I am looking the latest version of Weblogic as a replacement for our aging Weblogic 8.1.4 installation.
I first downloaded Weblogic Server 10.3 Technology Preview, anticipating that we would take a while before actually deploying it, and that BEA who come soon with the final version. So far, so good.
Then, just yesterday, I heard that Oracle had released a version of Weblogic, the first since they acquires BEA back in January (April, if you count the approval of the European Commission). I thought it was a good time to upgrade to the latest stable version.
Well, surprise, surprise. For a start, the main Weblogic page on Oracle’s site does not mention a version number. If you reach the download page, it mentions a ‘version 10.0 MP1’. I thought it was a weird numbering system (after all, it should have been 10.3 final, or at least 10.2, which, as I gather, was released in April 2008), reminiscent of Sun’s.
Alas, when I tried to install, the installer clearly stated it was really version 10.0, and only the BEA name appeared (the administration console also has no mention of the Oracle name).
Clearly, not only they had failed to rebrand even the installer, but they managed to released an obsolete version. This is not reassuring.
As a side note, the left-hand panel on the Weblogic console 10.3 TP (I didn’t reached the point where I could play with the console with Oracle Weblogic 10.0 MP1) does not seem to work with Firefox 3 (it is not clickable). It works fine with FF 2 and IE 6, though.
This is starting to seem like a lot of small problems that could have been avoided.
Update (16/07/08): there never was a version 10.2, nor a 10.1, for Weblogic Server. I got mixed-up with Weblogic Portal. So the update on v10.0 is 10.3. So my anger was partly misplaced. Of course, a consistent numbering system would have helped…
