Explore the WebLogic Remote Console

The WebLogic Remote Console offers an alternative option for administering WebLogic Server domains. It not only allows you to edit Administration Servers, but also build WebLogic Deploy Tooling (WDT) model files and property lists.

While the WebLogic Remote Console shares many features with the Administration Console, its functionality is slightly different. See Differences with the Administration Console for more information.

Basic layout

WebLogic Remote Console

The WebLogic Remote Console presents a simple user interface that varies slightly across different providers. Broadly, it’s arranged into the following areas:

  • Kiosk - manage the details of your current project, its providers and their connection details. You can also import and export project files here. On Administration Server providers, the Kiosk also includes the Shopping Cart which contains the Change Manager, as well as any changes you’ve made to the domain configuration. You can commit (or discard) changes directly from the Shopping Cart.

    If you have the console extension, console-rest-ext-6.0.war, installed, you can see the specific pending changes for your domain.

  • NavStrip - toggle the visibility of the navigation tree (Navpane icon) and, in an Administration Server provider, move between perspectives.

  • Navigation Tree - delve into the domain structure, expanding each top-level node to see more information. The Navigation Tree varies depending on your currently active provider.

  • Content Pane - explore and edit the properties of the active provider.

You can see the connection status of the current provider in the upper right corner of the console.

  • Administration Server connections are either Green (connected) or Red (not connected).
  • WDT model files, WDT composite models, and property lists are always Yellow (offline).

The WebLogic Remote Console automatically detects and matches the language of your operating system.

Perspectives

Each provider type has at least one perspective - a representation of the data supplied by the provider. In providers with multiple perspectives, each perspective prioritizes distinct aspects of the provider.

Provider Type Perspectives
Administration Server
  • Edit Tree: an editable view of the WebLogic Server domain. Enter this perspective when you want to make and commit changes to the domain.
  • Configuration Tree: a read-only view of the WebLogic Server domain. Enter this perspective if you want to see the current settings of the domain, without making any changes.
    • Changes made in the Edit Tree perspective won't appear in the Configuration Tree perspective until you commit them, or for non-dynamic changes, until you restart the server.
  • Monitoring Tree: an overview of the runtime statistics for the running domain. You can view statistics by server or aggregated across servers. For example, applications running on Server1 vs. applications running on one or more servers. The Monitoring Tree also provides some control operations such as starting or stopping servers or applications.
  • Security Data Tree: an editable view of the security providers' data in the security realm. This includes users, groups, policies, and so on.
Property List Property List Editor: an editable list of key-value pairs.
WDT Model File WDT Model Tree: an editable view of a WDT model for a WebLogic Server domain.
WDT Composite Model WDT Composite Model Tree: a read-only view of multiple, merged WDT model files for a WebLogic Server domain.

In the WebLogic Remote Console, you can travel through the structure of a WebLogic domain in multiple ways:

  • Navigation Tree - expand the nodes and drill down until you reach the information you’re interested in.

  • Breadcrumbs - review the hierarchical path of your current page and jump back or across to a related page in a different perspective. For example, from Domain/Servers in the Edit Tree, you can jump to Environment/Servers in the Monitoring Tree from the breadcrumb trail.

  • Search - enter a search term in the bar and see all the beans that match your search term. You can find previous searches in the Recent Searches node at the bottom of the Navigation Tree. Searches and search history are only performed within a perspective and provider.

Modify console preferences

You can change the behavior of the WebLogic Remote Console to suit your needs.

  1. In the WebLogic Remote Console, go to File > Preferences. (WebLogic Remote Console > Application Preferences on macOS).
  2. Choose a section tab and make your changes as needed.
  3. Close the Preferences dialog box to apply your changes.

Tool bar icons

These icons appear along the top of the content pane:

  • Home icon : Home - returns you to the provider home page with its list of perspectives

  • Landing page icon : Landing page - returns you to the landing page of the current perspective

  • history icon : Navigation History - displays a menu with a list of clickable links to the pages you have visited. This history is perspective-scoped.

  • Help icon : Help - shows reference information about the attributes displayed on the page.

  • Reload icon : Reload - reloads the form or table once if no auto reload interval is set. This icon changes to active (Sync interval icon) when the reload interval is set. Click the icon to toggle the auto reload on and off.

  • Sync interval icon Auto Reload Interval - sets or clears a specified time interval, in seconds, for automatic reload of the form or table. If you select a different tab, or move to another page, automatic page reload stops.

  • Shopping cart empty icon / Shopping cart full icon : Shopping Cart - indicates the status of changes to an Administration Server. A full shopping cart icon (Shopping cart full icon) indicates pending changes to the domain. Click to view, discard, or commit the changes.

Customizable tables

You can choose which columns to show or hide in tables so you can focus on the important details and ignore the irrelevant ones.

Click the Customize Table option that appears above all tables in the WebLogic Remote Console to view a list of all the possible columns you can add to the table and see information for. Move the columns back and forth between Available Columns and Selected Columns until you’ve assembled a set of columns that works for your needs and then, click Apply.

To return the table to its default set of columns, click Reset.

The list of options under Available Columns changes depending on the table; not all columns are applicable to all tables. Additionally, any changes to table columns will apply to that specific table across all applicable providers - if you change the table columns for Server Templates in wdt-model_1, those changes will also affect the Server Templates table in wdt-model_2 and admin-server_1 (Configuration Tree). Changes will also persist after you stop and start the WebLogic Remote Console.

You can easily copy text from the various tables throughout the WebLogic Remote Console. Right-click on a table cell and select either Copy Column Cell to Clipboard or Copy Row Data to Clipboard and the data from that table cell or its row is automatically saved to your computer’s clipboard.

Find help

The WebLogic Remote Console provides several types of online help on each page.

  • Use the ? icon to the left of each field to access summary and detailed help for the field. If you hover over the ?, a summary help description displays. Click the ? icon to display a more detailed help description, if available.
  • Click the ? icon in the top right of the content pane to toggle the view of the reference information for all of the fields displayed on the page.

WebLogic Remote Console extension

The WebLogic Remote Console extension is a complementary component that you can add to your WebLogic domain to enhance the functionality of the WebLogic Remote Console when managing domains.

After you install the extension, you’ll be able to:

  • View pending changes in the Shopping Cart
  • Manage security data stored in the embedded LDAP server (users, groups, roles, policies, credential mappings)
  • Inspect the JNDI table
  • Manage JMS messages and JTA transactions

To install the extension:

  1. Create a management-services-ext directory under the domain home.
  2. Download the latest WebLogic Remote Console extension, console-rest-ext-6.0.war, from https://github.com/oracle/weblogic-remote-console/releases and save it inside the management-services-ext directory you created in the previous step.
  3. Reboot the Administration Server if it is already running.
  4. In the WebLogic Remote Console, disconnect, then re-connect to the Administration Server.

Supplemental customization

While you should perform all configuration of the WebLogic Remote Console from within its graphical user interface, occasionally there are circumstances where that’s not possible. In those cases, you can view some of the data files upon which the WebLogic Remote Console builds its customizations.

These files are located in the following directories:

  • Linux: $HOME/.config/weblogic-remote-console/
  • macOS: /Users/<user>/Library/Application Support/weblogic-remote-console/
  • Windows: C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\weblogic-remote-console\
File name Purpose
auto-prefs.json Describes the user interface of the WebLogic Remote Console, including its dimensions, projects and providers.
config.json Describes settings for the WebLogic Remote Console. We do not recommend modifying this file; use the Settings dialog box to edit settings instead. See Customize settings for more information.
dashboards.json Records the details of existing dashboards. See Generate dashboards for more information.
out.log Collects log entries for the current session of the WebLogic Remote Console. At the start of each session, log entries from the previous session are moved to a new file marked by date: out-yyyy-mm-dd. See Check log files for more information.
recent-searches.json Lists the search terms for any searches that you’ve executed. See Search for more information.
table-customizations.json Describes any table customizations you’ve saved. See Customizable tables for more information.

If you introduce an error into one of these files, it may affect the behavior of the WebLogic Remote Console and you may need to wipe or delete the file to recover. The WebLogic Remote Console will lose all saved data for that file, resetting it to its defaults. For example, if you have to erase dashboards.json, all your dashboards will be deleted.

Multi-window support

You can open multiple instances of the WebLogic Remote Console to increase your productivity. Whether you want multiple windows to compare different views of the same provider or to work with distinct projects simultaneously, you can open a set of console windows that caters to your needs. Select New Window from the File menu to open a new WebLogic Remote Console window.