This post outlines different Architecture options available with Oracle WebLogic Cluster. It is very important to make yourself familiar with terminology specially tiers (Web, Presentation and Object).

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Terminology

Architecture – defines how various tiers of an application (Web, Presentation, Object) are deployed on one or more clusters.

Tier – Represents logical divisions of an Application’s service.
i) Web Tier ii) Presentation Tier iii) Object Tier
i) Web Tier > provides static content (HTML pages)
ii) Presentation Tier > provides dynamic content (Servlets or JSP)
iii) Object Tier > provides java objects (EJB or RMI classes) and associated business logic.

Proxy Plug-In- is WebLogic Server extension to HTTP Server (Apache, Netscape, IIS) to access clustered servlets provided by WebLogic cluster.  More on proxy plug-in coming soon…

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Type of Oracle WebLogic Server Architecture
—>Basic Recommended Architecture
—>Multi-Tier Recommended Architecture
—>Two-Tier Proxy Architecture
—>Multi-Tier Proxy Architecture
i) Basic Recommended Architecture (combined Tier Architecture) – All tier of Web Application (Web, Presentation, Object) are deployed on same WebLogic Server cluster.

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ii) Multi-Tier Recommended Architecture – Different tier of application (Web, Presentation, Object) are deployed to different cluster, One WebLogic cluster for Web, Presentation tier and another WebLogic cluster for Object Tier (EJB, RMI)

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Proxy Architecture- If you have existing Web Server, you can use this web server as Web Tier (static HTML) and use Proxy Plug-in to forward any JSP or Servlet  request to presentation Tier.

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iii) Two-Tier Proxy Architecture- same as basic recommended architecture but Web Tier is hosted on existing Web Server (IIS, Apache, Netscape). Static HTML content is served via existing Web Server where as Presentation or Object Tier request are served from WebLogic Cluster.

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iv) Multi-Tier Proxy Architecture- Same as Multi-Tier recommended Architecture but web tier is hosted on existing Web Server (IIS, Netscape, Apache) with WebLogic Proxy Plug-In on WebLogic Server

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References

Oracle Documentation for WebLogic Cluster Architecture