Whether or not your Oracle Advanced Queue (AQ) will enqueue and dequeue messages can be determined with a simple query:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | SELECT name , queue_table , enqueue_enabled , dequeue_enabled , max_retries , retry_delay FROM user_queues ; |
The query example is based on user_queues and in that case it has to be performed as the owner of the queue. The result wil be something like:
AQ enqueu dequeue
There are two places to determine the version of the SOA Suite you are running:
SOA Suite version
http://your-SOA-Suite-host:its-port/For a more detailed look we turn to the Oracle patch utility OPatch. The OPatch utility is located in the
The lsinventory command reports what has been installed on the system for a particular Oracle home directory, or for all installations. A result for using this command is shown in the screenshot:
opatch lsinventory
An overview of all release downloads can be found on OTN.
As in previous releases there is a Human Workflow component in the SOA Suite. Basically this component supports the interaction of humans with the process, like approval, exception management, and other activities to advance the process. The image gives a global impression of the component.
Human Workflow 11g
The Human Workflow has become more of a separate component compared to the previous SOA Suite release. Where it was more tightly integrated with BPEL. This is considered a good thing, since it can be used from other components than BPEL.
Like with all the new stuff in the 11g R1 release there is now End to end instance tracking through BPEL, mediator, and workflow. Which makes debugging and application management a lot easier. Another step forward is that the engine can be configured, monitored and managed from Enterprise Manager.
There are also serious enhancements in the task routing possibilities. Oracle Business Rules can now be used to define complex task routing scenarios. In previous versions these were custom coded or created in BPEL. On the security side finer-grain access-level policies have been added. This allows you to define who can see and act on different parts of a task.
The most visible enhancement is the new worklist application. In previous releases we would advise customers to not use the worklist application, because it used “old” technology, it was ugly, and it was supposed to be an unsupported demo. Now the interface is up to par.
Worklist App
Judge for yourself with this screenshot that was taken while playing with the purchase order demo / tutorial. Besides that there is now also better support to auto-generate Task Display Forms. If yoy want to learn more visit the Developer Guide or play around with the samples for Human Workflow .
Only two years after acquiring webMethods, Software AG has announced it wants to acquire IDS Scheer. IDS Scheer has a great name in the BPM as well as the Enterprise Architecture (EA) market. Their strong global brand will enabled Software AG to grow it’s name in these markets.
Oracle has based it’s BPA Suite on the ARIS Design platform. From now on Oracle has to rely on a competitor to augment the process modeling capability functionality of their suite of products in the BPM arena. This puts the Oracle BPM 11g and BPA Suite 11g Partner Community Launch in a slightly different perspective.
One of the most insightful blog posts on this subject so far comes from Forrester. This, like other sources, states that “Software AG has agreed to treat ARIS as a separate entity, with its own roadmap and strategic direction“. Actually good news for ARIS customers, and continuity of the ARIS Design platform.
There should be no problem running Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g on a laptop. However if it’s memory is on the low end of the spectrum, it can be challenging. One of the changes you can make, is reducing the memory allocated to the Java process for the WLS domain running the SOA Suite. These memory settings can be altered in the following file:
<your_WLS_home>\user_projects\domains\soa_domain\bin\setSOADomainEnv.cmd
Change the memory settings to:
set DEFAULT_MEM_ARGS=-Xms512m -Xmx512m
Off course the values are dependent on the resources of your machine, and shoud be altered accordingly.
Within a week from the launch of FMW 11g I was able to to get a good first impression of this milestone release. We attended the SOA Suite Foundation training that was lead by Oracle PTS. Basically this leads you through the OrderBooking order demo / tutorial. This gives a good impression of the foundations and possibilities of SOA Suite 11g.
flow trace
One of the key marketing terms for FMW 11g release is integrated. And indeed Oracle has made a great step in integrating SOA Suite components, as well as integrating SOA Suite with Weblogic server and it’s (monitoring) tools. However note that even if in the licensing Oracle Service Bus is in the package… It is still a separate product in this release. OSB is a sparate download and has to be installed next to the SOA Suite. Off course since it’s BEA background it has integration with Weblogic.
Part of the great stuff can be seen in the screenshot. It shows the flow through the composite application. After the message is received, it is routed by Mediator (former ESB). Which does it’s magic and sends it to two adapters ( in this case a file and a BAM adapter), and a BPEL process. The BPEL process in turn calls a decision service as implemented with Oracle Rules, and a JMS adapter.
This one common console to view status of both BPEL and Mediator (formerly known as ESB) is a great enhancement. A so called ecid (a global ID ) is used for this end to end tracking. This has really been brought to the next level. However I was a little disapointed that OSB has not been integrated (yet, as we were told) in the integral monitoring using ecid’s.
The SCA part is a great aid to create and manage composite applications. SCA is based on the idea that business function are provided as a series of services, which are assembled together to create solutions that serve a particular business need. These composite applications can contain both new services created specifically for the application and also business function from existing systems and applications, reused as part of the composition. SCA provides a model both for the composition of services and also for the creation of service components, including the reuse of existing application function within SCA compositions.
FMW composite
Please note that a composite applications, don’t have to be a SOA applications. Using all kinds of adapters in a composite looks great… and from an architectural perspective it could be argued that it is wise to only allow (web) service adapters to the Service Bus (that could be implemented with OSB).
OFM11g release
The OFM 11g can be downloaded from:
Enjoy all this great new stuff.
More links:
And those of you who want to read the press release go there.
We wouldn’t want to forget the latest JDeveloper release:
