SOA Suite 12.2.1: Resiliency updates on the operations side of life by Robert van Molken

On the 25th of October at Open World 2015, Oracle released the 12.2.1 version of SOA Suite 12c. This release is full of resiliency updates on the operation side of life.

The operations of integration are critical and Oracle listened to the business requirement of customers while developing this release. Here are few of these operations.

• Usually many hardware/software systems are managed by a small team.
• With minimum need for admin intervention an integration needs to run silently, automatically and smoothly.
• When things do go wrong, a console is needed that quickly allows identification and resolution of exceptions.
• Without a lot of admin training it should be relatively simple to manage integrations.
• An integration needs to scale, perform and provide continuous availability to process high workloads.
• Ability to patch applications/composites for emergency fixes.

It isn’t the first time in the life cycle of SOA Suite 12c that Oracle is working on the operations of the product.

SOA Operations in 12.1.3

In the previous 12.1.3 release Oracle already targeted the IT operations. Read my blog about it for more details. But for a quick reference, here are the major updates.

• Automated Operations
  • Auto Purge: Old data past the retention point are periodically on schedule to be automatically be purged.
• Performance
  • Modularity Profile: Startup time and memoty is reduced by starting up components that are used (depends on the selected profile).
  • Lazy Loading: Startup time is reduced by loading composites only on first use.
• Problem Identification & Resolution
  • Centered Error Hospital: The EM is reworked to be centered around exception conditions instead of business as usual, including a centralised Error Hospital.
  • Better Flow Trace: A flow trace with multiple composites shows both in a single trace for better troubleshooting.
• Simplified Tuning
  • Work Managers: Simplify and improve thread tuning by switching to work managers. In 12.1.3 it is possible to assign a work manager per soa-infra partition.

SOA Operations in 12.2.1

Now in this 12.2.1 release Oracle has targeted the IT operations again, but with more focus on resiliency. First lets look at the major updates.

• Resiliency
  • Circuit Breaker: Improved resiliency when downstream services go down by suspending inbound services.
• Performance
  • In-Memory SOA: Optimize performance and scalability by reducing database growth.
  • Integration Workload Statistics: Diagnostic tool for analysing performance similar to DB AWR.
  • Parallel Deployment: Faster SOA and Service Bus startup time.
• Availability
  • Composite Instance Patching: Patch (long running) instances immediately without redeploying new composite version and stalling instances.
  • Automatic Service Migration (ASM): Reduce the failover time and amount of machine resources needed for deployment.

Lets look at them in more details in same order as above.

Resiliency

Circuit Breaker

A problem we all have experienced is when services more downstream get unavailable cause instances to failt and fill up the error hospital. Manual recovery is sometimes difficult and time consuming. These failing instances consume unnecessary resources.

Because of these failing instances the operational costs to recover instances in the error hospital are greater. There is also a potential instability of the system due to the errors on business critical instances.

In the 12.2.1 release Oracle introduces Circuit Breaker. It automatically suspend upstream inbound services and the messages are added in queues on disk for later processing. The inbound services automatically resume when the downstream service endpoint is 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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Quick overview of SOA Suite 12.2.1 new features by Maarten Smeets

Oracle has just released SOA Suite 12.2.1 which contains several exciting new features. The below entries have shamelessly copied from the developers guide in order to provide a quick overview of highlights for this release of the SOA Suite. Also at the end of the article some links for new features of WebLogic Server 12.2.1 which has also been released.

Patching running instances

See Patching Running Instances of a SOA Composite

Oracle SOA Suite 12c (12.2.1) supports Composite Instance Patching, which enables you to patch running instances of a composite and recover faulted instances after patching the runtime. You can only include those fixes in the patch that are compatible with Composite Instance Patching. Use the SOA Patch Developer role in Oracle JDeveloper to make the fixes and create the patch.

Composite Instance Patching enables you to deliver urgent composite fixes that can be picked up by long running instances. You can make compatible/allowed changes without aborting in-flight instances. If a patched running instance comes across a business process that has been fixed by the patch, say a BPEL transformation, then it picks up the fixes applied to the business process.

When designing the patch, the SOA Patch Developer mode in JDeveloper automatically disables changes that cannot be made to the patch. Some of the compatible changes that you can make include:

• Non-schema related XSLT changes, changes to fault policy, sensor data, and analytics data.
• Compatible BPEL changes such as transformation activity, assign operations, etc.
• JCA Adapter configuration properties.

In-Memory SOA

See Using In-Memory SOA to Improve System Performance

You can leverage the Coherence cache associated with WebLogic Server to run your non-transactional business processes in memory. This improves performance and scalability for these business processes, as read and write operations are performed out of the cache. Database performance and management also improves, as the costs associated with continuous disk reads and writes are significantly reduced.

In-memory SOA enables short-running processes to live in memory. The process state gets written to the database only when faulted, or at regular, deferred intervals using a write-behind thread. The BPEL state information is dehydrated and rehydrated to/from the Coherence cache.

Support for debugging XSLT maps

See Debugging the XSLT Map

Starting in 12.2.1, you can debug your XSLT maps using the SOA Debugger. You can add breakpoints at strategic locations in the XSLT map. When debugging, the debugger halts execution at the breakpoints, enabling you to verify the data and output.

XSLT maps can be complex, making them difficult to debug. For example, you may have a Java function, or other functionality, that is best tested in the application server. Also, you might find it easier to debug in the application environment, as the XSLT may be invoked from many different applications in the server. The SOA debugger provides remote debugging capability for XSLT maps that have been deployed in the application server.

You can also use the debugger with your Oracle Service Bus projects.

Support for End-to-End JSON and JavaScript

See Integrating REST Operations in SOA Composite Applications

Starting in 12.2.1, your SOA composites can use end-to-end JSON. This means that the REST service can receive the REST request and route it to the BPEL engine without translating it to XML. The BPEL component can use the JavaScript action, and also use JavaScript in conditional and iterative constructs, to work on JSON objects directly. The REST reference can receive the REST message from the BPEL engine and route it to an external REST endpoint without translation. 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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