Creating Complex Local Temporary Variables in OIC by John Graves

Introduction

Over the past couple of years, I have been involved in more and more projects and proofs-of-concept moving assets from Oracle SOA Suite to Oracle Integration Cloud.

Now it is important to note that these are quite different products and serve different needs.  SOA Suite is a very extensive tool which allows you to create apps, user interfaces, integrations and much more.  Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) is more focused on just integration.  However, many companies have used SOA Suite simply for integration purposes and making the move to OIC attractive.

There are many actions in the world of BPEL that don’t yet exist in OIC, but one that is particularly troublesome is the lack of local variables.  It is often convenient in BPEL to use a local variable to make future mappings easier in the integration.  SOA Suite’s BPEL lets you create arbitrary variables of any shape and size based on a schema definition.  In OIC, local variables are either a string or based on a trigger or invoke operation.

Data Stitch

The new Data Stitch action almost gets us there, but again, the stitch variable must be a type already defined by a trigger or invoke.  You can’t define a schema for the variable if it does not already exist.

Solution

STAGE FILE to the rescue!!!

As you may know, you can use the stage file action to create a file on the local, in-memory, temporary filesystem.  This is very handy when manipulating files, performing zip and unzip operations and preparing files for file based integrations such as ERP Cloud.  But it can also be used to create temporary, local variables! Read the complete article here.

PaaS Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle PaaS become a member in the PaaS (Integration & Process) Partner Community please register here.

Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki

Technorati Tags: SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,OPN,Jürgen Kress