Oracle Containers for J2EE 10g Release 3 (10.1.3), or OC4J, provides a complete Java 2 Enterprise
Edition (J2EE) 1.4-compliant environment. OC4J provides all the containers, APIs, and services
mandated by the J2EE specification.

OC4J is distributed in two configurations:
*A standalone configuration, in which OC4J is installed as a single, "standalone" instance and
is managed, started and stopped directly as a self-contained component.
*A managed configuration, in which OC4J is installed and managed as a component of Oracle
Application Server.

At a minimum, a managed OC4J installation will include Oracle Process Manager and Notification
Server (OPMN), which manages the various Oracle Application Server components, including OC4J.

An installation will typically also include at least one Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) instance,
which provides Web communication and load balancing functionality.

OC4J is written entirely in Java and executes on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) of the standard Java
Development Kit (JDK). The current OC4J release can run on JDK releases 1.4.2 and 5.0. For
standalone OC4J, the JDK must be provided; for OPMN-managed OC4J, the JDK 5.0 is packaged with the
server binaries.

The OC4J documentation assumes that you have a basic understanding of Java programming, J2EE
technology, and Web and EJB application technology. This includes deployment conventions such as the
/WEB-INF and /META-INF directories.