he first chapter of this book introduced you to the Administration Console, the WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST), and the Node Manager, three very important management tools for handling day-to-day administrative tasks as well as for performing various server configuration tasks. This chapter shows you how to manage WebLogic Server using these tools and other management APIs offered by WebLogic Server. The chapter explains the WebLogic Server life cycle, from the time it starts up through the time it is shut down. Ant tasks help you perform many management and configuration tasks. This chapter shows how to build simple Ant-based scripts to manage WebLogic Server. The chapter also reviews the Node Manager and WLST tools at a deeper level and ....