WebLogic: The Definitive Guide

Programmatic SSL

SSL clients are Java programs that use SSL-enabled connections to communicate with WebLogic Server. These clients could be running within WebLogic itself — for instance, as a servlet. WebLogic uses the Certicom JSSE extensions in its implementation of the JSSE, and provides APIs that ease the task of communicating over an SSL channel. In fact, the APIs let you create SSL-enabled socket connections, URL connections over SSL, and JNDI contexts using certificate-based authentication. You don’t have to use WebLogic’s implementation of the JSSE in Java clients, though what follows in this section assumes that you are. For server-side code, you have to use WebLogic’s JSSE.

Warning

At the time of publishing this book, WebLogic 7.0 is certified only for JKD 1.3 and not for JDK 1.4. You will experience SSL problems if you use JDK 1.4 to run your clients and/or the server. An unofficial way around some of these problems is to delete the file jre\lib\jsse.jar that is shipped with your JDK 1.4 distribution. You do not need to do this if you are using WebLogic 8.1.

Whenever you run an SSL-enabled Java client, it is very important that you supply the correct values for the environment settings. Without these system properties, your Java clients surely will fail. For instance, any Java client that needs to use WebLogic’s SSL implementation must set the following system property:

  -Djava.protocol.handler.pkgs=com.certicom.net.ssl

Otherwise, the client may be using an alternative SSL ...