PaaS Community Blog

Understanding the Enterprise Scheduler Service in ICS by Sherwood Zern

Introduction

In many enterprise integration scenarios there is a requirement to initiate tasks at scheduled times or at user defined intervals. The Oracle Integration Cloud Service (ICS) provides scheduling functionality via the Oracle Enterprise Scheduler to satisfy these types of requirements.  The Oracle Enterprise Scheduler Service (ESS) is primarily a Java EE application that provides time-based and schedule-based callbacks to other applications to run their jobs. Oracle ESS applications define jobs and specify when those jobs need to be executed and then gives these applications a callback at the scheduled time or when a particular event arrives. Oracle ESS does not execute the jobs itself, it generates a callback to the application and the application actually executes the job request. This implies that Oracle Enterprise Scheduler Service is not aware of the details of the job request; all the job request details are owned and managed by the application.

What follows will be a discussion as to how ICS utilizes the ESS feature.  The document will cover how the ESS threads are allocated and the internal preparation completed for file processing.

Quick ICS Overview

The Integration Cloud Service deployment topology consists of one cluster.  The cluster has two managed servers along with one administration server.  This bit of information is relevant to the discussion of how the Enterprise Scheduler Service works and how it is used by applications like an ICS flow that runs in a clustered HA environment.

A common use case for leveraging ESS is to setup a schedule to poll for files on an FTP server at regular intervals.  At the time files are found and then selected for processing, the ESS does some internal scheduling of these files to ensure the managed servers are not overloaded.  Understanding how this file processing works and how throttling might be applied automatically is valuable information as you take advantage of this ICS feature.

An integration can be scheduled using the ICS scheduling user interface (UI). The UI provides a basic and an advanced option.  The basic option provides UI controls to schedule when to execute the integration. Read the complete article here

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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ICS Connectivity Agent stdout Log Rotation by Greg Mally

When monitoring and/or troubleshooting the ICS Connectivity Agent server, it is important to not only have the standard logs (e.g., AdminServer-diagnostic.log) but also the standard out/error (stdout/stderr).  One of the big challenges of capturing the stdout is not exhausting the disk storage over time.  Since the ICS Connectivity Agent is a WebLogic server installation, there are out-of-the-box options available for redirecting the stdout/stderr (see WebLogic Server logging options).  However, there are limitations for using the built-in features of WebLogic which include not capturing all the stdout/stderr (e.g., initial startup output, thread dumps using kill -3).  This blog focuses on an option available at the OS level and provides a script to help setup your environment.

One of the requirements of the ICS Connectivity Agent is it must run on Linux (see System Requirements and Restrictions). Because of this requirement, we have a Linux command at our disposal that will help manage the rotation of the agent stdout: logrotate (http://www.linuxcommand.org/man_pages/logrotate8.html). There are plenty of examples of how to use logrotate and if you are a seasoned Linux person, this blog is most likely not needed for you.  However, if you want a helper script to get this going for you in the context of the ICS Connectivity Agent then keep reading.

Starting the Connectivity Agent

Part of the ICS Connectivity Agent installation includes a start script (startAgent.sh) that is created in the directory where the agent is installed. In order to make sure the started agent server is not terminated when exiting the shell/terminal, the agent is started using the Linux nohup command. Read the complete article here.

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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Differentiating the ICS Agent Types – Definitive Tip #5 by Phil Wilkins

In our book we talked about the difference between the agents offered by ICS, namely the Connection  and Execution agents. Whilst we differentiated the two, we did focus on the connection agent as this is the type we expect to see used in most cases. However the execution agent still suffers from a level of confusion, and it has been helped by being called  ‘ICS on-premises’.

As part of a number of recent conversations the questions and confusion of what the execution agent is and how it works has come up. There is the well known saying ‘a picture is as good as a 1000 words’ which prompted us to develop the diagram below as a power point slide – in its power point form much of the detail is used as an animated build up. Read the complete article here.

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) partner resource kit

Partner Resource kit: Presentation, faq, click-through demo, documentation and decision matrix published at our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required):

· Oracle Integration Cloud Overview (PPT)

· Frequently Asked Questions

· Oracle Integration Cloud Click-through Demo

· Oracle Integration Cloud Documentation

· Cloud Integration Decision Matrix

· Overview Video YouTube

· Oracle Integration Cloud product page

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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Selecting which iPaaS Product(s) to use – ICS Definitive Tip #4 by Phil Wilkins

In the last few years Oracle’s iPaaS offerings have progressed significantly from one or two solutions such as Mobile Cloud Service to in excess of 35 offerings. This makes it challenging to decide which product(s) to use. The means for selection depends upon a range of factors including:

• Most suitable licensing model (ICS provides a lower cost of entry than SOA CS as you’re paying by message volumes)
• Development skills and desire to resilience or invest in people (SOA on-premises to SOA CS is easier than a technology change such as ICS)
• The amount of control you have in an environment – JCS offers more control than ACCS for example

This is in addition the technical features that the different products offer. In terms of capability, Oracle iPaaS products can overlap, but better than having gaps. Not only is there overlap, you can achieve the same results with one or more products. Obviously, the permutation that provides the least amount of overlap is likely  to provide the best value in terms of investment.  To help see and understand this we have in the past used a visualisation such as the one shown below which helps evaluate these considerations.

It is worth saying that this visualisation has been subjectively constructed, and as products evolve over time it is only true for a limited period of time. Never the less it is helpful in reviewing options, and explaining product recommendations. Read the complete article here.

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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