Installing OSB 11.1.1.6 (PS5) on Windows 7

went very smoothly - my doc is available here

BPM11g - Copying and pasting activities within/between processes

This question came up during a workshop last week.

Yes, you can copy and paste one or more flow objects within a process or between
processes. Simply follow the guidelines as per section
How to Copy and Paste Flow Objects

Full 11.1.1.6 docs are available here

BPM11g - Draft activities

I add a new service task to the process from the previous post.



As worthy of a draft, the icon of the new activity is greyed.



According to the docs -

"A flow object marked as Draft means the object has a default implementation where
data object values can be set. A Draft flow object is indicated in a process by a gray icon in place of its default color icon.

Flow objects marked as Draft are considered to be unimplemented. However a process
that contains Draft flow objects can still be deployed, but a warning will be issued.
Only events and activities can be marked as Draft. Events and activities that already
have implementations defined can also be marked as Draft. Existing data associations,
however, will be removed in the implementation when you change the Draft status.
Data objects in a Draft flow object can be initialized using custom assignments in the Data Associations dialog, but implementation arguments are not available in the
dialog."

Now back to the scenario, in this process I need to call an external billing system.
Currently I do not have access to it but I have the relevant input/output xsds. So all I now need to do is to configure a default output mapping for the billing service. My algorithm is simple unitPrice * quantity * 2. Talk about markup!

I create a data object v_bill that adheres to the following XSD -



I set the output data association of the Billing activity as follows -



I then log as per the previous post -



Re-deploy and test



I log in as jcooper and approve the order



Check out the audit trail

BPM11g - Logging

Nice feature, available since the feature pack release.

Here is my test process -



I add logging info to Start -



I want to log the value of the incoming order -







I re-deploy and test the process via em



Check the audit trail -



Click on Data after output association

Installing JDeveloper 11g PS5 SOA/BPM extensions

Download the extensions zip file from eDelivery or OTN -
ofm_jdevext_generic_11.1.1.6.0_disk1_1of1.zip

extract -



Start JDeveloper




Install as per usual -

soa-jdev-extension.zip and then bpm-jdev-extension.zip

Installing BPM 11g PS5 using XE - MDS packages error

Just installed PS5 on my Win7 laptop using my existing XE DB.
On starting WLS, I saw an error related to the MDS package -
MDS_INTERNAL_SHREDDED.
So I started JDEV and made a connection to the DEV_MDS schema via the Database Navigator.

There I saw that the 3 MDS packages were invalid -







So I just re-compiled them - right mouse click --> Compile



Then I re-started WLS

BPM 11g PS 5 released. Available on OTN

Here it is

BPM 11g Feature Pack - Alter Flow feature

Behold the following simple BPM process -



Scenario: Order is stuck awaiting jcooper's approval



In this scenario, jstein has been assigned to the role of process owner.
Login to workspace as jstein and click on the Process Tracking tab-



One may expect to see the instances awaiting approval by jcooper. We simply need to
set the search criteria accordingly.





Now the process owner can Alter the flow. In this case we simply jump to the end.





Then Click resume.

Now I have encountered an issue with this in Feature Pack.
In this scenario, my process owner is jstein. When I try to alter flow as jstein, I get an error. However, it does work with the admin user, weblogic.

This issue is addressed in PS5

Oracle BPM 11g Feature Pack - Process documentation

Scenario -

see the following simple process -



Document the individual activities etc.



Generate Process Report

OEG 11.1.1.6 install on Windows

Please see the following doc -

OEGInstallOnWin

OEG 11.1.1.6 available for download

The latest release of Oracle Enterprise Gateway
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/id-mgmt/oeg-300773.html

Do more with SOA Integration: Best of Packt

Just back in freezing Germany after the warmth of the Caribbean - lucky for me that the guys from Packt publishing have released the above, enough to warm the cockles of your heart!




Link 2 Book on PacktPub


This is a compendium from industry experts including Oracle's own Harish Gaur, Tom Laszewski, Antony Reynolds, Jason Williamson, Markus Zirn. There are also contributions from Oracle Aces such as Guido Schmutz and Matt Wright.

Chapter 1 covers the basic principles of integration architecture, including a section on Patterns for service-oriented integration.

Chapter 2 goes into detail on Integration Architecture, Principles, and Patterns. This includes a very interesting section on Integration Infrastructure.

The next chapter covers the base technologies - JCA, SCA, JBI, SDO. It concludes with a section covering Process Modeling - EPC, BPMN and BPEL.

Chapter 4 is a gem, covering as it does - Best Practices for Using XML for Integration. Lots of useful tips here.

The next chapter deals with leveraging BPEL to integrate with other EAI solutions. The case study covers integration with TIBCO BusinessWorks and webMethods.

Chapter 6 covers integration with the 2 leading ERP systems - Oracle Apps and PeopleSoft.

Chapter 7 introduces us to the concept of JBI service engines and the raison d'être for NMR(Normalized Message Router). It then goes on to discuss the offering that comes with the NetBeans Enterprise Pack. To quote - "The NetBeans Enterprise Pack provides a version of the Sun Java System Application Server 9.0 which includes several Service Engines from the Open ESB project." The following chapter covers the binding components within the NetBeans environment. Among those discussed are File BC, SMTP BC, SOAP BC, JDBC BC, JMS BC, FTP BC.

Chpater 9 is titled SOA and Web Services Approach for Integration. It begins by discussing how to design Service-Oriented Architectures and then moves on to the heuristics of designing Web Services. The differences between B2B and EAI Web Services are discussed which leads on nicely to the concluding section on Interoperable WSDL.

Chapter 10 discusses ESB architecture, positioning it succinctly as the middleware for middleware technologies. It also focuses heavily on the key requirements of scalability, reliability and security.

Chapter 11 is titled - Loosely Coupling Services - and explores how service virtualization through the Oracle Service Bus (OSB) can be leveraged to ensure more loosely coupled services.

Chapter 12 covers - Integrating BPEL with BPMN using BPM Suite. the focus is on Oracle SOA Suite and how one can implement an SCA composite that includes both BPEL and BPM. Human interaction via BPM, back end service integration via BPEL.

The penultimate chapter, 13, covers - SOA Integration—Functional View, Implementation, and Architecture. Here SOA is discussed in the context of modernization - Legacy SOA Integration. To quote - "SOA Integration is a combined data federation and remote method invocation approach to solve EII/EAI in a Legacy Modernization project." So for those of you concerned with this space, this chapter is a must!

The final chapter - SOA Integration—Scenario in Detail, covers an implementation of the concepts from the previous chapter. To quote "We are now going to show an example in detail for—Web Enablement. We will use JSP, JDBC, the Oracle Legacy Adapter, Oracle Application Server, Java EE Connector API, and XA transaction processing to show a two-phase commit across an Oracle database and VSAM on the mainframe." A great real-world example of SOA in action.

All in all, a great read from those who really know what they are talking about!

Take a bow guys!