deltalounge

SOA Suite on EC2

Setting up Amazon Web Services (EC2 and S3)

This arcticle on OTN guided me while signing up for:

• Amazon AWS
• Amazon S3 – Simple Storage Service
• Amazon EC2 – Elastic Compute Cloud

and to setup PuTTY. The only hick-up here was that I’m using the PortableApps version of PuTTY that doesn’t come with the puttygen – Key Generator.

Provisioning a SOA Server on Amazon EC2

This blogpost guided me in the provisioning of the AMI (Amazon Machine Image).

• AMIs are per region: The Amazon Machine Instance (AMI) for SOA Suite (id = ami-acb557c5) is only available in the US East (Northern Virginia) Region.
• Don’t bother to setup the Elastic Block Store (EBS) Volume. It is scripted in the latest version of the AMI, as described in step 5 of “SSH to your image and accept license”. The EBS Volume is seeded using a snapshot (id = snap-dd980db4) that is provided. This volume will be used to persist your data across sessions and AMI start/stop.
• When launching the image (during the Configure Firewall step) set the SecurityGroup to accept HTTP traffic on port 7001 in case you want to use the SOA Suite from outside the Image.

Yesterday Clemens Utschig posted a list of SOA Suite 11gR1 Patchset 2 ~ 11.1.1.3.0 (SOA) features. He says it is a non-exhaustive list. It contains features like:

• Full and complete support for BPEL 2.0 (designtime and runtime)
• Reintroduction of “BPEL domains” – that are called Partitions because there are already WebLogic Domains
• Enhancements to BPEL’s transactional behavior and audit-trail
• Full BPMN 2.0 support – part of BPM 11g which runs on top of 11g PS2 SOA core

Update: for the Java developer

In an additional post the features for the Java developer were announced. These include:

• Support for interface.java as a first class citizen next to interface.wsdl
• Full support for Spring as component implementation
• Support for EJB bindings (binding.ejb)
• Invocation of a composite service

This week I came across a good overview of Java Web Frameworks:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mraible/4378559350/

The presentation (that will be given at TSSJS Las Vegas 2010) this time-line originates from, can be found here. The overview was created by Matt Raible of Raible Designs.

For a lot of us the migration to Windows7 will be the first time we get easy access to a 64-bit desktop OS. One of the first things after an upgrade like that is to get your tools, like in my case JDeveloper, working again. First step is to download the jdevinstall jar, and the Sun JDK. The installation worked fine:

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java -jar jdevstudio11112install.jar

Running JDeveloper on 64-bit JVM

Running JDeveloper with the 64-bit JVM resulted in an error:

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Unable TO launch the Java Virtual Machine  
located at path:  
C:\Java\jdk1.6.0_18\jre\bin\server\jvm.dll

A solution is to use the 32-bit JVM. To do this change the SetJavaHome in thejdev.conf that is located in the {JDEV_HOME}\jdev\bin\jdev.conf.

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SetJavaHome C:\Java\jdk1.6.0_18_x86

Where the jdk1.6.0_18_x86 is a 32-bits JVM version.

After installing JDeveloper 11G successfully, we encountered the following error while starting JDeveloper:

Unable to create an instance on the Java Virtual Machine located on c:\jdeveloper11g\Middleware\jdk160_05\jre\bin\client\jvm.dll

Using Google and Oracle Support showed us that the virtual memory for the PC was not set to level that allowed the JVM to initialise.
The solution is to increase the virtual memory or swap area. To do this on Vista:

My Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings > tab Advanced > Performance - Settings > tab Advanced > Virtual memory - Change

On January 27th Larry Ellison and other Oracle executives outlined the Oracle Sun strategy in a live event. The webcast and sheets are available online. There is also a FAQ overview available.

Besides that there is the Oracle + Sun Product Strategy Webcast Series. If you are into Java or Middleware developement, I think the message boils down to these few sheets:

Development Tools

Development Tools Strategy

Application Server

Glassfish and WebLogic will coexist and share logic/components.

AS strategy

SOA products

Oh, and WebCenter will be the strategic portal offering.

SOA product strategy

• Integration perspective
• Oracle gets MySQL for free

This evening while playing with WinDirStat (using the Portable Apps version) I took the following screenshot:

JDeveloper Stats

To some of us it came as a surprise that SOA Suite design time stuff was no longer an integral part of the Oracle IDE. To use BPEL, Mediator, Human Task, and Adapters the soa-jdev-extension is required.

The SOA extension can be acquired using the menu Help | Check for updates, clicking Next, and selecting Oracle Fusion Middleware Products. Select Oracle SOA Composite Editor and click next to start the download. Since the extension is over 200 MB this could take a few minutes depending on the speed of your internet connection. When the download has finished, the version number details are shown and you’ll click finish to start using it.

Install from local file

Update wizard

Download the extension, and instead of selecting the Search Update Centers option during step 2 of the upgrade you choose the Install From Local File option and the appropriate file. This is displayed in the screenshot. From here on it is a Next - Next - Finish operation.

Other JDeveloper extensions

Other extensions like the AIA Composite Application Framework, PHP extension, and the SQL Developer extension can be found in the update center.

SOA Suite 11g

In a blogpost Clemens Utschig writes about this book:

Heidi and her team have done a tremendous job to structure the labs and hands-on exercises in a didactic, explanatory way – with solutions all the way through. This way the book serves not just as a tutorial, but also as a reference bible when it comes to implementation of specific features and concepts.

Being familiar with the labs and hands-on for the SOA Suite from the earlier versions up to 11g R1, and having read the first four chapters, I agree with Clemens. It is a good tutorial, and learning path that includes some great tips on how to overcome the pitfalls you could run into.

SOA Suite 11gR1 Book resources

To get an impression of the book you can download a sample chapter here (pdf). There aren’t any errata (yet).

Artifacts for the tutorial part are available for download. An overview of the required software can be found on the Release Downloads for Oracle SOA Suite pages of OTN. These include the link for download.

This week few initiatives to find sample code caught my eyes.

Oracle Sample Code Repository

Although there was already a sample code page on Oracle’s Technet. There probably were more… Oracle has created a Sample Code Repository. Like any repository this one should centralize and consolidate the large pile of samples that is available, both from Oracle product specialist, consultant, partners and customers.

Actually this could make it easier to find samples. To make this a success, there has to be a spirit of reuse. And as the major part of developers and architects out there can testify that’s not always easy part. It boils down to the same willingness for reuse of code that is required for a successful long term Service Oriented approach of software development within an organization.
Anyway some good examples are already available. A good introduction on samplecode at Oracle Technet can be found in this podcast (m4v) that features Duncan Mills. By the way, more podcasts can be found on the techcast page.

Google Code Search

Google Code Search is not exactly new, but it caught my attention because of some blogpost and comments I saw this week. To give it a try I did some queries with it and have mixed feelings so far. Asking around co-workers did not raise and enthusiastic crowd. Leaving me with the question whether any of you out there uses Google Code Search on a regular basis? And, do you have any examples for what kind of queries this works for you?
Thanks in advance for your comments.