deltalounge

Recently I read Do more with SOA integration that was published December 2011. This book is a mash-up of eight earlier published works from Packt, including Service Oriented Architecture: An Integration Blueprint, Oracle SOA Suite Developer’s Guide, WS-BPEL 2.0 for SOA Composite Applications with Oracle SOA Suite 11g, and SOA governance. More details on this title:

• Table of contents
• Free sample chapter – Loosely coupling services.

Target audience according to the publisher:

If you are a SOA architect or consultant who wants to extend your knowledge of SOA integration with the help of a wide variety of Packt books, particularly covering Oracle tools and products, then “Do more with SOA Integration: Best of Packt” is for you. You should have a good grasp of Service Oriented Architecture, but not necessarily of integration principles. Knowledge of vendor-specific tools would be an advantage but is not essential.

My thoughts

My assumption is that most people won’t read the around 700 pages of this book cover to cover. In my view it is a good reference book to get a solid introduction to SOA and integration in general.

To deepen you knowledge on real world scenario’s there a good examples eg given in the chapters on Extending enterprise application integration and Service oriented ERP integration. The first gives an example of of BPEL orchestrating various web service exposed on ERP systems (SAP, Siebel) using EAI (TIBCO, webMethods). This sample includes an example of centralized error handling. The latter shows an integration of PeolpleSoft CRM 8.9 and Oracle Applications 11g using BPEL 10g. The ideas and mechanismes of the integration will also hold in the 11g version.

Chapter 14 on SOA Integration a Scenario in detail, offers another example on how to use Oracle SOA technology (10g again) to integrate legacy systems into a more modern application landscape. It does a thorough job.

The chapter on Base Technologies has parts that are based on the Trivadis Integration Architecture Blueprint. Beside that it offers a good introduction on transactions, JCA, SCA and SDO. Their fundamentals are well explained without getting too technical. So should you be looking for coding examples on these topics, there are other great sources.

When reading about XML for integration I noticed that it answers questions we get from our customers on a regular basis like: How to design XSDs – XML Schema Definitions. Questions on when to use a type or an Element, chose targetNamespace or XMLSchema as the default namespace, the number of namespaces to use. These are all well adressed in the book.

Where on the other hand a complete view on the following statement could fill at least a whitepaper:

Adopt and develop design techniques, naming conventions, and other best practices similar to those used in object-oriented modelling to address the issues of reuse, modularization, and extensibility. Some of the common design techniques are discussed in the later sections.

The chapter on loose coupling offers an example of how to achieve this using the Oracle Service Bus. It is hard to overrate the importance of loose coupling since a lot of both the technical and the business advantage rely on whether or not this loose coupling is achieved.

Bottomline

As a reference this is a good starting point to learn about SOA and integration in general. It could be more consistent on some details and with the great BPEL and BPM tooling these days I wouldn’t implement processes in an ESB. Of course there is a good chapter (12) with an eaxmple of using both BPM and BPEL. As mentioned before it has some great illustrative examples of real world scenarios. The bottom line is that I would recommend this book to people looking for a reference on SOA and integration.

Cons:
Some text seems a little dated.

Pros:
Good description of SOA and integration in general; practical ; solid introduction on the XML stuff, transactions, JCA and SCA; nice real world integration examples.

Additional reviews

If you’re interested in other reviews on this book, visit the ADF Code Corner blog by Frank Nimphius, AMIS blog by Lucas Jellema, or this SOA / BPM on Fusion Middleware blog by Niall Commiskey.

Sharing some things we learned while working with SOA Suite 10g database adapters.

• Restrict the number of rows that will be returned by the query that is used in the database adapter. If you do not restrict the number of rows that is returned that could lead to high CPU and memory usage and time outs due to extreme processing time. These conditions can appear when a query results in severla thousand of rows returned.
• Changes the this_toplink_mappings.xml file. If a toplink:read-all-query is used, change it to toplink:max-rows like

<toplink:max-rows>100</toplink:max-rows>

• In case you forgot… if the audit level of the BPEL domain is still on Development level change it to the production level.

For links to File and FTP adapter stuff.

While trying to keep my post on purging the BPEL and ESB/Mediator database up to date with the latest documents and experiences, I found these whitepapers and references:

• SOA 11G Database (pdf) Growth Management Strategy

An Oracle SOA 11G installation presents a few challenges for administrators and one of these is managing the growth of the SOA database. The advice facilitates better dialog between SOA and Database administrators when planning and managing database requirements.

• On Oracle support: SOA 11g Infrastructure Database: Installation, Maintenance and Administration Guide [ID 1384379.1]

This document covers everything you need to know about the SOA Infrastructure Database for Oracle SOA Suite 11g. Here we bring together content from sources such as OTN, Product Documentation and our Knowledge Base in an effort to provide you with a single comprehensive resource.

Oracle released the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Administration Guide 12c Release 1 (12.1.0.1) documentation. It is part of the Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Documentation.

Enterprise Manager Cloud Control is system management software that delivers centralized monitoring, administration, and life-cycle management functionality for the complete IT infrastructure, including systems running Oracle and non-Oracle technologies.

With the Oracle Technet Virtual Developer Day coming up a great VirtualBox appliance came available. The developer day focusses on developing Java EE6 applications and Oracle WebLogic Suite 12c.

WebLogic Server 12.1.1 VirtualBox Appliance

The virtual machine contains:

• Oracle Linux 5, JDK 1.6 +
• Oracle WebLogic Server 12.1.1
• Oracle Coherence 3.7
• Oracle TopLink 12.1.1
• Hudson 2.2
• Subversion 1.4.2
• Apache Maven 3.0.1
• NetBeans IDE 7.1 RC2
• Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse 12.1.1 / Eclipse 3.7
• Easter Egg: Introductory Labs for Oracle Coherence 3.7

All details on download and importing the appliance can be found on the VirtualBox instructions page. No need to say that the appliance has been released for development and testing purposes.

Labs

The image contains four Labs:

• Total Oracle WebLogic Server Development with Eclipse, Maven, and Hudson
• Hands on with an end-to-end Java EE6 Application
• A Step-By-Step Guide to Oracle Coherence
• Running the Coherence Examples Project in Eclipse

These can be found in the /home/oracle/labs/ directory. Web links to these Labs can be found here.

About 2 months ago InfoWorld published 11 programming trends to watch. I’d like to share three with you since they are close to home for me:

1. No code is an island
2. Bandwidth is no longer free
3. Energy is no longer free, either

No code is an island

Having worked in integration project for almost a decade the idea that there is little code living on an island is not strange to me. However InfoWorld points out that besides that more and more software developer are creating products to enhance other products

Our code is living increasingly in ecosystems. Many PHP programmers, for instance, create plug-ins for WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, or some other framework. Their code is a module that works with other modules.

The same goes for development for mobile devices that rely increasingly on modules or apps created by others, whether they run on the device or in the cloud. This increases the demand for stable interfaces and contracts. Besides that the requirements for availability and scalability will weigh in heavier.

An urge for lean programming

Or create programs that deliver value in an efficient way. New releases of software programmers tend to demand always more resources (just a small example). The cost of keeping a computer plugged in has never been an issue. It never mattered how much energy your rack of servers sucked down because the colo just sent you a flat bill for each box.

The Cloud trend tends to make cost more transparent. Some of the clouds — like Google App Engine or Amazon S3 (example) — don’t bill by the rack or root password. They charge for database commits and queries. This adds a new perspective for software developers. We might need to start thinking about the cost of each subroutine in euros, not in lines of code, function points or milliseconds of execution time.

On the consumer side more and more ISPs adding bandwidth caps and metering. To a software developer this means that optimizing bandwidth consumption when designing apps is becoming imperative. Besides the cost issue this will also be needed because of the customer experience (loading speed etc).

Since this blog is also dedicated to sharing resources that are valueable to me I decided to share my reading list of 2011 with you.

Lean Integration: An Integration Factory Approach to Business Agility

A great best practices book on integration. The first part provides description of the business value of Lean. It introduces the core concepts. As a manager that doesn’t need all the details you could just read this part and you can get a good grasp of the ideas presented.

The second part translates the lean principles from the world of manufacturing to the world of systems integration. It has great case studies that shows the principles applied in a real world context.

Part three of the book provides a “how to” guide. This can be used as a reference and as such is a great desk-top reference manual. This book is great and a must read for all technology and business practitioners and innovators.

Web Service Contract Design and Versioning for SOA

Great reference (not a book that I read front to back) on Web Service Design from Thomas Erl and his co-authors. This book focuses exclusively on the contract part of the service. Due to the depth it is a extensive resource to use besides others. The book is filled with extensive examples on how to meet the goals of SOA properly using contract design.

Via the site of the publisher and on iTunes are additional service design podcasts by the authors of the book. Could be a great resource to start with.

The Back of the Napkin (Expanded Edition): Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures

This is a great book on problem solving, extremely useful and in a sense thought provoking. It structures problem-solving into a six by five visual codex. This makes sense; you can literally see the evolution of the thought processes and the development of the insights take shape through the pages. Fun read as well.

Recently I engaged with a customer who experiences (among other problems) the following. Since there is hardly any info on Oracle Support or blogs I thought I’d share some info here:

WSIF JCA Execute of operation 'SomeService' failed due to: Unable to create control directory.
Unable to create control directory: "/mnt/queues/controldir/bpel/fileftp/controlFiles/epajYGFxPFPErSM8HcN8HQ==/outbound".
; nested exception is:
ORABPEL-11075
Unable to create control directory.
Unable to create control directory: "/mnt/queues/controldir/bpel/fileftp/controlFiles/epajYGFxPFPErSM8HcN8HQ==/outbound".
Please make sure that the directory name is valid and that there are adequate permissions to create the directory.


Solution

As the last part of the error message suggests, check for file system stuff:

1. Is the share and/or mount your file / ftp adapter is pointing to still available?
2. Can the share be reached from your SOA Server?
3. Does the directory name exist?
4. Are the required permissions available?

Correct inaccuracies.

Common Issues and Workarounds for File/FTP Adapter

There is an extensive document on solving issues with file and FTP adapters on Oracle support. The documentation for file and FTP adapters can be found:

1. 11g JCA File / FTP adapter
2. 10g File / FTP Adapter

Wishing you and your loved ones all the best for 2012!

That you may enjoy life’s little (and not so little) miracles each and every day.

Just uploaded the presentation I gave at the Seminar “Architecture and Governance”: