WebLogic Suite Reviews

The most valuable features are that it's easily deployable and easily scalable. It'll shrink and can grow as much as you want. Those are the benefits, but when compared to other products, such open-source Tomcat, we've considered moving from WebLogic to Tomcat because WebLogic is very expensive.

It's scalable for the company and easily deployable. The GUI and integration with SSO is more beneficial than other available options.

It's definitely a complex solution. It throws at least a million lines of errors just for one password. You can get a small issue that could potentially generate about a thousand of lines with warnings, and those warnings might mean nothing. It will just pop up warnings, so you'd have alerts for nothing. It's not that easy from the admin perspective if you're not really familiar with what you're getting into. It's not 100% GUI, so that you need to know lots and lots of configuration files.

We've had no issues with deployment. In fact, it deploys very easily.

WebLogic is not a light product. Java uses the whole memory of the server so it's a memory hog.

We've had no issues with scaling it for our needs.

The initial setup was easy and pretty straightforward.

We did the implementation ourselves with our in-house team.

It's quite expensive.

If it were like Tomcat, configuring .xml files would take care of some things, but there's not a particular main .xml file available with WebLogic. In fact, there are so many important .xml files that are needed for WebLogic.

It's highly expensive and there are other much, much better products out for the cost of peanuts.

We mainly use this program for forms and reports, as well as application provisioning for Java and so on.

This solution has greatly improved security wise over the last couple of years. The user experience is much better now than it was in the previous version, version 12. And the new inference manager is also much better.

All the areas of this program needs to improve. The integration with other providers and the user management could be better, and the upgrades are pretty complicated. So I would like to see that being improved in the next version.

The program is stable and we haven't had any issues so far.

The program is scalable. You can create domains so we're fine with it. We currently have around 50 internal users and we have customers that which are big, state companies or government companies that use our solutions extensively. 

The first line of support in India is quite bad, but as we go further into the problems, we are referred to some really good technical guys, and they are really great. But it's not immediately opened as a priority one issue of support, so that's pretty bad.

The initial setup was complex at first, but we soon got the hang of it and then it wasn't too bad. To deploy it by hand takes a couple of hours, but provisioning with a custom script takes around 10 minutes. It depends on the environment it will be run in.

My advice to others would be: don't complicate things. Keep it simple. On a scale from one to 10, I rate this solution a seven. I think the support could be much better. So perhaps the developers can work on that. Also, the WebLogic management console could be more intuitive or more up to date, because it's still the old console from version 10. Bring us up to enterprise manager or cloud control, which has been in design and very intuitive.

The most valuable feature is the update deployment feature. Update deployment is when you already have an application deployed and you want to handle a new deployment. The feature ensures you don't need to add or remove anything. Rather, you just need to update and the feature will handle everything else, like adding the new features that have been released on the new deployment. It's very simple.

I had issues when I installed the SSL. With WebLogic, it's a very lengthy process.

The solution isn't 100% stable, but it's pretty good. I'd rate it 3.5 out of five in terms of stability.

Scalability on the solution is great. It's very very easy to scale.

I've never had to reach out to technical support.

The initial setup is very simple. 

If you have everything ready from the OS side, it requires one to two hours to deploy.

The licensing for the solution is pretty expensive. It may be the most expensive solution, if you were to compare it to the competition.

I'd suggest those considering implementing the solution to move to the cloud. It's very simple and easy.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I work with Telcos, one of the cell phone providers in South Africa, and they use it for their billing infrastructure. 

The applications running on the WebLogic suite are for billing and customer CRM, which goes out to the call centers and the dealers. We maintain the environment.

The feature that I have found to be the most valuable is the ease of deployment. 

In the beginning, you do tend to struggle a bit, but once it's deployed, then everything falls into place and maintaining it is quite simple.

It is difficult to say which features can be improved at the moment, as we are not working with the most current version and I am not aware of the features offered in the new version. 

Once we catch up and move on to version 12C, we need to see what can be migrated to the cloud. 

It might not be suitable to migrate the systems to the cloud, or maybe only portions of it. For example, it makes sense for our web services to go on the cloud, but not the actual application, the CRM system.

If we are considering the version that we are currently working with, then I would say that it's all fairly straightforward when it comes to using it. However, there are some small things, such as being able to restart clusters, where you can choose to restart each server one by one instead of all at the same time.  

The ripple start is what we refer to as shutting down and restarting one server at a time in a cluster. In other words, when you kick off a ripple start, and it would go through, it will shut down the one instance, and start it up, then it would move to the next one. It wouldn't shut them all down, and I wouldn't have to manually, stop one, start it up, wait for it to come up and then move down to the next one. This solution would benefit from the inclusion of a ripple start function for clusters.

Also, the cloud integration, which I've heard is very strong with Oracle, it's the shift and lift methodology. 

IBM WebSphere used to do things like that, where you could do a ripple start as opposed to shutting everything down and it would manage each one individually. That would be useful. if it's a live environment we have to ripple start. That's the big one, otherwise, we are pretty happy with everything.

The debugging function is nice on the Weblogic, but one thing WebSphere has, is, that you can apply the debugging permanently, or just until the server is restarted. 

That might also be a feature that would be nice on WebLogic, but not critical because we turned it off afterward.

This solution is very stable.

The only time it's not stable is when the code has a memory leak, or it's heap dumping or the garbage collection isn't fine-tuned. That is not the environment, it's the code. The environment itself is extremely stable.

We have to get caught up as the version we are using is out of support. 

The buzzword right now is cloud, and at some point, we have to see what we can take to the cloud and what we cannot. There are plans to move in that direction.

It is scalable. We have added extra servers and extra instances when it's been required. 

We don't run on VMs, we run on IBM LPARS. We don't run VMs where you can have them firing up, on-demand, but it is scalable for our purposes.

Officially it's not supported, but we do get support when it's required. For example,  approximately six months ago there was that day-zero vulnerability bug that had to be patched. 

The patch that we applied on WebLogic actually broke some environments.

We logged tickets and worked with Oracle and they were able to support us, isolate the issue, and give us new fixes. 

The support was very good and worked very well.

From this experience, I would rate the technical support quite highly. They were able to pinpoint the issue quite rapidly and assist us with a new patch. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

Previously, we used the IBM product called WebSphere.

WebSphere and WebLogic are both very similar. They have the same purpose, the same end. I liked the way WebLogic is compartmentalized in the server where you can go and find the configurations, and see it on a file. It's fairly file-based, the data source is everything. 

WebSphere wasn't stored quite that way, so you couldn't work as nicely outside the system. 

There might have been a few other tweaks that WebSphere had which Oracle doesn't. But on the whole, I would say Oracle is far better, it more superior to the IBM product.

The initial setup is complex. We did a migration from WebSphere to WebLogic.

The reason it's complex is it was already running, but it was a very different animal than WebSphere. There were code changes required, which fell to the developers on the development side. On the operational side, things like fine-tuning little things like the data sources work a bit differently, but once you figure one out, then the rest all falls into place.

At the moment the deployment model we use is on-premises, and nothing has been migrated to the cloud. It's a project for the future.

The deployment was approximately just over one year to get it migrated fully to where we were stable enough to turn off the WebSphere.

It was a little bit better than I had expected it to be. We all felt it would be an eighteen-month to a two-year project, and it did come in a little bit less than that. But of course, the business expects it in three to six months. We did try but realized that it was not going to happen unless everything just magically works the first time.

I'm on the operations side, I'm not on the development side. We look after the infrastructure and the upgrading.

The developers are a large team. On the operations team, we have approximately ten people. One person can do a feature release, which is what we call a deployment, in an evening. This is done three times a week.

We do deployments roughly once a week, three times a month. 

We have our own in-house developed deployment manager, which we call the Deployamater, and they set up all the deployments. The manager fetches the EARs, JARs, pages, and JSP files, then it deploys them. 

We don't use the automated deploying via Oracle. We manage it like that, but we do it in an offline environment. 

We duplicate our environments and we go to our offline environment, deploy there, test it first, and then switch the traffic to the new environment that it's being deployed to.

I am a subcontractor to Vodacom, and the company I work for is a vendor, and they are an approved vendor with Oracle.

It is difficult to offer advice because every scenario is different, but I would suggest that you use the available expertise. There is a lot of expertise, don't try to do it all alone.

I wouldn't go back to WebSphere and for me, I would say it is the market leader.

I would recommend this solution and I would rate this product a ten out of ten.

It performs well.

It is connected with our systems, and our systems run on Oracle. It is beneficial because it integrates with our internal systems. This resolves half of our problems for our internal system integration, data retrieval, and subscription to specific events.

A valuable feature is its integration with Oracle Database. We have another system running Oracle Database which can be easily updated from the database and pushed to the middleware. Also, it easily connects to other Oracle products and services.

We need to have more adapters and connectors, especially healthcare system adapters. This solution doesn't have connectors to other external applications. We connect with other vendors' and other companies' systems, therefore we have been asking Oracle for specific interfaces because we have been unable to integrate with these systems using any adapters.

It is stable.

Scaling is costly. 

Technical support is very costly.

We tried to connect our healthcare systems with Oracle, and it needs a lot of support. We would needs to hire a consultant, and the consultant would cost us $4,000 a day. Therefore, it's very costly to integrate with the other systems, which is why we are looking for other alternatives.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

In general, it is a costly solution.

Microsoft.

I rate this solution as a seven out of 10, because it is not fully satisfying our needs. It is good in specific areas, but it's not satisfying all of our requirements. It is not a one stop shop.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• It is affordable.
• Easy to use.
• Ready documentation, training, and examples.
  

Our team works on it every day but; I don't do the technical work. I'm an operations manager and I  manage the team.

It runs smoothly and everything works fine. 

It integrates well with other solutions.

Sometimes there are issues when we work on a VM because people use it to put all of their reports on it at the same time. Then I have to restart and rebuild the machine. That is more of an issue with the users though. 

I have around 10 years of experience working with this solution.

We have between 40 to 60 users who use this solution.

The setup was complex but there weren't any issues.

I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

The client is happy and there are some issues sometimes with the scalability but it's probably because of the users. Otherwise, we don't have any other problems. Sometimes there are issues with the reports. 

One of the most valuable features of WebLogic is that deployment is an easy process. The code can be deployed on multiple instances without rework.

With a huge number of servers for our application, manual deployment would be an extremely tedious, error prone and time- (hence money-) consuming process. WebLogic has assisted us in this aspect.

The initial setup and administration does require expertise. While bigger organizations can afford to have dedicated horizontal teams, I assume smaller organizations may not be able to afford this. The default setup should include more features such as more scripts and more users with different privileges, which could resolve this issue.

I have used this solution for over four and a half years.

I did not encounter any issues with stability.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability either.

WebLogic was our first choice.

We did not require vendor support. Setup was done by my team and me.

Licensing is expensive but it is worth the cost. If you are going to utilize all its features, then you should go for it. If you do not have enough budget, you could choose for other freeware options and use automation and orchestration tools instead. This will surely have an impact on stability in the initial phases of implementation.

Although, I was not working while choosing it, WebLogic has been the first choice for organization. However, now after many years we are evaluating to look for other freeware options.

You need to consider the licensing and upgrade costs. In addition, it will help to have a dedicated administration team.

It's a very scalable, extensible, middleware component. It's especially useful for big data applications if you're using APIs or have geo-spatial data or complex data sets.

It's also a very affordable and efficient.

I would like to see Oracle offer the WebLogic Suite in other areas, like SaaS or PaaS. From what I've seen at Oracle World, they're already moving in that direction, so it gives you a broader portfolio or different ways to leverage their technology.

We haven't had any issues with deployment.

It's very stable. It can handle a lot of database storage and repositories. It's really the backbone of a lot of our systems that we use for our federal customers. It's very smooth and not buggy, and now that more people are learning how to troubleshoot and work with the product, it's becoming exponentially easier to find quality to support it during the WebLogic application process.

Obviously, it works best with Exadata servers, so that's what it really helped us with. We were running WebLogic on servers that weren't optimized for that software. I think we may have had it on IBM Blade and the servers we were using weren't necessarily optimized for the WebLogic tool. Once we kicked in the Exadata server, it increased the time to process.

The level of technical support is very good. The SMEs that are coming to help us have been excellent. It's very easy to get a hold of them and we talk weekly with our account reps to make sure things are going well. They are very approachable and always easy to get hold of, as well as being very knowledgeable.

We just like Oracle products.