhat of a misleading term. It is the author of the package, which means, it is not perse the author of the code. In any case, it is helping you to find who is behind a certain piece of code and it helps you to get more insight in what has changed per version.

Even though this should be in the release notes it can be an additional set of information. One of the reasons you might be interested in the more raw form of information is, as an example, you want to be able to collect and visualize insights in changes to the packages your enterprise uses (as it was the case I started to look into this)

Oracle JET - stop building server side user interfaces rendering

For years enterprises have been building large monolitical applications with large server side components and large user side components in it. We see a change and a move away from monolith application design, modern day applications are developed in a microservice manner. As part of the microservice architecture REST based APIs are becoming the standard for interaction between the different microservices within a wider service and between different services within an enterprise.

Surprisingly user interfaces are still being developed relatively common based upon a more traditional way. It is not uncommon to see deployments in which an application is designed to have the full server to server communication based upon REST APIs and the user interface is developed in a way that an application server is connecting to the backend REST APIs and will generate the user interface to be presented to the end user.

The model of using an application server-side rendering of HTML based upon data in the backend systems is a model which has been adopted form the model in which the application server would connect to backend databases primarily. When having a backend based upon APIs rather than direct database connectivity there is no direct need to have this old model in place.

As the above diagram shows, the traditional way is collecting data from the database and have the application server render HTML content which contains both the look and feel as well as the data in one. The below images outlines the more API and micro services driven architecture.

When using, as an example, Oracle JET you will have your “static” Javascript code and HTML being provided to the end-user from simple webserver without any “logic”. As companies move more and more to flexible and container based infrastructures it a good practice is to server the Oracle JET code from a Docker container running nothing more than a simple NGINX webserver on an Oracle Linux docker base image.

In effect, serving your Oracle JET code from an Oracle Linux Docker base image with NGINX provides you with a small webserver footprint that can be scaled upwards and downwards when needed.

The Javascript provided as part of the Oracle JET application will ensure that the client (the browser of the client), and not he server, will request the required information from a REST API. Meaning, instead of an application server collecting the data from the database, generating a HTML page containing the data and sending this to the workstation of the end-user the model is now working differently. The client itself will communicate with a REST API to collect the data when needed.

The advantage of this model is that developing the relative simple Javascript based Oracle JET application can be done in a fast manner and will base itself on REST APIs. The REST APIs can be used for this specific application and can also be used for other applications. The level of re-use in combination with ease and speed of development provides that new application and changes can be implemented and put to use much faster than when building monolitical and large application server based solutions.

Oracle JET - use clean JSON array data

Oracle Jet can be used to build modern web based applications. As part of the Oracle Jet project a set of examples and cookbooks have been created by Oracle which can be used to learn and build upon. The examples work in general perfectly good, however, at some places some optimizations can be done.  One of the examples is how data is put into the examples for the graphs. Building on an example for the bubble graph we have the below data set (in the original form):

The above example will work perfectly correct. As you can see it is a JSON like structure. If I run the above in JSONlint it will state it is not a valid JSON structure.

If we change the above into the below, we will have a valid JSON structure. Using a valid JSON structure is a better solution and will make things more easy when you use a REST API to get the data instead of using static data.

As the functionality is the same, the best way is to ensure we use a valid JSON structure. 

Oracle Linux - Nginx sendfile issues

Nginx is currently a very popular http server and might take over the popular place currently hold by Apache HTTPD. For all good reasons Nginx is becoming very popular as it is blazing fast and is build without the legacy Apache is having. It is build with the modern day requirement set for a http server. One of the things that support the speed of Nginx is the sendfile option.

Sendfile is by default enabled, and if you run a production server that will also provide end users with static files you do want this enabled for sure.

Nginx initial fame came from its awesomeness at sending static files. This has lots to do with the association of sendfile, tcp_nodelay and tcp_nopush in nginx.conf. The sendfile Nginx option enables to use of sendfile for everything related to… sending file.

sendfile allows to transfer data from a file descriptor to another directly in kernel space. sendfile allows to save lots of resources:

sendfile is a syscall, which means execution is done inside the kernel space, hence no costly context switching.

sendfile replaces the combination of both read and write.

here, sendfile allows zero copy, which means writing directly the kernel buffer from the block device memory through DMA.

Even though sendfile is great when you are running your production server you can run into issues when you are doing development. In one of my development setup I am running Oracle Linux 7 in a vagrant box on my Macbook to run an instance on Nginx. I use the default /vagrant mountpoint from within the Oracle Linux vagrant box towards the filesystem of my Macbook as the location to server html files.

Main reason I do like this setup is that I can edit all files directly on my Macbook and have Nginx serve them for testing. The issue being is that Nginx is not always noticing that I changed a html file and keeps serving the old version of the html file instead of the changed version.

As it turns out, the issue is the way sendfile is buffering files and checking for changes on the file. As it is not the Oracle Linux operating system that makes the change to the file but the OS from my Macbook it is not noticed always in the right manner. This is causing a lot of issues while making interactive changes to html code.

Solution for this issue is, disable senfile in Ngnix. You can do so by adding the below line to your Ngnix config file:

sendfile  off;

After this is done, your issue should be resolved and Ngnix should start to provide you updated content instead of buffered content.  

Oracle to expand Dutch data centre ‘significantly’

As reported by dutchnews.nl : Oracle plans to expand its Dutch data centre ‘significantly’ to meet demand for its integrated cloud services, the Financieele Dagblad newspaper said on Tuesday.  Financial details were not disclosed but data centres generally cost several hundred million euros, the paper said.

This is Oracle’s second large investment in the Netherlands in a short time. Two years ago the company set up a new sales office in Amsterdam to cover Scandinavia, the Benelux and Germany, marketing Oracle’s cloud services to companies and institutions. The office has a payroll of 450 people, of whom 75% come from abroad.

The Netherlands is popular as a data storage centre. At the end of 2016, Google opened a large new €600m data storage centre in Eemshaven. Microsoft is planning to spend €2bn on a new centre in Wieringermeer while Equinix of the US is to open a new €160m centre in Amsterdam’s  Science Park, near the Oracle facility.

Oracle Scaleup Program to support startups

Whenever you are working on a startup you know you can use every help you can get. Being it "simple" money to keep going, being it mentoring from someone in the industry or a veteran in doing business or getting help in a other ways. Other ways can be people and companies who believe in your startup and support you by providing office space, providing equipment or helping in getting that first customer to sign up with your startup.

If you ever worked at a startup you known that the first periode of your startup is crucial. And even if your product or service is brilliant, getting it from an idea to something that can be delivered is hard. People sometimes have a romantic idea around starting a startup, in reality it is very (very very) hard work where you are happy with every bit of support you can can get.

Oracle is expaning their support to the Startup community and recently announced this (also) via twitter with the below tweet:

Are you part of a #startup? Then, you don't want to miss this news: @Oracle is expanding its global startup ecosystem to reach more #entrepreneurs worldwide. Say hello to the new Virtual Global #Scaleup Program! @OracleSCA http://ora.cl/fO3jS 

In effect the Oracle ScaleUp program supports startups and Oracle announced the expansion of its global startup ecosystem in an effort to increase the impact and support for the wider startup community, reach more entrepreneurs worldwide, and drive cloud adoption and innovation. The expansion includes the launch of a new virtual-style, non-residential global program, named Oracle Scaleup Ecosystem, as well as the addition of Austin to the residential Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator program. The addition of Austin brings the residential program to North America and expands the accelerator’s reach to nine total global locations.

If you are a startup, getting the help from Oracle might be vital in becoming a success story. And as an entrepreneur you will recognize the fact that all support is welcome in the vital startup stage of your startup. Reaching out to Oracle and the Scaleup program might be a good idea. 

Oracle PaaS Middleware update 36 February 2018

The latest update on Oracle PaaS middleware from February 2018 is available online. Thanks to Juergen Kress and the Oracle Paas Community.

The latest update is shared in the form of a YouTube video blog as usual and should be of interest to you if you are involved or working with Oracle PaaS components and/or Oracle middleware based solutions in general.

Oracle JET - Interactive Force Directed Layout

When developing a user interface for modern enterprise applications one of the challenging tasks is to unlock the data within the enterprise and provide it in a usable manner to the end users. Commonly enterprises have vast amounts of data which are so compartmented users are unable to access them and in some cases the data is presented in ways that it makes it hard for users to grasp the bigger picture.

When developing modern enterprise applications one of the tasks that should be undertaken is ensuring data is not only accessible however that the data is also presented in a way that it makes sense to users. unlocking data in ways that it is easy to understand and that it is easy and intuitive to work with.

When you develop you enterprise application UI based upon Oracle JET you can extend Oracle JET with all different kind of javascript and HTML5 based options. In the below example we showcase an Interactive Force Directed Layout to represent relations between datapoints in an interactive manner.

The above is based upon GOjs in combination with Oracle JET. GoJS is a feature-rich JavaScript library for implementing custom interactive diagrams and complex visualizations across modern web browsers and platforms. GoJS makes constructing JavaScript diagrams of complex nodes, links, and groups easy with customizable templates and layouts.


As you can see from the above screenshot the demo application is build based upon a demo version of GOjs. When you like to use GOjs in a commercial manner you will have to purchase a license. However, a version is available to test the functionality.

To enable the above you will have to download go.js from github and include it into the Oracle JET structure. In our case I included the go.js library under js/libs/custom .

To get the above example running the below code can be used as part of the Oracle JET html code:

To ensure the script is loaded you will have to ensure the body tag contains an onload="init()" statement and you will have to ensure that you have a div element with id="myDiagramDiv" in your page.

if we look at the script used in the example above you will notice that the data points are hard coded into the script. In a real world situation this would not be preferable and you would use a method to load the data from a REST API. 

Oracle JET - Basic control with appController.js

When you start to develop your first application with Oracle JET the first thing you would like to understand is some of the basic ways on how to control parts of your application and influence some basic things provided by the template. The first place you can start looking is appController.js which is located at js/appController.js . The appController javascript is the simple control script which can be used to influence most part of the application.

What is provided in the base template (shown below) is a start for you to develop your own code. As you can see we have some hard values which are used in the examples. In a real world example it would not make any sense to have any (or most) of these in a hardcoded manner. You would rather fetch them from a REST API source.

If we look for example at line 19 in the above example;

self.appName = ko.observable("My Demo Application");

This is used as a variable which is referred to in html pages within the Oracle JET application. This specific example if for example used to show the name of the application, you can see this in the screenshot below. The same is the case for the email address which is controlled in the appController.js script self.userLogin

If you want to understand how to call and include the values from appController.js you can refer to the basic examples provided by Oracle JET. You will see that there are data bindings included in the HTML code like for example the below:

The data-bind="text: appName" part will ensure that the value for appName from appController.js is used in this case.

As stated, there is no real good use for this model in real world applications, or at least the number of cases is limited. In reality you will fetch most data from a REST API in most cases. However, when starting with Oracle JET is a good to play around a bit with it to ensure you understand the basics and how to apply them as it will help you a lot when you develop your own custom code and extensions for appController.js in a later stage.