Oracle BPEL In Depth

BPEL thread tuning

2009-12-06T14:31:00.002Z

Why I write this?

Oracle has been changing the way the threads are increased or decreased from different versions of the SOA stack.

There are quite a number of people who do not read the documentations quite often and the change are put up like a small note some where.

And when you look at any presentations that talks about changing the number of threads, there are different version of the document as it was prepared for a version of the SOA stack.

Here I am trying to capture the thread setting for 10.1.3.4 and for older versions it is different.

For 10.1.3.5 and 11 there are no changes for the thread settings.

What is it with 10.1.3.4 and how it was before that?

In 10.1.3.1.0 there was this concept of dspMaxThreads which has been totally done away with.

The other setting were dspMinThreads and dspInvokeAllocFactor.

All this has been done away with and now there are only 3 different threads that you allocate directly to the server.

These are

dspInvokeThreads

dspEngineThreads

dspSystemThreads

The number of threads you allocate to the domain is directly controlled by these parameter.

There are no more any dspMaxThreads

All that crap calculations that was required with number of threads total in all domain is less that dspMaxThreads has been done away with.

I think oracle has been consistently adding value into the SOA stack and clearing out all that mess.

Best document to read

This document shows what was and what change and how it looks in 11

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/upgrade.1111/e10127/upgrade_bpel_apps.htm

How to get Oracle Fusion 11.1.1 into Ubuntu 9.04

2009-08-29T04:20:00.051+01:00

Why the hell Ubuntu

Well to be frank windows in a crap to run, no offense but I hate windows to run my servers.
Ubuntu is what i like to use and I am sure some one else would also make use of what I have to share here.

What surprised me!!

I have never seen a installation of Oracle SOA suite go smooth till I came to Oracle Fusion 11.1.1
The installation was smooth as silk. No hiccups. And a cool new GUI for IRCA.

Here is what I started with :)

I have a Oracle database running in Ubuntu
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.1.0.6.0 - Production

Nothing else to start with.
And don't worry if you are already running 10.1.3.4 as all the schemas a new ones. You can run them in parallel.

Is it supported??

Ubuntu is not officially supported

The steps

Just follow the installation steps in the documentation.
1. Check fusion requirements
2. Run the RCU (Repository Creation Utility) - well this is cool GUI replacement for the old boring IRCA fianlly from oracle.
3. Installation of weblogic server
4. Installation of SOA suite
5. Finally the configuration

What is the catch!

There are a few things that might try to stop you installing, but here is the blog to help you as I helped my self.
As I could find no one has written about this yet.

Upgrade the JDK and JRE

You might need to upgrade the JDK
Fire this and you are ready to go. And don't worry you will both jdk and jrocket after installation.
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

Follow the link to get JRE upgraded
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-install-java-runtime-environment-jre-in-ubuntu-904-jaunty.html

And finally you might have to change the default JRE. Get this done from the link
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=87395

During Installation

Now during installation, there are few checks that says this OS is not supported ans few like them. Just ignore them and continue. You should be home.

Just Incase

Just in case you are unable to start the managed server with the command startManagedWebLogic.sh soa_server1
and some strange error like Unable to authenticate, remember to check that the your localhost and are pointing to the same IP address in /etc/hosts file

What was the pain

The pain in the ass was to get the whole thing downloaded. Nothing seems less than a gig.

Word of advice

Don't do the installation in a rush. Read the pre-req and follow each step.

BPEL Deployment on highly available SOA cluster server

2009-05-13T10:38:00.011+01:00

What is highly available SOA cluster server?

Well this is the standard oracle recommended server configuration were you have say 2 application server, and a single RAC dehydration database.

You can find the details of this here.
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E10291_01/core.1013/e10294/overview.htm

What is the default load balancer mechanism?

The default load balancer does a round robin request routing. Say if this is 2 AS instance, then first request goes to instance 1 and second request goes to instance 2.

Do you deploy on both servers?

Well this is a good question. As you got say atleast 2 Oc4J-SOA instances running.
Do I deploy to both the server or does the server take care when deployed to 1.

Well the answer is, the server takes care when you deploy to 1 server.
It automatically goes into the second server also.

How is load balancer related to deployment?

Well if look at the logs during deployment you would see that once you have some automated process to deploy.

The first process physically get deployed to server 1 and second process to server 2 and so on.

What about Polling processes running on both servers?

Well there are no issues with polling processes, it is taken care internally to do the right thing.
If one OC4J-SOA instance goes down the other picks in up automatically.

Server Configuration

Be sure to do server configuration on all the instaces as this does not get replicated at all.
You need to physically do this, that is logical.

Issue

With deployment plans there is a bug with cluster deployment.
The replacement happens only in the server where the process is deployed, the other servers still seem to get a copy of the non-replaced code.

This causes issues in deployment with 10.1.3.4 deployment plan.
This is a know bug and oracle has logged a bug to fix this.
A fix might be available soon.

Alternative for now is to while a shell script to do the find and replace for environment specific replacement. Once the fix from oracle is available, deployment plan should take care of the stuff for you.

Deployment Problems-Can't get oracle user password

2009-04-20T10:48:00.013+01:00

What happens for deployment?

If you have a wrapper shell script to perform deployment of BPEL processes, you would need to have a user to log in to the box.
Generally such wrapper scripts for deployment of BPEL processes are run as oracle user.

What is the concern?

Generally oracle user is used to run the installation.
Now for installation to run oracle user has every access to do any thing in the system.

Now if the oracle password is given for deployment, there is concern of miss use of it.
Who ever has access to it can mess up the system big time.

Why is this so?

oracle user has sys admin privileges. So generally the DBA would not give this to you.

Alternative option

Create a new user for deployment.
Get this user the following access and you don't need oracle username password.
Only read and execute access in the below list would be enough to get depployment script working.

${ORACLE_HOME}/bpel/bin	All files	BPEL deployment related files	r-x
${ORACLE_HOME}/jdk	All files and sub directories	set jdk home for deployment	r-x
${ORACLE_HOME}/ant	All files and sub directories	set deployment ant modules	r-x
${ORACLE_HOME}/bpel/system/classes	All files and sub directories	bpel classpath	r-x
${ORACLE_HOME}/j2ee/${oc4j_instance}/applications	All files and sub directories	for j2ee related deployment	r-x
${ORACLE_HOME}/bpel/lib	All files	BPEL libraries to be included for compilation	r-x
${ORACLE_HOME}/j2ee/home	All JAR files	BPEL client jar files	r-x
${ORACLE_HOME}/j2ee/home/lib	All JAR files	BPEL client jar files	r-x
${ORACLE_HOME}/lib	All JAR files	dependent JAR files	r-x

java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space KILLER

2009-04-07T12:08:00.053+01:00

When did I see this happen?

I seem to have seen this in 2 different places with in BPEL world so far.

Firstly when I try to use the automated deployment process while deploying to System Test or Use Acceptance Test (UAT) and even in pre-prod some times. I have this whole bunch of about 30+ bpel processes to deploy and have a automated deployment process to do this. In random order in the middle of deployment you get this crap.

Secondly I have even seen this in Development environment, while deploying BPEL process from JDeveloper.

I have never seen this happen any other time at least in the scenarios that I have worked in.

Where do you see this?

If I take this second one first, I mean JDeveloper deployment in DEV, then it is in the JDeveloper logging window.

Now to the first scenario is a bit of a pain. You have a deployment running and all of a sudden the deployment fails. Time to dig into the opmn log file and find these words there.
"java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space"

What the hell is PermGen space?

First of all it is NOT PermGem space but it is Perm Gen space.
PermGen stands for Permanent Generation.

How the hell is this related to BPEL?

The answer is both No and Yes.

Why NO?

This weired error is not a BPEL error but a java JVM memory error.

Why YES?

You see this crap come up while deploying BPEL.

So what is the background of PermGen Error?

Well let us dig into java. JVM has this memory called virtual memory. This is the memory that JVM uses to work with what ever it has in hand.
But JVM has 3 different space of it.
The Young, Tenured and Perm.

All the objects that get created are first stored in Young Generation. If the objects survive long enough from garbage collector they get transferred to Tenured Generation.

Now Permanent Generation is special. When there is no space left in Perm you see this error.

So what does Perm Gen contain?

Permanent Generation is special as it contains class definitions.
Objects are in Young and Tenured Generation.

Basically it contains

Basic fields of java class
Methods of a class (including the bytecodes)
Names of the classes
Constant pool information
Object arrays and type arrays associated with a class
Internal objects created by the JVM (java/lang/Object or java/lang/exception for instance)
Information used for optimization by the compilers (JITs)

There are a few more pieces in there but this is most of it.

So what causes Perm Gen?

As you are loading BPEL through some ANT task.
ANT runs the java stuff to load BPEL.

The class loader that loads the BPEL fills up the Permanent Generation with the class details of all the classes that you have loaded.

What is the default PermGen?

The default max permanent generation size is 64M, not quite enough.

What is recommended?

1024 is recommended.

How to control this?

Use the following with the command line
-XX:MaxPermSize=1024m

What does -Xms and -Xmx do to PermGen?

These 2 parameters does nothing to change the Perm Gen space setup by JVM.
You just do want to default Max Perm Gen space to 64 M.

Is this the final solution?

Not really, if you keep loading loads of new processes or huge number of classes this might delay your Out Of Memory Error but will not fix it.

The only solution?

The only solution is to bounce the server once you see this error.

Where else?

This is a general issue faced by all sun java based servers. When huge number if class are loaded as part of an application, this error is expected.

Related Links I liked

http://blogs.sun.com/jonthecollector/entry/presenting_the_permanent_generation
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=3344909&#3344909
http://www.jroller.com/agileanswers/entry/preventing_java_s_java_lang

hostname with and without domain name issue

2009-01-21T12:13:00.052Z

Why I write this?

The reason why I write this is as I faced this.
Some kind of a behaviour that I have never seen to known, but yes I did find this.

What did I see?

I was happy developing my BPEL process. everything looks cool and alright.
Now I had BPEL process A and B.

A was calling process B
B was developed happily and deployed

Started developing A, this is when I see this strange error
When I tried to create a partner link for B from the service explorer in partner link wizard
"The WSDL could not be located" error was displayed in the wizard

How can that be?

Yes how can this be, I was actually using the service explorer and making my way to B and selecting it and still WSDL not discoverable
What stupidity, how can this be?

What does the partner link actually not like?

Well, what I found is this. The URL for webservice was causing the issue. The wonderful hostname.

The URL from service explorer did not have the domain name in the hostname.
When I added the domain name there in the WSDL location, the WSDL was working alright.

Strage aint it.

What was the other issue?

The WSDL was alright, but there was some thing else that broke.
When I tried to deploy A it came back with the following error.

Error:
[Error ORABPEL-10902]: compilation failed
[Description]: in "bpel.xml", XML parsing failed because "undefined part element.
In WSDL at "http://hostname.domainname:portnumber/orabpel/domain/B/B?wsdl", message part element "{http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2003/03/addressing}MessageID" is not defined in any of the schemas.
Please make sure the spelling of the element QName is correct and the WSDL import is complete.
".
[Potential fix]: n/a.

What does the error mean?

When I opened up the WSDL from BPEL console I saw this.
The WSDL from BPEL console was looking like this http://hostname:portnumber/orabpel/domain/B/B?wsdl
With out the domain name.

Also when I opened the WSDL, the ws-addrressing was like this
<schema>
<import namespace="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2003/03/addressing" schemaLocation="http://domainname:portnumber/orabpel/xmllib/ws-addressing.xsd"/>
</schema>

The domain name was missing from the import.

What does this mean?

As the domain was missing the server could not locate the import from ws-addressing.
And the namespace that was present right at the taop was

xmlns:wsa="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2003/03/addressing"

wsa was refering to wsa:RelatesTo, wsa:MessageID and wsa:ReplyTo
All these should be failing one by one in trial to deploy to the server the BPEL process that tries to partnerlink B.

How to fix this?

The fix is as simple as changing the WSDL to have the complete domain name in hostname.

But how to do that?

The change is as simple as this.
Open up the file ${OracleAS_Home}\bpel\system\config\collaxa-config.xml

Change the following
Property name soapServerUrl

<property id="soapServerUrl">
<name>BPEL soap server URL</name>
<value>http://hostname:portnumber</value>
<comment>
<![CDATA[This URL is published as part of the SOAP address of a process in the WSDL file.<p/> The hostname and port for this URL should be customized to match the hostname of your system and the port of your HTTP gateway.]]>
</comment>
</property>

To
<property id="soapServerUrl">
<name>BPEL soap server URL</name>
<value>http://hostname.domain:portnumber</value>
<comment>
<![CDATA[This URL is published as part of the SOAP address of a process in the WSDL file.<p/> The hostname and port for this URL should be customized to match the hostname of your system and the port of your HTTP gateway.]]>
</comment>
</property>

Also change similarly in the next property
soapCallbackUrl

What caused the problem?

During install the hostname file had the server host name before the hostname with domain name causing all this error.
So be sure to install with care and check the host file before install. Even if you break it, you are sure now how to fix this, aint you!!

BPEL 10.1.3.4 Deployment Framework

2009-01-06T10:55:00.137Z

Why I want to write this?

I wanted to find some quick start material for using BPEL deployment framework in 10.1.3.4
Damn I could not find any. Nothing that looked like a quick start thing.
And the worst part was the closest I could find was oracle documentation about it.

At least I could not google any thing even close
But neither of them helped me quick start like a quick list of things to do. :(

I hope this post comes up in google for the help of those who want it.

What is the first thing to do?

The first thing to do is edit your build.xml file
If you open up your BPEL project you will find that in Folder called Resources
If you are looking in the actual physical folder then you will find this in ${process.dir} (the bpel ant terminology)
Basically the top project folder where you find your jpr file.

Why build.xml first?

Fundamentals first, as you are going to use ant to perform deployment automation, you need to edit the build.xml file that ant uses.

Do what in build.xml?

You need to include the ant things that oracle has come up with.
Basically it has 4 things new
generateplan - to generate a brand new plan for you, isn't that cool
attachplan - to attach the plan to your jar while deplyoing
validateplan - to validate the plan, use for developement purpose only and disbale in PROD
extractplan - to extract the plan out from your jar file

Down to business in build.xml

how the hell to use these.
First things first. You need to create plan file as a starting point.
generateplan is the good thing that help you do this.

Stick this piece of code before the </project>

<target name="generateMyPlanFromProjectFile">
<generateplan planfile="${process.dir}/MyPlanFile.xml" verbose="true"
overwrite="true" descfile="${process.dir}/bpel/bpel.xml"/>
</target>

What this does is, generate a file called MyPlanFile.xml in your ${process.dir}

If you want to generate the plan file from jar file, you can stick this piece there as well.

<target name="GenerateMyPlanFromSuitcaseFile">
<generateplan planfile="${process.dir}/MyPlanFile.xml" verbose="true"
overwrite="true"
suitecase="${process.dir}/output/bpel_${BPELSuitcase.BPELProcess(id)}_${rev}.jar"/>
</target>

What this does is, generate the plan fuile from jar file.
Here the use of some things like ${rev} etc can found some where below in build.properties
For now just know that this will pick the correct jar

Basically stick both the pieces there.

If you have not yet complied to generate the jar, do not be surprised to see the GenerateMyPlanFromSuitcaseFile fail

What the hell do I do with this generateplan thing....

Well what else but run as ANT
Right click the build.xml in Jdeveloper, Open up Run Ant Target
Choose generateMyPlanFromProjectFile

JDeveloper should fire up and generate a file for you called MyPlanFile.xml
If you are not able to see that in Resources folder (same place where the build.xml is located) click refresh mate and you should see it

Congrats you have completed the first step easily

Changes in build.properties file

There is a file called build.properties in the same good old folder ${process.dir}
Open that up and see 2 properties called domain and rev
These are commented out by default

uncomment them and change them as below
#if domain name is "commmon" then type in common domain = ${enter the name of the domain yoiu want to deploy}
#if revision is 2.0 then type in 2.0 rev = ${version number of the bpel process}

Good with all this but where is the search and replace thing

Open up the MyPlanFile.xml and you should see some thing there.
Some thing like wsdlAndSchema

There is a element called search and replace

Need to fill this up to search and replace. Read the documentation to find how all to use it. This is the easy part aint it!! Just fill in some strings to test your code.

How to attach the plan

Stick this thing into the build.xml file

<target name="AttachMyPlan">
<echo> -------------------------------------------------------------- | Attaching the plan file ------------------------------------------------ </echo>
<attachplan planfile="${process.dir}/MyPlanFile.xml" verbose="true"
overwrite="true"
suitecase="${process.dir}/output/bpel_${BPELSuitcase.BPELProcess(id)}_${rev}.jar"/>
</target>

What this does is attach the plan file to your jar.

What about extract plan

I am not sure if you want this or not, but here is the piece of code

<target name="ExtractMyPlan">
<extractplan planfile="${process.dir}/MyPlanFile.xml" verbose="true"
overwrite="true"
suitecase="${process.dir}/output/bpel_${BPELSuitcase.BPELProcess(id)}_${rev}.jar"/>
</target>

Ya ya I know that you know what this does.

Now what else?

The last part, add the new target you added to the default target process-deploy

In the depends part of &lttarget name="process-deploy"
Add the target AttachMyPlan after complie

So the new target will look like

<target name="process-deploy"
depends="validateTask, compile, AttachMyPlan, deployProcess, deployTaskForm, deployDecisionServices"/>

Why Am I not adding the generateplan thing in there

Well you do not want to generate the plans always and over write the search and replace that you have read form the documentation and build

If you did then do not be surprised but only thing is I will be laughing ha ha ha :)

How to deploy to other Environments

Well that is for you to discover and explore
Just that you need to run this in dev prompt. Go to the same old ${process.dir} directory and run the ANT as
command promt>ant process-deploy

Congrats mate you have done it.
There are other few things that you can learn from the documentation if you are interested at all

Links that I liked

I could hardly google a lot of stuff for this.
The best is oracle documentation
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12524_01/relnotes.1013/e12523/bpelrn.htm#BABCEBAA

The next best I could find was
http://blogs.oracle.com/reynolds/2008/11/bpel_deployment_framework.html

Deploy BPEL process with different name

2008-12-19T17:19:00.010Z

What I want to do?

What I want to do is this.
There is a process A.
I want to deploy this to the server with name X.

How I did it?

This is just very simple.
Just open up the bpel.xml file

Change the following tag
<BPELProcess id="A"
to
<BPELProcess id="X"

Why I want to do this?

No particular reason actually. One of my friends wanted to know this.
If he wanted to know there could be other too who want to know this.
So I put this up.

Do All ASync BPEL process require correlation?

2008-12-19T16:32:00.033Z

Why I ask this?

Well it is natural to ask this question once you have read about correlation.
When to use correlation? And a even better question when not to use correlation?

When not to use correlations?

If you have 2 BPEL processes that behave in the following way you do not require correlation.

A calls B --> ASync(Invoke)
B send result back to A --> ASync(Invoke)

This scenario does not require you to use correlation if you are with in BPEL realm.

How does this work?

BPEL does this behind the scenes for you.
Well there is some thing called WS-Adressing that takes care of this.

When does this above rule break?

If you are using a Async callback in a flowN branch you break this rule as there will be more than one process waiting to receive the input. WS-Addressing is not enough.

The other scenario is when you have atleast 3 processes that work as stated below.

A calls B
B calls C
C calls A

Now how does C know which instance of A to call. This forces you to use correlation.

There are other complex scenarios that can make you use correlation that is a variance of the above.

Links

How to use correlation in FlowN
http://oraclebpelindepth.blogspot.com/search/label/FlowN

getFaultAsString( ) in SOA version and wonderful JDev

2008-12-12T17:13:00.033Z

Why I write this?

When one of my team members questioned that getFaultAsString( ) was shown as invalid in JDev that had my bells ringing. He also dig up some posts that were talking about some versions.

Well when I read a few posts after googling them out to say that getFaultAsString( ) had gone and has come back. I wanted to see that in my version of SOA suite.

What did I find out?

A few posts read this feature had disappeared in soa 10.1.3 and has come back in soa 10.1.3.3.
So what the hell is this, do it work or not work.
So does it work with soa 10.1.3.4 version.

Working or not in versions?

soa 10.1.3.3 -> Yes it works
soa 10.1.3.3 after MLR patches -> Yes it works
soa 10.1.3.4 -> Yes it works

Whatz it with JDev?

Jdev 10.1.3.3 -> complains in JDev while creating the assign
Function of name "getFaultAsString" not Found
Just Ignore this and proceed with deployment, it will work in server.

Jdev 10.1.3.4 -> worked!! :)

Links I found

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/message.jspa?messageID=2139312

SOA suite 10.1.3.1.0 with oracle 10.2.0.2 joke

2008-12-01T15:17:00.017Z

Why I write this

I just tried to install SOA suite 10.1.3.1.0 onto my PC.
So i went onto download the oracle DB. That when I was surprised.

What is the version of oracle you want???

The SOA suite advanced install database version support recommended by oracle is

Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.x) -->10.2.0.2 or later

OK. Thatz cool. Just that I can not download one for the version of OS i have.

What is this to do with the OS !! :(

I have got Windows XP professional running on my PC.
So naturally I want to download oracle DB version 10.2.0.2 or later for windows.

But I can not find it. Oracle only gives these to download.
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1.0) for Microsoft Windows - This I can't use

Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.3/10.2.0.4) for Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows 2008 - This I don't want as this is for Vista

Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.4) for Microsoft Windows Vista x64 and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 x64 - This I don't want as this is for Vista

What the questions in my mind

The basic question is if oracle SOA suite 10.1.3.1.0 needs Oracle DB 10.2.02 or higher. Why is there no Windows Xp compatible 10.2.0.3 or higher. Why only vista?

To get SOA suite onto my Xp, looks like i have to go through a lot of pain to just get the dehydration database up and running. Not at all elegant.

What did i end up doing

Well I end up download the database upgrade for 10.2.0.1 to 10.2.0.2.

How to upgrade 10.2.0.1 to 10.2.0.2

You will find all the information on how to upgrade from 10.2.0.1 database to version 10.2.0.2 follow read me of patch 4547817 or metalink note 316900.1

Basically you will end up downloading the path set for oracle database and applying it.

Just be sure to follow post installation instructions.
Link that helped me was
http://becomeappsdba.blogspot.com/2007/06/upgrade-oracle-database-to-10202-soa.html

Default Retired BPEL process

2008-10-30T13:29:00.005Z

How did I find this?

I was testing the rollback of BPEL processes. That is when I found this behaviour.

What was the setup?

There were 2 versions of a BPEL process say A.

Say version 1.0 and version 1.1

Version 1.1 was deployed.

Version 1.0 was retired.

What I wanted to do?

Now I wanted to rollback to version 1.0

So I retired version 1.1

Set version 1.0 as default

All this was done using the Java API

Why java API?

If you ask me why java API, well there were quite a few BPEL process that need to be rolled back.

And getting this done manually is a monumental pain.

What I expected and found?

What I expected was, once I retire version 1.1

And set version 1.0 as default, version 1.0 will become active

But that did not happen. After version 1.0 was set as default it still was in retired state.

How to do this?

Once I found this it was all logical to say yes this is the expected behaviour.

But this never crossed the mind when preparing the automated rollback process.

Now I know this, possibly other might face or some thing to be aware of.

Create instance with Pick

2008-10-13T16:25:00.034+01:00

Break the receive idea!

Well if you think that receive activity is the only way to create BPEL instances, think twice. You can do this with Pick onMessage activity as well. Well if this is a surprise to you then read on else dump this stupid post.

Why do this with PICK

Well if you think about it, it makes it clear that you can have multiple Pick onMessage activities at the same time. What that means in plain english is, you can have multiple operations calling in, to create a instance in BPEL. Is that not cool.

You create BPEL process for each operation in onMessage Pick.
Generally you have single operation to create a instance in BPEL.

How to create instance with PICK

Just check the create instance in the activity, that it. You are done.

What can not be done in this

You can not use a onAlarm activity in this Pick onMessage activity.
If you think about why, it is not logical at all.
How do you expire time on some thing that was not created.

Word of caution

At design time there should be strong reason that you are trying to simulate this at operation level. Use this with caution and for some strong reasons.
For example if you want a single web service for each operation from a source system.

How do you relate BPEL dehydration tables

2008-10-07T08:01:00.016+01:00

Why I write this?

Well if you want to write some real clever applications on to top your BPEL dehydration database, you need to know some key BPEL tables inside out.

The dehydration database table need to be house kept to clear production data.
What helps you in these scenarios are:

Understanding of what the key tables are.
What the key fields are.
How to relate these table.

What is the key table?

There are a few key tables that can be used across to relate together BPEL tables.

The first table that you should know is CUBE_INSTANCE

What is the key column in CUBE_INSTANCE table?

The most important column that you should know as a BPEL developer is cikey

What is the significance of cikey?

This is the instance ID that you see in your BPEL console.

This gets incremented in a sequence with creation of BPEL instances.

If you don't know what cikey is then here I go. Each BPEL instance is assigned a unique ID.

This ID is visible in the BPEL console.

And guess what BPEL console does allow you to filter using instance ID.

This is one of the key columns that you should know to do a lot of stuff.

And this key cuts across a lot of tables in the dehydration tables.

The article will continue to grow....

Continuation to cover..

What are the other tables that have cikey

What are the other Key columns in CUBE_INSTANCE

SOA does not start with error "An unknown OPMN error has occured"

2008-10-05T17:26:00.034+01:00

When did I get this?

I have a fresh installation of SOA suite on my stupid Vista laptop.

I had a hard time getting this into it in the first place.

If you want to find how hard it was see this

http://oraclebpelindepth.blogspot.com/2008/10/install-soa-suite-on-windows-vista.html

I was damn happy getting this into it and I though wow here I go.

But damn stupid thing, after re-starting my system I could not get the SOA suite working.

I capture what I did to get this wonderful thing working.

What is this error and why I write this?

The first bolt I got was this

"An unknown OPMN error has occurred"

"Error connecting to OPMN (is it running?): Connection refused: connect"

This was when I tried to start SOA suite from the "start SOA suite" from start menu.

When I looked at opmn.log file it said some thing that did not make any sense initially.

It read "[ons-connect] Local connection 127.0.0.1,6100 invalid form factor"

Tried to see opmnctl status -app but got back

"Unable to connect to opmn.

Opmn may not be up."

How did I solve this?

Solving is very simple process.

Stop all opmn and related process forcefully if does not stop from "stop SOA suite" script

Rename persistence to persistence.old in ${ORACLE_HOME}/j2ee/${OC4J_Insatnce}

Note you will not be able to rename the folder if opmn or any related process is still running.

Use the following command to start SOA suite

opmnctl start

opmnctl startproc process-type=HTTP_Server

opmnctl startproc process-type=${oc4j_instance_name}

Where did I find the solution?

Found the most helpful solution here

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=388156&start=15&tstart=0

Damn why does it suck so much to get SOA suite working on my laptop.

"The procedure entry point snlinAddrLocalhost could not be located in the dynamic link library oranl10.dll" post SOA suite installation

2008-10-05T12:51:00.005+01:00

When did I see this?

When I tried to fire up sqlplusw I got this stupid error.

Well I had done nothing wrong but only installed SOA Suite in my laptop.

And here this error presents itself to me.

No clue why some thing should not work when I have not touched the original pieces of the application but installed entirely different application.

What is this stupid error?

This error has nothing to do with your software being corrupted but just a little paying with some thing called the PATH.

Once you install SOA suite, the installer tries to get itself as the first thing in the path. Pushes the oracle database bin path backwards.

How to solve this?

Well if SOA suite can push the path back for oracle database you can do the reverse and have the path come forward in the path list. Volla there you go, thatz it, nothing big but difficult to find.

Just another of those oracle's issues that you discover in the forum and fix.

Links I liked?

The link that sort of gave me the idea was

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=1858020&tstart=0

The post by [dragosv] in the last few entries.

Install SOA suite on Windows Vista

2008-10-01T18:03:00.013+01:00

Why I write this post?

I have a laptop at home and I want to install SOA suite in that.
Now this piece of equipment that I have got has Windows Vista Home in it.
When I first tried to get this software into it, it was a failure. The setup process itself did not run to completion.

I originally thought that it might take a few hours. But it was days before I could get this working.

How did it start?

I could not get the installation process to complete.
And the error message that I saw was
"Error: Missing ormi[s]://host:port"

That is when I started digging for information.
It turned out that I was not the only one struggling.

And even the installation of Oracle Database faced issue with Vista with DHCP settings.

Is Windows Vista Home the only standalone?

Well having read the different flavours of Vista had similar issues in forum, my impression was that Vista was the culprit. And when I did install the same software in XP in a flash.

What all did I do?

I found a host of things that need to be done, or at least I need to be aware of before I hit the road. Some are pre-installation and some during installation and some post installation.

If you do not find these in your system, do not be surprised. Every time I have done this I have faced a different issue. Thought not completely sure why so. Might be my system got bored of me with repeated installation and de-installations.

Pre-Installation Issues

Under score in Computer Name
Remove any under scores that you find in your computer name

If you ask me how to do this in Vista? Here are the steps:

Right click on MyComputer

Click Properties

Locate some thing called "Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings"

Under there Click "Change Settings"

Some thing called "System Properties" pop up and you will be in a tab called "Computer Name"

You should find a button "Change", click that

Change the Computer Name there

Use any name that does not contain a underscore(_)

Configure loop back adapter

You need to get this loopback adapter into your Vista.

And to get this in do the following

Go to Control Panel (use classic view)
Click "Add Hardware"

Click Next

Choose "Install hardware manually"

Choose "Network Adapters" in Common Hardware Type choice

Choose "Microsoft" as Manufacturer and "Loopback" as the adapter

Follow the signs and you are done.

DHCP configuration

Disable IPv6 completely is important for successful installation
Have a look at the Metalink Note 444112.1

If you do not do this installation goes smooth till a point booom. Fails with error unable to locate OC$J URI

Use the following link to disable IPv6

http://nsegainkc1.aliant.net/knowledge/Docs/Internet/Conn/HSI/Vista/disableip6/disableip6.htm

Hosts file

Get rid of ::1 localhost from hosts file. To work this out you need to type in some thing in RUN.

In RUN type in "drivers"

Go into the folder "etc"

Edit the file "hosts"

Comment out part "::1 localhost"

The changed value will look like

#::1 localhost

Completely Disable IPv6

I missed this and I could not complete my installation till I figured that this was the issue.

This is to do with adding a new entry into registery to disable IPv6.

This is documented in

http://www.approach-alliance.nl/index.php?option=com_jd-wp&Itemid=2&p=52

The setups would be like

Run regedit to open registry

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SYSTEM, CurrentControlSet, Services, Tcpip6, Parameters

Create a new DWORD called DisabledComponents with value 0xFF

Thatz it. I think you are ready to rock DHCP now.

No WhiteSpace Directory

Do not use white space character in directory structure that has the SOA setup files.

Though I have not tested this I could find some people who seem to have faced these issues.

What all this white space actually means is if you get the directory to SOA installation file, there should be no blank space there.

JDK version

I tried to run the IRCA script with java 1.6. To my surprise the IRCA complained that I have to go to a lower version of JDK.

I expected the higher version of JDK to work with out issue. But it did not. I had to uninstall and go back to a older version of JDK i.e 1.5.

Installation Steps

Run as Admin

While firing up you setup file, be sure to right click the setup file and choose "run as Administrator". I guess this gives the setup rights to do stuff that running in normal mode does not.

But frankly I have not tried running otherwise.

Version of OS

Do not be surprised if you see some error message stating that version of OS is 6.0.

And installtion does not go any further.

See the post http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=711505&tstart=0

Gives details for getting this working.

Could not get DeploymentManager

Do not be surprise if you see this error message

Failed at "Could not get DeploymentManager".

This is typically the result of an invalid deployer URI format being supplied, the target server not being in a started state or incorrect authentication details being supplied.

More information is available by enabling logging -- please see the Oracle Containers for J2EE Configuration and Administration Guide for details.

If you get this then you have missed the disabling of IPv6. each and every step is important and you can not skip even one of them.

What are the links I liked

Oh my god, at last this is done. Took me a while to get here.

The link that I could find that gave the most details was

http://www.approach-alliance.nl/index.php?option=com_jd-wp&Itemid=2&p=52

Another post with quite a few issues covered was

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=2299674
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/message.jspa?messageID=2568623

Other links that I looked at were
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=2236119&#2236119
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=2437440&#2437440
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=358789

Specify Time in onAlarm

2008-09-30T14:20:00.009+01:00

What forced me into it?

This was in a onAlarm activity that I wanted to specify the duration.
This was to set an alarm and retry interval in BPEL.

I saw some documentation providing me incorrect info, and I did have a lot of BPEL instances go to invalid state once they hit the onAlarm.
Now I can not go wrong, I have this post to help me.

So what is the notation?

Well this is the notation as in 10.1.3.3 MLR 5
P1Y1M1DT1H1M1S

Explaination!

This is straight forward.

Duration is
1 Year
1 Month
1 Day

This is for the P1Y1M1D part of the expression

Duration is
1 Hour
1 Minute
1 Second

This is for the T1H1M1S part of the expression

Links I liked!

To be frank I did a few trial and errors in BPEL before I was sure that the doc was not correct.
And I could not Google this up in the first 2 pages I was looking at.
So here is the post that has it. Now I know where to look. I hope it helps others as well.

Whatz with the default Services TaskManager and TaskActionHandler

2008-09-30T11:00:00.021+01:00

Why I wanted to write this?

When I first started to use BPEL console, I saw 2 service that were already deployed.
That did not make sense to me, and I wanted a clean environment.
I had not deployed anything. And here I see 2 services already deployed.
I wanted to undeploy those, but I decided to find out why.
Then I started to ask question to myself as to why these were there.

What is this TaskManager Service for?

TaskManager service is basically for managing the tasks.
Initiate Task
Update Task
Complete Task

Also does a few things like send callback for
Results for the task and
on expire of task

Basically operations on taks are performed through this service.

What is this TaskActionHandler for?

Task Action Handler as the name states handles actions.
Put items to user's worklist
Get response from the users
Maintain timer events

If you are wondering what timer events are, they are task expiration, task reminder and other such related timer based events.

Links that I liked!

The link you would like to read are
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/ias/bpel/pdf/orabpel-Tutorial6-TaskManagerServiceTutorial.pdf

Undeploy BPEL with JAVA

2008-09-29T13:09:00.047+01:00

What forced me into it?

Undeploying BPEL process from BPEL Console is a nightmare especially when you have many environments. And with each test cycle, the environment is refreshed and recreated.
It takes hell a lot of time and AS admin time to get this. (Well these admin guy are always short of time with their hand full of work)
Best option, automate the process. So I have small piece of code that I have pulled.

You will be surprised how short this is?

package bpelUndeployment;

import java.util.Properties;

import com.oracle.bpel.client.BPELProcessId;
import com.oracle.bpel.client.IBPELDomainHandle;
import com.oracle.bpel.client.Locator;
import com.oracle.bpel.client.ServerException;

/**
* @author Kalidass Mookkaiah
*/
public class UnDeployBPELProcess {
public static void main(String[] args) throws ServerException {

//Properties with BPEL server connection information
Properties props = new Properties();
props.put("orabpel.platform", "ias_10g");
props.put("java.naming.factory.initial", "com.evermind.server.rmi.RMIInitialContextFactory");
props.put("java.naming.provider.url", "opmn:ormi://hostname:6008:home/orabpel");
props.put("java.naming.security.principal", "oc4jadmin");
props.put("java.naming.security.credentials", "oc4jadmin");
props.put("dedicated.connection","true");

//Get a locator in default domain
Locator locator = new Locator("default","welcome1",props);

//Get a handle to the domain
IBPELDomainHandle iBPELDomainHandle = locator.lookupDomain();

//Undeploy this process from default domain
iBPELDomainHandle.undeployProcess(new BPELProcessId("default","MyUndeployedBPELProcess"));
}
}

Explanation!!!

If you do not know that the properties mean, see this post
http://oraclebpelindepth.blogspot.com/2008/08/bpel-context-properties-for-client-api.html

Well if you have read the above post then you know what the Properties are for.
In one word it is values to connect to the AS server.

Use the locator to get a handle to the domain.
Use this handle to perform undeployment.
Here I have used the BPELProcessId class to identify the domain and ProcessName.
The ProcessName should match exactly.

What about versioned BPEL process?

Help your self.
But what I can hint you with is this.
The Class BPELProcessId has overloaded constructor.
3 of them.
One takes domain and processID
Other takes domain, processID and revision Tag.
There is another one tooo with domain, processID, revision Tag and process GUID.

Happy hunting with the overloaded constructors.
And don't forget to run the code ;)

What Jars to include?

And if you are looking to find the jars to include to run this see the link
http://oraclebpelindepth.blogspot.com/2008/09/jars-for-bpel-java-api.html

JARs for BPEL Java API

2008-09-29T12:01:00.068+01:00

What forced me into it?

To get the BPEL Java API working the first thing to do is to have the java class be available for you to code.
And to get these classes into your work space, what else but include the libs.
Every time I do this I Google. I am either very bad at Google or there are not many people who write about this.
Now I want this as a reference for myself, and also for those who want the list.

What are the jars that I included? And why in that Order?

The first jar that I included was orabpel.jar
For what other reason that the fact that it has what I need.
And what I need to start is Locator.
To be more specific I need com.oracle.bpel.client.Locator class

Is this jar enough?

Well if you think this is enough then it is time for you to run and see for yourself.
Do not be surprised to get error that looks like this
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/ejb/EJBException

Make this error disappear?

How else but include the jar that has this class. And the jar is ejb.jar
I think now it is time to run this and see for your self.

Whatz the next error?

Well you have gussed it right. There is another error that comes up.
This time round it looks like this
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/collaxa/common/util/NonSyncPrintWriter
at com.oracle.bpel.client.util.ExceptionUtils.handleServerException(ExceptionUtils.java:82)
at com.oracle.bpel.client.Locator.getFinder(Locator.java:962)
.......
Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/collaxa/common/util/NonSyncPrintWriter
at com.oracle.bpel.client.util.BeanRegistry.lookupFinderBean(BeanRegistry.java:351)
at com.oracle.bpel.client.Locator.getFinder(Locator.java:956)
...

Make this error disappear? And next error appears.

How else but include the jar that has this class. And the jar is orabpel-common.jar
You know what time this is. Yes run time. So letz see te next error.

The next error you might be seeing is

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.Exception: Failed to create "ejb/collaxa/system/FinderBean" bean; exception reported is: "javax.naming.NoInitialContextException: Cannot instantiate class: com.evermind.server.rmi.RMIInitialContextFactory [Root exception is java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.evermind.server.rmi.RMIInitialContextFactory]
....
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.evermind.server.rmi.RMIInitialContextFactory
...

Make this error disappear? And...

This time round I include the jar oc4j-internal.jar

The next error you might be seeing is
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: oracle/ias/opmn/optic/OpticException
...
Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: oracle/ias/opmn/optic/OpticException
...

Make this error disappear? And...

This time round I include the jar optic.jar

The next error you might be seeing is nothing....

What was the code that I ran?

There might be other jars that need to be included based on what is that you want the Java do perfom.
But the java code that I ran is for undeploying BPEL process.
The code is in the post
http://oraclebpelindepth.blogspot.com/2008/09/undeploy-bpel-with-java.html

FTP file name: Both Get fileName and dynamic Put filename

2008-09-25T08:58:00.011+01:00

How did it make into my workspace?

What else but a requirement.
A file is dynamically created based on the web service message received.
The file that needs to be FTPed has a name, that is dynamic.
The file name is one of the fields in the message received.
Well this was about Put.

How the hell did Get file name come to my workspace?

Well it was not a requirement in my project. But was a help that I did for a friend.
This person wanted to read files from a server.
And drop this off to another server after some enrichment's to the content.
And wanted the Get and Put file names to match.

So this adds a new thing of getting the filename of the file that was read from FTP directory.

How does it work?

If you have created FTP Get and Puts you should see
ftpAdapterInboundHeader.wsdl and ftpAdapterOutboundHeader.wsdl file in your workspace.

These are the 2 key file to get this cracking.
Both of these have a element called fileName.

What to do with this element?

You have to either play with these elements to get the work done.
To play with these elements you first need to create a variable from the wsdl.

How to get the file name of the get file?

Just use the variable that you have created from the ftpAdapterInboundHeader.wsdl.
Read the fileName element. Yes it is that easy.

How to assign file name to put file?

Well nothing different from the above one.
But this time round you need not read but assign value to the fileName element.
The variable that you have created from the ftpAdapterOutboundHeader.wsdl, use that.

Assign the file name to the fileName element in this variable.
Thatz it. You have done it.

What Does it do in the background?

What you are trying to do here is either read or write to the FTP Adapter Header Message.

For Inbound messages the header has the fileName, FTP server and FTP port.
For Outbound message the header has the fileName.

You can play with these.
From Inbound message you can read the values.
For Outbound if you populate these values the Adapter will behave accordingly.

The requested URL /integration/services/deploy/deployHttpClientProcess.jsp was not found on this server

2008-09-22T16:06:00.015+01:00

How the hell did I get it?

I tried deploying BPEL process from automated deployment script that I have got.
This script uses ANT process to do the job.
What I see is the below error.

--------------------- Error Message Start ------------------------
BUILD FAILED

/nas/orasoft/orbit/oracle/soasuite_pc_deploy_v1.2/bpel_deploy/build.xml:223: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/nas/orasoft/orbit/oracle/soasuite_pc_deploy_v1.2/bpel_deploy/src/ErrorLogging/build.xml:79: A problem occured while connecting to server "orbit" using port "7777":
<HTML><HEAD>
<TITLE>404 Not Found</TITLE>
</HEAD><BODY>

Not Found
The requested URL /integration/services/deploy/deployHttpClientProcess.jsp was not found on this server.
<HR>
<ADDRESS>Oracle-Application-Server-10g/10.1.3.1.0 Oracle-HTTP-Server Server at orbit Port 7777</ADDRESS>
</BODY></HTML>
--------------------- Error Message End ------------------------

Where did I find the solution?

Well first I read a few posts in oracle forum.
The post that helped me solve or at least pointed towards a solution was
http://kr.forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=631670

Healthy Green hw_service!!

My hw_services was working and was green in colour.
Well that meant that it was healthy.
But later I found it was not configured for deployment (read to find where I found the jsp)

Next I wanted to find the directory. /integration/services/deploy/deployHttpClientProcess.jsp
I could not. So I started a search to find it! And yes I did find it. Not as a directory but as a configuration in Active Servlets/JSPs.

Where did I find /integration/services/deploy/deployHttpClientProcess.jsp?

I tried to find this in the hw_services from EM (enterprise manager). And yes I did.
Thanks to the post there.

These are the steps that I followed.
Go to EM.
From the home page click the + sign of OC4J instance used.
Click hw_services to open up the properties.
Click the deploy Web Module.
You will find "deployHttpClientProcess.jsp" under the Active Servlets/JSPs.

That is where I found this guy registered.

What happened to deployment from JDEV?

The deployment from JDev went with out any issues.
This issues was with ANT deployment only.

What I found and how I solved it?

Before I tried to solve the issue. I wanted to find this. And I did as above.

My DEV ENV was working so I wanted to see that before I did any thing else.
I found this configuration present in my DEV environment.
I found this missing in my SYS TEST ENV and that had this above error.

What I found was "deployHttpClientProcess.jsp" was not not present in the Active Servlets/JSPs list at all. It was blank in DEV.

The very next thing I did was to stop and start hw_services.
And when I did the deployment went smoothly.
And the "deployHttpClientProcess.jsp" came back to the Active Servlets/JSPs.

Arrays in BPEL

2008-09-21T23:24:00.010+01:00

Why it made itself into my Project?

What else but FlowN. That was the culprit.
FlowN will use index to create separate flows for each of the parallel flows using the index variable.
And the index was used to read data from where else but array.

How to create a array?

Actually it is not as complex as I originally though it to be.
Array in XML can be any element that can store multiple repetition of some data.

For example if A represents sequence of element B then A can be used as array for B.

What is that I am going to show you below?

In short this is what I am attempting to show you.

1. Add elements into the array using BPEL append.

Most of the cases people already have a array from the source system.

Use this when you want to build your ow array i the fly.

2. Build the XPath

If you have decided to use array then build a dynamic XPath.

Store that in a temporary variable.

And use that XPath temporary variable while reading elements from the array.

If you ask me what type of variable, I prefer String type.

2. Read data from array

Just as plain as use the temporary XPath variable and read data from the array element.

Just like saying A[X] i ay other lang. Here A is the array and X is the temporary XPath.

Movig in rounds to read like A[1], A[2] etc.

How to add value into the array?

What else but use append. I you have not seen this, it looks like a + in the assign activity. Just see an assign.

Behind the scenes the bpel code looks like:

<assign name="Assign_CDM_Contents_Append">
<bpelx:append>
<bpelx:from variable="Variable_Add_Array_Element"
query="/ns1:ABC"/>
<bpelx:to variable="Variable_Array"
part="payload"
query="/ns1:ArrayList"/>
</bpelx:append>
</assign>

Here Variable_Array is the variable to hold the array of Variable_Add_Array_Element

I am trying to add elements into the Array (Variable_Array).

I am doing this by appending the elements to be end of it.

Whatz with XPath?

There are 2 options to read data from XML arrays.
One is to use another XPath variable to build the dynamic XPath query.
Second option is to not use a new variable but dynamically insert the XPath in the bpws:getVariableData()

I prefer the first option as it gives a little clarity over the second option.

Why Dynamically build XPath?

Well what ever the case be you need to build XPath dynamically.
But why? Just to use the changing index into the Array.

How to Read data?

If you have a running index over either a flowN or a while loop that does this for you, either way you need the index to access the array.

Now the way to read is through dynamic XPath. That need to be built.
Here I have used option 1.

The below code shows how to use assign to build the dynamic XPath.

<assign name="Assign_XPath_For_Array">
<copy>
<from expression="concat('/ns1:ArrayList/ns2:ArrayElem[',bpws:getVariableData('Variable_Index_Counter'),']') "/>
<to variable="Variable_Xpath"/>
</copy>
</assing>

Note have used [index] to represent index element here in the array.
Here Variable_Xpath acts as a temporary string variable that holds the intermediate Xpath as string.

Now use this XPath string Variable while reading array index elements.
This would look like
<assign name="Assign_Read_Array">
<copy>
<from expression="bpws:getVariableData('Variable_Array','payload',bpws:getVariableData('Variable_Xpath'))"/>
<to variable="Variable_Read_Array_Element"
query="/ns1: ABC"/>
</copy>
</assign>

How to do with out another variable?

Just do not use the new variable. Build your XPath dynamically right in the bpws:getVariableData() 3rd parameter.

How to perform manual copy of bpel code for faster development!! With out issues

2008-09-16T13:27:00.033+01:00

What forced it?

Well as part of the BPEL development I had used a set of Enterprise Integration Patterns that each particular type of BPEL scope code should follow.

When each of those BPEL processes are created, they follow the same Pattern, a lot of code looked similar. But are not the same.

That where the catch was!!
SIMILAR but not the SAME!!!

What I wanted to do?

Well what I originally planned to do was to copy some of the code from one of the already built BPEL scope onto the new one I was building.
And I would be seamlessly able to reuse the stuff.

What that meant from code perspective was, I would like a scope from another BPEL code into my current BPEL code.
Well originally I though it was a brilliant idea. And finally it did turn up that way.
But it was damn hard till I figured out the trick. Not a trick actually but divide and conquer.

What are the problems I faced?

The first time I did that. I saw ERROR. Actually a brilliant one.
"XML parsing failed"

Nothing else. How the hell is that supposed to help me?

How did I make it work?

Well that is when I put my experimenting hand into the BPEL xml code.

The first thing you need to worry about are the non-declared variables that have come over as part of the copy process.
Resolution : declare them.

The second thing would be the name space that are new or namespaces that already exist.
Resolution : Either create the new namespace or when appropriate use the old namespace.

The third and the best helping hand is. Comment out groups of code. Leave a logical complete unit and compile. Follow the above steps. Fix apparent errors are they come.
Then go on to the next logical unit and repeat till finally you have completed the full Scope.

Just be aware of the Catch, if you have them. I hope you will as part of the scope. Copy them as well.

Why I like this better than drag and drop?

Some people advice not to do that but I prefer this better than the GUI to build.
If you ask me why? I would say this is damn faster to build.
And that is what brings me back into the BPEL xml code.

And the second reason is the way JDeveloper behaves.
Some times it does weired thing. Does not save thing that I have changed.
Some times goes back to the old code after I save.
It catches you by surprise some times as you are damn sure that you made the change that does not exist.

What is it with templates?

Some people recommend templates but they give complete BPEL template.
Not scopes to copy. But templates are good options if the BPEL processes are damn alike.

Create Empty Tag in Tranformations

2008-09-16T11:46:00.012+01:00

What forced me into it?

The message received from a web service had less data than what the XML (cannonical Data model needed) had. Down the line there were conditions that check the value of a element in the XML. These could be empty or some XYZ value.

Now the transformation had to map these value onto the XML, but if I did not map them the XML will miss the elements.

What I wanted to see?

What I wanted to see was, I should be able to perform the transformation from the Input Variable to the Output Variable.

Those elements that were required should not be lost.
These elements should be as empty tags in the Output Variable.

What did I get?

The transformation lost those elemements that I did not map.
That left me with only a few elements in the Output Variable.
Less than the required elements.

How I fixed this?

First of all I could not change the XML definition as the XMl is shared my a host of systems.
And it would be a massive effort to get this done.

Now a simple work around for this would be to assign a blank to the element in the transformation.

Now if you are think what is that supposed to mean, here is what I mean.
In the transformation right click the element that you dod not want to loose as that is not mapped.
Choose "setText" option in there.
Give a space in the "Text" field that you see there.

Congrats you have done this. Was simple aint it.

What does it look like back there?

Well inthe transaformation it will look like this

<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="no"> </xsl:text>

If you want to try?

If you have noted this, the xsl will have a space between the tags.
Delete that. And see what you get.
I have seen no difference on my instance.

Change my Partnerlink Property Dynamically

2008-09-15T14:05:00.029+01:00

What forced me into it?

This was in production. And there were 2 releases planned into production.
This was a property that was defined in bpel.xml file in the partnerLinkBinding.
As part of the second release the property had to be changed.

How did I do it?

Well I used java embedding to get this done.

Created a java embedding to change the property value in the partnerLinkBinding

Sample bpel.xml file
<?xml version = '1.0' encoding = 'UTF-8'?>
<bpelsuitcase>
<bpelprocess id="UpdateThis" src="UpdateThis.bpel">
<partnerlinkbindings>
<partnerlinkbinding name="client">
<property name="wsdlLocation">UpdateThis.wsdl</property>
<property name="myPartnerlinkProperty">myValueOfPartnerlinkProperty</property>
</partnerlinkbinding>
</partnerlinkbindings>
<configurations>
<property name="configProperty" encryption="plaintext">myBPMSystemAdmin</property>
</configurations>
</bpelprocess>
</bpelsuitcase>

Sample java embedding code to change these

try {
getLocator().lookupProcess ("UpdateThis").getDescriptor ().
getConfigurations().
setPropertyValue ("configProperty",
"BPMSystemAdmin");
getLocator().lookupProcess ("UpdateThis").getDescriptor ().
getPartnerLinkBindings().
getPartnerLinkBinding ("client").
setPropertyValue ("myPartnerlinkProperty",
"myChangedValueOfPartnerlinkProperty");
}
catch(Throwable ex) { .... }

Whatz the issue with restarting AS?

The first time I saw this it looked stupid. I changed the property from using another dummy bpel process. Used that happily till I restarted the AS.
And when I did the values in the partnerlink went back to those present earlier.

What I tried but failed?

And then I realized that the AS will reload all the BPEL process from the SUITCASE_BIN
The changed functionality with 10.1.3.X

A option that I tried but failed was to change the DESCRIPTOR column value in the PROCESS_DESCRIPTOR table.

But that did not help with restart. It always went back to the values that were present as part of the original deployment.
If you are thinking where can I find these tables, they are in the ORABPEL schema.

Database Adapters JNDI name in JDev and Application server

2008-09-12T08:05:00.004+01:00

Why I used it?

Well in all 3 of big projects that I worked in, Db adapters was required. I had no choice but use it.

Why JNDI?

Well JNDI itself provides one level of indirection from the physical database connection.

Decouples the actual database connection code from the application logic.

If you are thinking cut the theory and tell me the real thing, how to do this in BPEL, that's exactly what I am about to do.

Where is this done for DBAdapter?

If you had a look at DB Adapter, JNDI is a configuration that comes up while following the wizard for DBAdapter. Now where the hell did I set up JNDI connections and how will AS (application server [for those who might not guess AS is this]) figure this out.

Well actually you need to do this in 2 places. One in DBAdapter and another in AS.

Why I need this in AS?

Well how can AS figure out which database and other connection details.

What else but you need to do this in application server as well!

If you are asking what all I need to setup in AS just read on!!

What is the order to do this?

Both of these are independent and can be done in any order. (By both I mean JDev setup and AS setup)

Just be sure that both of these are done before you execute any code in BPEL else your opmn logs will show thing that you never like to see, ERRORS.

How to relate them? Whatz this use the same name thing?

Both the JDev and AS JNDI names should be the same or else AS will not be able to relate these together.

What's the AS setup?

There are 3 basic things that need to be setup in AS before AS JNDI can be used.

Number 1 the physical connection pool with all the service details.

Number 2 the Data source that points to the connection pool.

Number 3 setup the JNDI name as in JDev and pointing to the Data Source.

What do I setup in JDev?

In the connections in JDev create a connection to the database that was created in AS connection pool. Else you will not be able to explore the stuff in the Database.

What is with this mcf thing?

If you setup connection in JDev there is some thing that comes on board but not directly visible.

What else but the mcf properties.

Does not harm anything but if the JNDI are missing in AS starts using this to connect.

So for production it is best that these mcf details are removed.

If you don't know that where it is located just create a project with JNDI see it for your self.

It will be present in the Database Adapter generated files. Do you want clues!! I guess not.

Correspond manual recovery back to the BPEL process

2008-08-22T11:59:00.026+01:00

Looks complex, but is it?

Manual recovery of BPEL process does not look like a trivial job at all.
And the BPEL Console for manual recovery does do seem to reveal a lot of information as to which process corresponds to which instance of BPEL process in the first glance.

Why do instances end up in manual recovery?

Well this is to do with how BPEL engine handles in coming messages.
BPEL delivery service does 2 things

Use JMS to register message to be processed
Save message in dehydration store

Once the BPEL thread picks the JMS message the instance goes into UNRESOLVED state.
And when the instance is complete the dehydration stores goes to HANDLED state.

If the server shuts down or crashes or engine times out and comes back unable to find the JMS message as it might be already consumed.

What does Manual Recovery show?

Manual recovery shows all instances that are in UNRESOLVED state.

So it would also show instance going from UNRESOLVED to HANDLED states in dehydration store. But are not yet marked as HANDLED.

From what I have seen in production box, a lot of instances come into manual recovery and disappear in a short while.

Should I recover everything that I see in Manual Recovery?

One should not recover every message that you see in manual recovery.
Some of these could be genuine messages that are in flight.
Recover only those messages that are in manual recovery for at least a duration of X which is larger than expected in that particular enterprise system.

What and where do you recover?

Well when you look at the manual recovery area there are 3 different tabs that you generally see in the BPEL console. Most often you would only recover from the first 2 that are represented invoke and callbacks.

Generally I use the instance ID of the BPEL process to identify manual recovery instance corresponds to which BPEL instance.
If there are instances in staled state in BPEL, there there would be a correspoonding manual recovery process instance.
This manualt recovery instance conversation ID will have also contain the instance ID of the BPEL process along with other information with which the conversation Id is build.

What if there is no instance ID but some thing like MD5{xyz...}

These are messages for which instances are not yet created. Can be safely recovered.

Relate BPEL process instance parent to child relationship

2008-08-22T10:51:00.033+01:00

Why I want to relate these?

Before I start I consider this scenario that prompted me to write this stuff.
Well I have a sequence of BPEL processes that get called.
A
--> B
----> C
-------> D
-------> E
----> F

I want a way to relate all the process together in the BPEL console or bespoke application built on top of the BPEL Database.

How to do this?

There are multiple ways to relate these BPEL process.

Title approach

Well the one I prefer is to set the title of the BPEL process instances as some logical value that makes sense to business. What that would mean is all the BPEL processes from "A" to "F" will all be name as "XYZ".
But this is good for the bespoke applications.
Well some times before the actual title of the process is set the BPEL process might go into manual recovery. How do you solve?

Database approach

Well go into the BPEL database and look.
Now how do I relate all the processes in the database.
Well first you need to go the table "ORABPEL"."CUBE_INSTANCE"

There are 3 specific columns that you should know about.
"TITLE" - sets the title of the BPEL process in this column as seen in the BPEL console

"ROOT_ID" - CIKEY (instance id as in BPEL console) of the root parent basically instance ID of A as in BPEL console

"PARENT_ID" - Immediate parents ID i.e the caller process

Sample Scenario

A is the parent
A calls B
B calls C and F
C calls D and E
-------------------------------------------------------
Process Name - Instance ID - Root ID - Parent ID --> comment
-------------------------------------------------------
A - 1 - 1 - --> parent Id blank as no parent for it but root Id is 1
B - 2 - 1 - 1 --> both parent and root ID as same as A
C - 3 - 1 - 2 --> root is still 1, but parent now is B
D - 4 - 1 - 3 --> root is still 1, but parent now is C
E - 5 - 1 - 3 --> root is still 1, but parent now is C
F - 6 - 1 - 2 --> root is still 1, but parent now is B

Sample Query

So sample queries to find all the children in a parent BPEL tree would be to use the root ID
================ Query START ==================================================
select * from cube_instance where root_id = {ROOT aprent instance number}
================ Query END ====================================================

A query to find all root BPEL process i.e BPEL process that are the initiators

================ Query START =================
select * from cube_instance where parent_id is NULL
================ Query END ===================

Why not use Tree Finder?

Itz a good question to ask why not use tree finder.

In the projects that I worked, access to the BPEL console is restricted and access to the BPEL is only through a bespoke J2EE application. But that application does not allow viewing of BPEL instances are that is for functinal people to see work flow tasks related to business errors.

The alternative that was implemented was a read only user to the BPEL database from where these queries are helpful to relate BPEL instances. Especially when performing manual recovery of stales instances and to identify the tree chain that has stalled in the flow.

Hope this answers question raised as a commnet here.

Correlation for what? What forced it?

2008-08-21T14:25:00.009+01:00

Is it complex?

Well correlation is not as complex as it seems.
Well when I first looked at it, it did not make any sense.
But this is what my experience with correlation is, and it was not as hard as I though it would be.
Though it was not difficult to get it working, I had to do a lot of ground work basically read a couple of articles before I understood what it was all about.
But once I did understand, it was a cake walk.

Whatz correlation? What does it correlate?

What correlation meant to me as a maths student was linear relationship between two random variables.
I initially understood it was to relate two seemly unrelated instances in BPEL, that are related in business sense. And it did turn out that way.

Where to use?

When BPEL is in synchronous mode, the caller waits for the response, so caller instance does the correlation in the background using WS-Addressing, basically add its own correlation to the message header send out.

Itz the asynchronous execution where the BPEL instance fires and forgets who received it. That when you want to say to BPEL which instance to go back to. Here is where BPEL correlation kicks in. What is basically does is use the data in the message to relate the instance. And so the correlation should be unique to the instance.
It does not always need to be A --> B --> C --> A but can be A --> B --> A if BPEL fires and forgets and wants to send back to the caller.

What forced it?

First of all correlation has force itself into my workspace in 2 of the projects that I was involved in. And both of these were for different reasons.

Circular call

Firstly was for the generally known and widely written about one i.e. A--calls -> B --> C --> A, basically a transitive calls that ends up on the caller, and the caller needs to figure out which instance of A --> C should return to.

If canonical data model id used to pass data across then one or more of the elements in the message will be used to build the correlation else one of the those fields in the message will be used for correlation.

FlowN

Second was for a entirely different scenario.
I tried to use FlowN to spawn 'N' 'ProcessB' from a master 'ProcessA'.
Call from 'ProcessA' to 'ProcessB' was asynchronous call. After ProcessB was complete it would return status back to ProcessA.

Without any correlation I was getting

"Conflicting receive.Another receive activity or equivalent (currently, onMessage branch in a pick activity) has already been enabled with the partnerLink "Process", operation name "onResult" and correlation set "" (or conversation id). Appendix A - Standard Faults in the BPEL 1.1 specification specifies a fault should be thrown under these conditions."

To solve this I had to create correlation. The reason being each of the branches in FlowN created exactly the same asynchronous call, but the receiving instance had to identify which spawn in the FlowN was the response coming back to. And yes creation of correlation did solve the problem.

But making correlation in FlowN to work was not straight forward as there were scope issues that I had to address, and I initially did not see coming. I only found explanations about FlowN in oracle forums from the Google I did. Hopefully I would write another blog post for the correlation in FlowN.

Where to setup correlation?

Only the receiver should perform the correlation.
And the sender should only worry about sending enough data to perform correlation.

Related Articles that helped me:

There was another very good article that helped me but I am unable to find that now.

Perform Stress Test in BPEL Console

2008-08-15T13:46:00.005+01:00

Where Do I find it?

There is "Perform stress test" check box that you might have see in BPEL console.
Well the one that sits along side the famous manual data feeding page "Post XML Message".

Well if you have not seen it then this what I am referring to.
When the BPEL process is clicked, the "Initiate" tab opens.
Here you will see the payload as HTML form, also possible to choose XML Source.

Right there at the bottom left you will find 2 check boxes.
"Save Test" and another "Perform stress Test"

Options that come up

When you click this "Perform stress test", a few options are thrown up.
Number of concurrent threads?
Number of loops?
Constant delay between each invocation?

So if you set these values are 100, 50, 1000 respectively that would run 100 threads that loop and send 50 requests i.e. total of 5000 requests in the system.
Each thread will wait 1000 milli seconds before posting a request.

When not usable?

If you have not guessed it then here it is.
When correlation exists in the BPEL process that you want to test this approach is not suitable.
If you ask me why, it is becoz the same input is feed in the loop.
So this might not work out.

What the other option?

The other option that I have used is to use Java API and pump messages into BPEL for such testing. Mostly I will post another blog post to say how to post messages using java API.

BPEL context properties for Client API invocation

2008-08-15T13:10:00.006+01:00

Java Class Locator

"Locator" class Java APIs are used to connect to oracle BPEL.
The locator requires a BPEL Context properties to be loaded as parameter as part of the Locator initialization. So I need to know what the properties looks like.

Properties looks like this

The propeties should look like
=================properties file START===========================================
orabpel.platform={Oracle Application Server Platform}
java.naming.factory.initial=com.evermind.server.rmi.RMIInitialContextFactory
java.naming.provider.url=opmn:ormi://{hostname}:{port}:{oc4jinstance}/orabpel
java.naming.security.principal={username}
java.naming.security.credentials={password}
=================properties file END=============================================

Sample properties
=================properties file START=======================================
orabpel.platform=ias_10g
java.naming.factory.initial=com.evermind.server.rmi.RMIInitialContextFactory
java.naming.provider.url=opmn:ormi://localhost:6003:home/orabpel
java.naming.security.principal=oc4jadmin
java.naming.security.credentials=welcome1
=================properties file END=========================================

Where do I find the property values?

There are multiple ways to identify what the these property values are.
One of the easiest wasy is through the BPEL Console. Here is how I do it.

Open the BPEL console --> Click Goto BPEL Admin --> Login to the Admin console

The default page that opens is SERVER --> under the tab Configuration
the following value correspond to the following property
"jndiProviderURL" = "java.naming.provider.url"
"bpelPlatform" = "orabpel.platform"

Truncate Work Flow Tasks in BPEL

2008-08-14T17:09:00.004+01:00

Why I want to do this?

While in Development, the instances are purged using the "Purge All Instances" option button in Instances tab in BPEL console.

What I find is this process does not seem to clear out any work flow tasks that are outstanding.

How I do this

To clean out all the outstanding WF tasks use the following query.

=============Query START ===================
truncate table wftaskhistory;
truncate table wfassignee;
truncate table wfattachment;
truncate table wfcomments;
truncate table wfmessageattribute;
truncate table wfnotification;
truncate table wfnotificationmessages;
truncate table wfroutingslip;
truncate table wftasktimer;
truncate table wftask;
=============Query END ===================

What it does?

What this does is clear the back end BPEL database table.

Count Number of BPEL processes Instantiated in 15 minutes intervals

2008-08-14T17:04:00.006+01:00

Why count number of instance that too in 15 minutes interval?

Count Number of BPEL processes instantiated in 15 minutes intervals for what is a good questions.

Well, post GO LIVE to identify what is the rate of arrival of BPEL processes at 15 minutes interval is some thing that upper management is always interested in.
Also can be used for performance stats collection.

Query

Well here I have only used the "Hello World BPEL" process for listing. Add process names to identify the rate of arrival of messages in BPEL system.

=================Query START ====================
SELECT processname sourcesystem, time_interval timeinterval,
COUNT (1) numberoftransactions
FROM (
SELECT process_id processname, creation_date,
CASE
WHEN (EXTRACT (MINUTE FROM (creation_date)) / 15 ) <>
TO_CHAR (creation_date, 'DD-MM-YYYY HH24')
'Hrs 1-(First 15 Minutes)'
WHEN (EXTRACT (MINUTE FROM (creation_date)) / 15) <>
TO_CHAR (creation_date, 'DD-MM-YYYY HH24')
'Hrs 2-(15 to 30 Minutes)'
WHEN (EXTRACT (MINUTE FROM (creation_date)) / 15) <>
TO_CHAR (creation_date, 'DD-MM-YYYY HH24')
'Hrs 3-(30 to 45 Minutes)'
ELSE TO_CHAR (creation_date, 'DD-MM-YYYY HH24')
'Hrs 4-(Last 15 Minutes)'
END AS time_interval
FROM orabpel.cube_instance
WHERE process_id IN ('Hello World BPEL')
AND creation_date > TO_DATE (:starttime, 'DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI:SS')
AND creation_date <>
)
GROUP BY processname, time_interval
ORDER BY time_interval DESC;
=================Query END ====================

BPEL process states

2008-08-14T11:20:00.007+01:00

Why Identify states?

To identify the states of the BPEL processes from the database can be quite handy while for housekeeping jobs in production and building some bespoke application to monitor BPEL servers.

Where to find?

Well the the states of the BPEL processes can be found from the database.
This is what I do and I prefer as it gives a lot more control of what you like to see and customize.

Core table and columns

Well the core table to look at is "ORABPEL"."CUBE_INSTANCE"

The states of the BPEL processes are stores in "STATE" column.
This is defined as INTEGER in the database and does not help in first glance, unless it is know what each state means.

What do the states mean?

Well this is what each integer in the "STATE" column mean they mean:
0 - INITIATED in BPEL
1 - OPEN and RUNNING in BPEL
2 - OPEN and SUSPENDED in BPEL
3 - OPEN and FAULTED in BPEL
4 - CLOSED and PENDING_CANCEL in BPEL
5 - CLOSED and COMPLETED in BPEL
6 - CLOSED and FAULTED in BPEL
7 - CLOSED and CANCELLED in BPEL
8 - CLOSED and ABORTED in BPEL
9 - CLOSED and STALE in BPEL
ELSE UNKNOWN in BPEL

Sample Query

A sample query to find count of BPEL process in various states with in start and end date
=================== Query START ======================
SELECT
CASE state
WHEN 0 THEN 'initiated'
WHEN 1 THEN 'open.running'
WHEN 2 THEN 'open.suspended'
WHEN 3 THEN 'open.faulted'
WHEN 4 THEN 'closed.pending_cancel'
WHEN 5 THEN 'closed.completed'
WHEN 6 THEN 'closed.faulted'
WHEN 7 THEN 'closed.cancelled'
WHEN 8 THEN 'closed.aborted'
WHEN 9 THEN 'closed.stale'
ELSE 'unknown'
END state_text,
COUNT (1)
FROM orabpel.cube_instance
WHERE creation_date < (:startdate) AND creation_date > (:enddate)
GROUP BY state;
=================== Query END ======================

Disclaimer of content

2008-08-13T19:55:00.001+01:00

Well all the posts in this blog are what I have experienced in the projects that I have worked on or have tested with simple examples in SOA suite 10.1.3.3 MLR 7

I would say they work in the environment that I have got.
And I am fairly certain that the environment that I have got is a standard one that oracle provides.

If you find that these do not work,

either you can play with it and make it work.

Or you can choose to leave me a note and have some suggestions that will help others understand the post better.

Or vene better take both the options.

Don't hesitate to drop in a comment

Welcome to Oracle BPEL in depth series

2008-07-11T16:00:00.000+01:00

Welcome to another in depth series!!
Well this is about Oracle BPEL