Oracle Fusion Middleware Environment Architecture

A typical Oracle Fusion Middleware environment contains the following :

One Oracle WebLogic Server domain, which contains one Administration Server and one or more Managed Servers.

An Oracle WebLogic Server domain is a logically related group of Java components. A domain includes a special Oracle WebLogic Server instance called the Administration Server, which is the central point from at which configuration and management of all resources in the domain occur.

Oracle WebLogic Server instances called Managed Servers.  You can deploy Java components, such as Web applications, Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), and Web services, and other resources to the Managed Servers .Managed servers in a domain can be grouped together into a cluster.

System components are installed and configured as Oracle Instance.  An Oracle instance contains one or more system components, such as Oracle Web Cache, Oracle HTTP Server, or Oracle Internet Directory. The system components in an Oracle instance must reside on the same computer. The directory structure of an Oracle instance is separate from the directory structure of the Oracle home.

A metadata repository hosting the metadata required for Hosted components such as SOA suite and Web center application

A Middleware home, which contains product binary files. A Middleware home consists of the Oracle WebLogic Server home, and, optionally, one or more Oracle homes.

Oracle Fusion Middleware provides two types of components:

• A Java component, which is an Oracle Fusion Middleware component that is deployed as one or more Java EE applications.  Examples of Java components are the Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle WebCenter components.
• A system component, which is a manageable process that is not deployed as a Java application. System component is managed by Oracle Process Manager and Notification (OPMN).

The system components are:

• Oracle HTTP Server
• Oracle Web Cache
• Oracle Internet Directory
• Oracle Virtual Directory
• Oracle Forms Services
• Oracle Reports
• Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer
• Oracle Business Intelligence

A Java component and a system component are peers.

Java components are deployed to an Oracle WebLogic Server domain as part of a domain template.

The general layout for all the components on host machine will look as shown below

The top-level directory for all Oracle Fusion Middleware products is called the Middleware home; this directory is created when Oracle WebLogic Server is installed.

Each Oracle Fusion Middleware product must be installed in its own Oracle home location called as "Oracle Home Directory".

Each product has its own Oracle home directory. To differentiate among all the product Oracle home directories, the installation guides typically refer to each Oracle home by product name; for example, the Oracle home for Oracle SOA Suite is referred to as the SOA Oracle home, while the Oracle home for Oracle WebCenter Suite is referred to as the WebCenter Oracle home.

Java Components is configured in a Oracle WebLogic Server domain while the other products (Oracle HTTP Server and Oracle Web Cache) is configured in an Oracle Instance (because it consists of system components).