deltalounge

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”:

Oracle WebLogic Server 12c (12.1.1) is available for download. The main themes of the new release are according to Oracle:

• Java EE 6 and Developer Productivity
• Simplified Deployment and Management with Virtualization
• Integrated Traffic Management
• Enhanced Availability and Disaster Recovery
• Much Higher Performance
• Seamless Upgrade

WebLogic Server 12 is available as installer or ZIP distribution. Download WebLogic Server 12c. Other useful links:

• The documentation library, including the Installation Guide.
• Blog post by Arun Gupta on using the WLS 12c – Using Zip Installer
• Markus Eisele already published already quite some 12c post on his blog.

Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse (12.1.1) available

Shortly after WLS 12c Oracle also has released OEPE 12.1.1 – Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse. It is certified on Windows 7/XP/Vista, MacOS, and Linux. OEPE is supported on JDK 6.

• The installation guide for OEPE.
• The installer is available both as ZIP and Full Installer. Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse full installers include Oracle WebLogic Server 12c and Oracle Coherence 3.7.1.
• OEPE Homepage

Update: WebLogic 12.1.1 VirtualBox Appliance available

With OTN Virtual Developer Day a WebLogic 12c VirtualBox appliance became available. On the appliance there are Labs and other Java development tools like: Hudson, Subversion, Maven, NetBeans IDE, and Eclipse (including OEPE).

Update: Updated/Patched WebLogic 12.1.1.0 distribution available

Just read Markus Eiseles blog on an updated WebLogic Server 12c on OTN. If you obtain the updated product distribution for WebLogic Server 12.1.1 after March 16, 2012, the patches are included. If you obtained a product distribution for WebLogic Server 12.1.1 prior to March 16, 2012, and you do not wish to re-install with the updated WebLogic Server distribution, you can obtain the patches from Oracle Support.

While doing some research on the web I came across a Service Component Architecture Diagram Generator. The script generates diagrams for applications based on the Service Component Architecture (SCA) model. This can be a great aid to understand the relations between components in large BPEL or SOA applications.

Download the tool here. The readme is over here. The script runs on Linux/Unix and has primarily been tested with Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g applications but should work with other BPEL or SOA frameworks.

On December 13th Whitehorses will host a seminar on SOA and Governance. During this seminar we will show the value of a proper architecture and governance for your organization. In the presentation you will get clear guidelines and steps on a pragmatic approach for implementing a manageable SOA solution.

Some of the topics:

• What is SOA Governance and Why do we need it?
• SOA reference architecture – The importance of solid standardization.
• Service life-cycle governance – Design and build the right services and the proper way to reuse them.
• Service repository – With examples of repositories based on Oracle Enterprise Repository (OER) and a wiki.

rsvp.

Recently McGraw Hill published the Oracle Business Process Management Suite 11g Handbook. It is available on their site and at Amazon.com.

Here is the table of contents with the links to the free chapters:

Part I: Introduction
1. BPM – Background
2. Standards in BPM
3. BPM Suite 11g – Overview

Part II: Mastering Oracle BPM 11g

4. Quick Learners Guide to Oracle BPM 11g
5. Business Process Modeling and Implementation using BPMN 2.0
6. Mastering Business Rules
7. Advanced Human Tasks
8. Developing Rich User Interfaces for BPM with ADF

Part III: Essentials of Oracle BPM Methodology

9. Planning a BPM Adoption
10. Strategic Analysis, Process Selection and Design
11. Technical Design and Project Delivery Strategies

While the NoSQL Database Community Edition still waits for final license approval, Oracle has released it’s NoSQL Database, Enterprise Edition 1.1.100. The download is available on OTN.

The Oracle NoSQL Database is a distributed key-value database. It is designed to provide highly reliable, scalable and available data storage across a configurable set of systems that function as storage nodes.

The documentation page is still rather empty. However Technical Overview and a Data Sheet are already available.

Oracle NoSQL is a key offering in Oracle’s portfolio of Big Data products. The product is based on the Java version of Berkeley DB, an open source database used in embedded systems.

Update

• The NoSQL documentation is available.
• A great in depth look into Oracle NoSQL. Also read the discussion over there.

Whitehorses published the results of their Oracle Forms Survey on their blog. I’ll share three remarkable results. Please read the whole post on their blog:

• Over 30% is still running Client – Server (Forms 4.5 or 6i).
• Over 50% doesn’t consider upgrading their unsupported version.
• When replacing Oracle Forms APEX is the most considered alternative.

The results are mostly in line with the findings in Germany (on which the survey was based).

After installing Oracle Enterprise Repository (OER) we experience some memory issues. Besides the messages in the log files, we also couldn’t use the console and em as we did before (when we were just running SOA Suite). It turned out the installation of OER in the same Weblogic domain resulted in some unexpected things.

The WebLogic Server and SOA Suite are started using the startWebLogic script (for windows .cmd and on Linux/Unix .sh). This script uses the setDomainEnv script to set the environment variable for the domain. The setDomainEnv script in turn calls the setSOADomainEnv that actually sets the USER_MEM_ARGS. That in the end are used in the startWebLogic script.

After the installation of OER the setDomainEnv not only calls the setSOADomainEnv. It also calls a script that sets the USER_MEM_ARGS for the oer_server in the domain. Apparently the memory required for OER is less than needed for the SOA Suite. Since the script for OER is executed last, memory setting remain low. As shown in the smippet taken from the setDomainEnv.cmd:

call "%WL_HOME%\common\bin\commEnv.cmd"
call "%DOMAIN_HOME%\bin\setSOADomainEnv.cmd"
call "%DOMAIN_HOME%\bin\setOERDomainEnv.cmd"

To solve the memory issue when starting the WebLogic Server using the startWebLogic script we alter the sequence so the setOERDomainEnv.cmd goes before the setSOADomainEnv.cmd.

If the installer put a second call to setSOADomainEnv.cmd in the setDomainEnv.cmd. That doesn’t work because the setSOADomainEnv.cmd contains the following check:

REM Skip running this script again if it was run once
if "%XENGINE_DIR%" == "" goto set_env
echo *********************************************************
echo ** SOA specific environment is already set. Skipping ...
goto end_set_env

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