Oracle Fast Connection Failover in WebLogic 10g for JDBC Load Balancing
Oracle’s WebLogic Server 10g appear to be lacking in supporting Fast Connection Failover (http://download-east.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/java.102/b14355/fstconfo.htm#CIHJBFFC) support, contrary to what Oracle WebLogic’s documenatation says. FCF has native support in Oracle Application Server 10g, and very simple to configure.
While trying to configure Fast Connection Failover in Oracle WebLogic 10g 10.1 MP1, after much toil, ONS jar must be present in WebLogic’s classpath in order to utilize the Fast Connection Failover features provided by Oracle’s ONS protocol. This is mentioned nowhere in the documentation on BEA or Oracle’s side. The JDBC driver class name to use FCF must be as follows: oracle.jdbc.pool.OracleDataSource.
The setup of a data source for Fast Connection Failover is listed in BEA’s documentation, however, there is no information on how to configure this with WebLogic 10g, although it can be gathered from the example:
“jdbc:oracle:oci:@(DESCRIPTION=
(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=cluster_alias)
(PORT=1521))
(CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=service_name)))”);
ods.setUser(”scott”);
ods.setConnectionCachingEnabled(true);
ods.setFastConnectionFailoverEnabled(true):
ctx.bind(”myDS”,ods);
ds=(OracleDataSource) ctx.lookup(”MyDS”);
try {
ds.getConnection(); // transparently creates and accesses cache
catch (SQLException SE {
}
}
The actual properties that a BEA datasource accepts in regards to Fast Connection Failover are as follows:
ConnectionCachingEnabled
FastConnectionFailoverEnabled
ConnectionCacheName
ONSConfiguration
Also, WebLogic 10.0 or 10.0.1.0 (MP1) are being used, a special patch must be applied from Oracle/BEA support in order for FCF-related properties to be used in the JDBC datasource settings: That patch number is CR289711.
The most frustrating part about this feature is that Oracle/BEA says it is supported; however, there is no information on how to set it up and Oracle/BEA support recommends professional services in order to get this operating. My suggestion here is to just use the Oracle JDBC driver’s native Connect Time Failover feature with Load Balancing turned on, and let RAC’s native load balancing mechanisms do the work. After scouring the Oracle WebLogic Server 10g R3 (10.3) support pages, I was unable to find any information possibly alluding to the integration of FCF with the latest WebLogic server release. Hopefully in the future the Fast Connection Failover features will be tightly integrated and not require referencing the Oracle JDBC Developer’s Guide in order to configure a datasource (http://download-east.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/java.102/b14355/toc.htm)
Some hopes in the future are that now that Oracle has acquired BEA systems, it would be nice to see tighter and simpler integration with Oracle Database’s native load balancing and HA features, and hopefully better documentation.
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