SOA Suite 12c: Collect & Deploy SCA composites & Service Bus artifacts using Maven by Maarten Smeets

April 6, 2016 Leave a comment

 

clip_image002An artifact repository has many benefits for collaboration and governance of artifacts. In this blog post I will illustrate how you can fetch SCA composites and Service Bus artifacts from an artifact repository and deploy them. The purpose of this exercise is to show that you do not need loads of custom scripts to do these simple tasks. Why re-invent a wheel when Oracle already provides it?

This example has been created for SOA Suite 12.1.3. This will not work as-is for 11g and earlier since they lack OOTB Maven support for SOA Suite artifacts. In order to start using Maven to do command-line deployments, you need to have some Oracle artifacts in your repository. See http://biemond.blogspot.nl/2014/06/maven-support-for-1213-service-bus-soa.html on how to put them there. I have used two test projects which were already in the repository. A SCA composite called HelloWorld_1.0 and a Service Bus project also called HelloWorld_1.0. In my example, the SCA composite is in the GroupId nl.amis.smeetsm.composite and the Service Bus project is in the GroupId nl.amis.smeetsm.servicebus. You can find information on how to deploy to an artifact repository (e.g. Nexus) here.

SCA Composite

Quick & dirty with few dependencies

I have described getting your SCA composite out of Nexus and into an environment here. The process described there has very few dependencies. First you manually download your jar file using the repository API and then you deploy it using a Maven command like:

mvn com.oracle.soa.plugin:oracle-soa-plugin:deploy -DsarLocation=HelloWorld-1.0.jar -Duser=weblogic -Dpassword=Welcome01 -DserverURL=http://localhost:7101

In order for this to work, you need to have a (dummy) pom.xml file in the current directory. You cannot use the project pom file for this. The only requisites (next to a working Maven installation) are;

  • the sar file
  • serverUrl and credentials of the server you need to deploy to

Notice that you do not even need an Oracle home location for this. In order to build the project from sources however, you do need an Oracle home. Read the complete article here.

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WebLogic Console and BPM Worklist. Authentication using OpenLDAP by Maarten Smeets

November 23, 2015 Leave a comment

clip_image002In this blog I will illustrate how you can configure Weblogic Server to use OpenLDAP as authentication provider and to allow OpenLDAP users to login to the Oracle BPM Worklist application. In a previous blog I have already shown how to do Weblogic Authentication with ApacheDS (LDAP and Weblogic; Using ApacheDS as authentication provider for Weblogic). In this blog I will use OpenLDAP to also do BPM Worklist authentication.

 

Why use OpenLDAP?

Oracle Platform Security Services (OPSS) supports the use of several authentication providers. See: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/core.1111/e10043/devuserole.htm#JISEC2474. OpenLDAP is the only open source provider available in this list.

  • Microsoft Active Directory
  • Novell eDirectory
  • Oracle Directory Server Enterprise Edition
  • Oracle Internet Directory
  • Oracle Virtual Directory
  • OpenLDAP
  • Oracle WebLogic Server Embedded LDAP Directory
  • Microsoft ADAM
  • IBM Tivoli

When you can use a certain provider for Weblogic authentication, this does not automatically mean you also use this user in Fusion Middleware applications which use JPS such as the BPM Worklist application. Possible authentication providers in Weblogic Server cover a wider range of servers and mechanisms than can be used in JPS out of the box.

What causes this limitation? Well, most Fusion Middleware Applications (all as far as I’ve seen) can only look at the first LDAP provider for authentication. This is usually the default authenticator (Weblogic Embedded LDAP server). When I add another LDAP authenticator, it will be ignored. The solution is straightforward; use a single LDAP. Of course if you don’t want that, you can also virtualize several LDAPs and offer them as a single LDAP for the application to talk to. The most common solutions for this are; Oracle Virtual Directory (OVD, http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12839_01/oid.1111/e10036/basics_10_ovd_what.htm) and LibOVD. Oracle Virtual Directory is a separate product. LibOVD is provided with Weblogic Server but does not have its own web-interface and is limited in functionality (and configuration is more troublesome in my opinion). When (for example for ApacheDS) you specify the generic LDAPAuthenticator and not a specific one such as for OpenLDAP, you need to specify an idstore.type in the jps-config.xml in DOMAINDIR\config\fmwconfig. This idstore.type is limited to the list below: Read the complete article here.

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Unleash the power of Java API’s on your WLST scripts! By Maarten Smeets

September 22, 2015 Leave a comment

 

clip_image001Oracle SOA Suite and many other Oracle products have extensive Java API’s to expose their functionality. WLST can often be used for relatively course grained actions. WLST (the version supplied in Weblogic 12.1.3) uses Jython 2.2.1. Jython is the Python scripting language implemented on the Java Virtual Machine. Jython allows easy integration with Java. In this article I describe how you can unleash the power of these Java API’s on your WLST scripts!
Considerations

Why WLST and not Java?

For system operators, WLST is easier to work with than Java code. For Java code you need to supply all dependencies in the classpath and updating code requires recompilation. Also Java code can be a bit verbose compared to WLST code and requires (for most developers) more time to write. With a WLST script you do not need to provide dependencies since they are already present in the classpath set by the wlst.sh (of wlst.cmd) command used to start WLST scripts and you can more easily update the scripts without need for recompilation.

Why use Java classes in WLST?

In this example I wanted to create a script which undeployed composites which where not the default revision (are not called by default). Also I wanted to look at the instances. I did not want to undeploy composites which had running instances (long running instances like BPM and ACM). WLST provides some nifty features to undeploy composites; https://docs.oracle.com/middleware/1213/soasuite/wlst-reference-soa/custom_soa.htm#SOACR2689 for example the sca_undeployComposite command. I did however not see WLST commands I could use to query instances.

Undeploying composites using Java

I started out with a piece of Java code shown below. In order to make the required classes available in your project, you need to import Weblogic Remote Client, JRF API and SOA Runtime (see here for a more elaborate example of using the Java API). With the Locator class you can find your composites and instances. By calling the MBean oracle.soa.config:Application=soa-infra,j2eeType=CompositeLifecycleConfig,name=soa-infra method removeCompositeForLabel you can undeploy composites from Java. This is based on what I found at Read the complete article here.

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Searching Service Bus Pipeline Alert contents by Maarten Smeets

September 15, 2015 Leave a comment

 

clip_image001There are several ways monitor messages passing through the Service Bus. Using pipeline alerts is one of them. Pipeline alerts can be searched in the Enterprise Manager based on several parameters such as summary or when they have occurred. Usually an important part of the message payload is saved in the content of the alert. This content can not be searched from the Enterprise Manager. In this post I will provide an example for logging Service Bus request and response messages using pipeline alerts and a means to search alert contents for a specific occurrence. The example provided has been created in SOA Suite 12.1.3 but the script also works in SOA Suite 11.1.1.6.
Service Bus Pipeline Alerts

The Oracle Service Bus provides several monitoring mechanisms. These can be tweaked in the Enterprise Manager.

In this example I’m going to use Pipeline Alerts. Where you can find them in the Enterprise Manager has been described on: https://technology.amis.nl/2014/06/27/soa-suite-12c-where-to-find-service-bus-pipeline-alerts-in-enterprise-manager-fusion-middleware-control/. I’ve created a small sample process called HelloWorld. This process can be called with a name and returns ‘Hello name’ as a response. The process itself has a single AlertDestination and has two pipeline alerts. One for the request and one for the response. These pipeline alerts write the content of the header en body variables to the content field of the alert.

When I call this service with ‘Maarten’ and with ‘John’, I can see the created pipeline alerts in the Enterprise Manager. Read the complete article here.

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Oracle introduces API Manager! By Maarten Smeets

July 8, 2015 Leave a comment

 

clip_image001Oracle has introduced a new product; API Manager (you can find the official documentation here). API Manager is an important addition to the already impressive Oracle SOA stack. In this article I’ll explain what this new product does and how it helps in managing your API’s. I will focus on the features and benefits you can have of this product and also elaborate a little about my current experiences with it.

API Manager

What does API Manager do?

API Manager is a product which extends the Service Bus functionality and provides an API Manager Portal to manage API’s and browse analytics. API Manager allows you to save certain metadata as part of a Service Bus proxy service. This metadata is used to allow access to an API and provide data on their usage. SOAP and REST API’s are supported (HTTP API’s). Read the complete article here.

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SOA Suite 12c: The Coherence Adapter By Maarten Smeets

May 26, 2015 Leave a comment

 

clip_image001Oracle SOA Suite 12c ships with a new technology adapter, the Oracle CoherenceAdapter. This adapter allows easy integration with a Coherence Data Grid (a distributed cache). The excellent post by Antony Reynolds provides the information required to setup your Coherence cache and get started with the adapter. In this blog post I will describe a pattern which can be used to use Coherence Data Grid as a cache for a database table (or view, or…). Also I did some performance measures on the Oracle quickstart JDeveloper installation with Integrated Weblogic server and an XE database with surprising results!

Important tips from Antony’s post:

  • Use one Coherence cache per object type. This allows clearing the entire cache and specifying specific behavior per object type.
  • Make sure the Coherence configuration file is available to every server in the cluster (shared storage). This is similar to a DbAdapter configuration plan.
  • Set the servicename in the outbound connectionFactory of the CoherenceAdapter to DistributedCache so it works in clusters and WLSExtendProxy to false unless you are using this feature.
  • In 11c you can use Coherence from within a SOA Suite Spring component or by enabling the OSB result cache. Both have disadvantages though. 12c provides the CoherenceAdapter as alternative. Read the complete article here.

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Service Bus: Obtaining a list of exposed SOAP HTTP endpoints by Maarten Smeets

February 18, 2015 Leave a comment

 

The Oracle Service Bus is often used for service virtualization. Endpoints are exposed on the Service Bus which proxy other services. Using such an abstraction layer can provide benefits such as (among many other things) monitoring/logging, dealing with different versions of services, throttling/error handling and result caching. In this blog I will provide a small (Java) script, which works for SOA Suite 11g and 12c, which determines exposed endpoints on the Service Bus.

How to determine endpoints?

clip_image001In order to determine endpoints on the Service Bus, The Service Bus MBeans can be accessed. These MBeans can obtained from within a local context inside the Service Bus or remotely via JMX (when configured, see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1013916/how-to-enable-jmx-on-weblogic-10-x). In this example I’ll use a remote connection to a Weblogic Server instance which runs on the same machine (JDeveloper IntegratedWeblogicServer). To browse MBeans, you can use jvisualvm (http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/visualvm/) which is distributed as part of the Oracle JDK. JVisualVM has a plugin to browse MBeans.

When connected, the Service Bus MBeans are located under com.oracle.osb. The proxy services which define the exposed endpoints, can be recognized by the Proxy$ prefix. In order to determine the actual endpoint, you can look at the ResourceConfigurationMBean of the proxy service. Under configuration, transport-configuration you can find a property called url. The script also filters HTTP SOAP services since the url field is also used for other transports. A replace of // with / is done on the combination server:host/url since the url can start with a /. This causes no difference in functioning but provides better readable output. If you want WSDL’s, you can add ‘?wsdl’ to the obtained endpoint. Read the complete article here.

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SOA Suite 12c: Getting started with the Spring Component by Maarten Smeets

February 7, 2015 1 Comment

 

clip_image001The Oracle SOA Suite Spring component has been present since SOA Suite 11.1.1.3 (11gR1 PS2). This component allows easy integration of Java code with other SOA Suite components such as (among others) BPEL, BPM and Business Rules. In SOA Suite 12c (12.1.3.0) this component is still present. In This blog post I will provide a short example on how it can be used and how the first problem I encountered with this component can be avoided.

Implementation

First create a SOA Application and an empty project. Next create a Java class with a public method and extract an interface with the public method. You can also supply JARs in the SCA-INF/lib folder of the project with the class/interface.

The result in this example. The Java class extends the interface. Read the complete article here.

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SOA Suite 11g and 12c: Determining composite dependencies to the level of operations by Maarten Smeets

January 16, 2015 Leave a comment

clip_image001In large companies, often there are many services and dependencies between services. It is important to track service dependencies in order to for example estimate the impact of changes. Design documents or architecture views can be used for this but as everybody knows, there is often a gap between theory and practice (design and implementation).

In this blog post I provide code to determine dependencies between composites to the level of operation calls. In order to achieve this, I’ll parse the composite.xml files, JCA files (used by adapters) and also the BPEL and BPMN files in order to determine the operations. The script can be used for SOA Suite 11g and 12c composites.

The above picture shows different parts of which a composite is composed and how they are linked. The script first determines references. The references specify which external services are called. Then by using wires, the relevant components are determined. Based on the component type, specific logic is used to extract the operation. Not shown in this picture is how database dependencies can also be determined by the script by parsing the JCA files specified in the reference. If you’re in a hurry, you can go to the ‘Executing the script’ part directly and skip the explanation.

Composites

This blog will focus on composites (which can contain components like BPEL and BPM) using the shared SOA infrastructure and not on for example the Service Bus. Composites use the Software Component Architecture (http://www.oasis-opencsa.org/sca) to wire different components together in a consistent way. Oracle uses XML files to describe composites, components and references. These files can easily be parsed and correlated.

Introduction composite.xml

The main file describing a composite is the composite.xml file. Below is a small sample of a HelloWorld composite containing a single component, a BPEL process. Read the complete article here.

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SOA Suite 12c: The LDAP Adapter, a quick and easy tutorial by Maarten Smeets

December 16, 2014 1 Comment

clip_image001In enterprises, LDAP servers are often used to store user credentials and groups and share them among applications. Oracle SOA Suite 12c introduces a new technology adapter; the LDAPAdapter which allows easy integration with LDAP servers. In this blog post I will provide a quick and easy howto on installation of an LDAP server and browser (ApacheDS and Apache Directory Studio). I will also describe the configuration required to use the LDAPAdapter and provide an example BPEL process which allows creation of new users in the ApacheDS LDAP server by means of webservice calls.

Setting up the LDAP server

Installing an LDAP server

For this example I’ll use ApacheDS as LDAP server and Apache Directory Studio as LDAP browser. First download and install Apache Directory Studio from http://directory.apache.org/studio/. Next create an LDAP server. Click the LDAP server tab in the bottom left corner and click New Server. Read the complete article here.

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