deltalounge

The question on the ability to purge instances for both Oracle BPEL and Oracle ESB keeps recurring so I decided to come up with a small overview.

Oracle BPEL

• FMW version 11.1.1.4 and up, there is a new version of the purge_soainfra_oracle.sql. Ensure that you run the purge setup scripts from the 11.1.1.4 RCU or 11.1.1.5 RCU location, respectively, as this contains the latest purge details. Details are in the SOA Admin Guide
• FMW version 11.1.1.1 and up, there is a purge_soainfra_oracle.sql script in the RCU_HOME/rcu/integration/soainfra/sql/purge directory. In the release before 11.1.1.4 you need to apply patch 10297850 to obtain the updated purge scripts. More details are in the FMW Admin Guide on Managing Database Growth. Mark Kelderman posted on how to improve the performance of this script by adding a specific index.
• From BPEL in SOA Suite version 10.1.3.3.1 and up, there is a purge_instances_oracle.sql script in the SOA_HOME/bpel/system/database/scripts directory.
• For BPEL in SOA Suite version 10.1.3.1 you need patch 7162289. After applying this patch purge_instances_oracle.sql will be located at SOA_HOME/bpel/system/database/scripts.
• In case you’re still running BPEL 10.1.2.0.2 check Oracle support document 398578.1 and document 341102.1

Oracle ESB

• For Mediator in FMW 11g refer to the scripts and links mentioned in the BPEL paragraph.
• To purge ESB instances in 10.1.3.4 you need to apply at least MLR#4 to have purge scripts available. There are 3 scripts available:

$ORACLE_HOME/integration/esb/sql/other/purge_by_date.sql
$ORACLE_HOME/integration/esb/sql/other/purge_by_id.sql
$ORACLE_HOME/integration/esb/sql/other/purge_by_instance_id.sql

Update 2011-06 SOA Suite 11gR1 PS3

Recently the SOA Suite Engineering Team published a presentation on Purging strategies in Oracle SOA Suite 11gR1 PS3. Besides the information presented in this post, the presentation goes into targeted deletion from the EM and looks into looped and parallel purges. It also mentions the use of database partitioning. That can be very useful when you have long running instances and a large installation (the presentation gives more than 500GB total OR more than 10GB daily depending on environment specifics).

Update 2011-07 Purging the Extreme Edition

Mark Kelderman posted a blog on Purging SOA Suite 11g Extreme Edition. He give a SQL script that deletes data from Mediator, BPEL, BPM, Workflow and Composite, and after that reclaims disk space.

Update Purge Oracle Service Bus

Marc Kelderman posted on his blog on Purging OSB Report Data. Besides the default way to delete the data using the console. He also gives a SQL script to purge directly in the database.

SOA 11g database growth strategies

In January of 2012 the Oracle Fusion Middleware whitepaper on database growth strategies was published. The advice presented should facilitate better dialog between SOA and Database administrators when planning database and host requirements. An important aspect of the whitepaper is purging of the SOA database.

Related documentation:

• Oracle BPEL 10g purging strategies
• SOA 11g Infrastructure Database: Installation, Maintenance and Administration Guide [ID 1384379.1]
• Managing Space in the SOA Infrastructure Database

Updated purging strategies on Oracle Support

As part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware (FMW) SOA 11g Infrastructure Database: Installation, Maintenance and Administration Guide [ID 1384379.1] A purging guide has been published to offer strategies and procedures for managing database growth in a production SOA 11g implementation.
Purging is not supported for MS SQL Server out of the box or through a patch in any version of 11g. The provided scripts can, however, be used as a solid base from which to create usable purge scripts for SQL Server.

The session I presented at the SOA Symposium 2010 is now available online via InfoQ. You can find it as a Service Bus case study. It is introduced as:

a case study of using a service bus in a supply channel connecting a wholesale supplier with hundreds of retailers, the overall context and challenges faced – including the integration of POS software coming from different software providers-, the solution chosen and its implementation, how it worked out and the lessons learned along the way.

Watch the video, download the mp3 or sheets.

In this post will show you how to install the Oracle Service Bus on the VirtualBox SOA Suite 11g appliance. For this demo we used a pretty straightforward installation scheme.

Oracle WebLogic Server installation

Download wls1033_oepe111150_linux32.bin for installation on Linux. Install using the command ./wls1033_oepe111150_linux32.bin:

The following screenshots will give you a good idea of the installation flow.

Oracle Service Bus installation

Start the Disk1/runInstaller.sh and specify the JRE/JDK location /oracle/osbhome/jdk160_18/.

This sequence of screenshots gives you a good impression.

Configure a WebLogic Domain

Configure a Domain using the Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuration Wizard using ./config.sh in the /oracle/osbhome/oracle_common/common/bin directory.

A straightforward configuration of the WLS Domain requires the following steps:

Start WebLogic

./startWebLogic.sh and Have Fun!

So here is my presentation from the SOA Symposium 2010. Hope you enjoy it:

SOA Cloud Symposium 2011

The SOA Cloud Symposium 2011 logo has just been released. In 2011 the SOA Symposium will be held on April 27 and 28 in Brasilia the capital of Brasil.

In the 10g release of Oracle SOA Suite you could set properties to instruct web service calls to go via SOAP or not. If you were calling services on the same server or domain you could gain some performance with a native call and avoiding the SOAP overhead. To do this you would set the optSoapShortcut property.

With SOA Suite 11g on WLS SOAP optimization is automatically configured. In the scenario where you upgraded to 11g R1 and are using this optimization shortcut approach, you should specify the Server URL in the SOA Infrastructure Common Settings. Optimized calls are only active when the host name value (referred to as WSDL URL in the composite.xml) matches the Server URL.

To configure the SOA Infrastructure Common Settings choose from the SOA Infrastructure Menu > SOA Administration > Common Properties. As shown in the screenshot. Other access ways to this configuration screen are described here.

Enter the server URL in the Server URLs section. This URL is published as part of the SOAP address of a service in the concrete WSDL file. Either set both values to the host name (for example, myhost) or to the full domain name (for example, myhost.domain.com). If these values do not match, a regular SOAP call is performed instead of an optimized local call.

One of the scenarios that you have to set the Server URL in order to use the optimized local call is after a migration of AIA to AIA 11g R1.

In this blogpost I’ll share some steps you can take to get your AIA 11g R1 installation back on track. If you do not perform the Pre-Installation Configurations as described in the Foundation Pack 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.2.0) Installation Guide (available as partnumber E17949-01 via eDelivery), it is possible that your AIA installation fails. After checking the pre-installation configuration it is possible to start the installation again if you follow these steps:

1. Navigate to /user_projects/domains/ and delete the edit.lok file.
2. Delete any file located in /user_projects/domains//pending
3. Log into the weblogic console and activate all the changes.
4. Restart SOA Suite and Weblogic domain.
5. Press retry button on the installation screen

If the installation screens are no longer available because you closed them, use the log files to figure out what targets haven’t been performed yet and run these targets (in the sample case below it were Deployments and PostInstallScript):

Move to the /aia30/aia_instances/aia30poc/bin and source ./aiaenv.sh.

ant -f /aia30/Infrastructure/Install/AID/AIAInstallDriver.xml -DDeploymentPlan=/aia30/config/FPInstallDP.xml -DPropertiesFile=/aia30/config/AIAInstallProperties.xml Deployments

ant -f /aia30/Infrastructure/Install/AID/AIAInstallDriver.xml -DDeploymentPlan=/aia30/config/FPInstallDP.xml -DPropertiesFile=/aia30/config/AIAInstallProperties.xml PostInstallScript

In the blogpost on the release of SOA Suite 11gR1 PS2, I mentioned a link to the documentation index. Since it hasn’t been update by now, I suggest you go to the middleware documentation page. This page is more up to date and has the link to the web library and download address (Alert! approx. 860 MB) of E14571-01 – the Fusion Middleware Online Documentation Library 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.3.0).

SOA Suite 11gR1 PS2 installation notes

Besides the reference in the documentation library to the Install Guide and the Quick Install Guide, there are several blogs describing the installation of 11.1.1.3. Which is actually a patch on 11.1.1.2:

• This post by Oracle ACE Eric Elzinga;
• The installation steps described by Theo van Arem;
• Installation of 11g PatchSet 2 on Windows by Niall Commiskey, members or Oracle PTS in EMEA;
• The one on Oracle blogs by James Taylor includes OSB 11.1.1.3

SOA Suite on Amazon EC2

This week it was announced that BPM 11g R1 is available as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). This AMI includes SOA Suite 11gR1 Patchset 2 and JDeveloper with the SOA and BPM extension. In AWS filter on 64-bit and put soa-bpm in the search box. This should enable you to find oracle-soa-bpm-11gr1-ps2-4.1-pub. Some of the tips I posted on x SOA Suite in the cloud could be useful here as well.

There are several advantages when working in a project with Oracle SOA Suite to have a local installation of the SOA Suite on your workstation. While developing and trying bits of code you can’t break other peoples work as you can on a central server. Running FMW 11g on a workstation with say memory on the low end of the spectrum can be challenging. In this blog I’ll show you some additional (to this previous post) measure that my blogless colleague Rob Heikoop came up with.

Rob came up with two things:

• Create an All in One AdminServer as described on the Oracle wiki. We skipped BAM in the installation Use only one Domain in WLS. You’ll have to combine the admin en the SOA_domain. Running just one domain saves memory.
• Keep the database centralized. In the central database each developer has it’s own SOA schema that is especially created for him. To do this run the RCU for every developer and use the prefix to reflect for example the developers initials (example of using RCU on slideshare). Not running the database on your workstation saves memory and CPU.

In order to have new developers being able to use this quickly we copy the reference installation (with plug-ins, patches and the works) and alter the configuration:

• Alter the scripts in the C:\Devel\SOAMiddleware\user_projects\domains\soa_domain\bin directory to reflect your workstation name instead of that of the reference machine. You can do this easily by using an editor like Notepad++ and use Search > Find in files > Replace in files. Otherwise you’ll be stopping your teammates server…. (again sorry Rob)
• Change the configuration files in C:\Devel\SOAMiddleware\user_projects\domains\soa_domain\config\jdbc to reflect the prefix created especially for you while using the RCU. Again Notepad++ can help you here.

Now you can start the tools:

• WebLogic Server: C:\Devel\SOAMiddleware\user_projects\domains\soa_domain\bin\startWebLogic.cmd
• JDeveloper: C:\Devel\SOAMiddleware\jdeveloper\jdeveloper.exe

Previous I mentioned a preview of the 11g R1 PS2 new features. Here are a few links for this new release – 11.1.1.3.0:

• SOA Suite 11g R1 PS2 new features.
• Download page
• The documentation index will probably be updated soon.

Existing PS1 users simply apply the patch to upgrade to 11.1.1.3.0.

Other releases

• Oracle Service Bus OSB 11g R1
• Business Process Management BPM 11g R1

One of the things on my To Do list was to move my local SOA Suite 11g R1 to The Cloud. It seemed a good idea to save my laptop some resources (to spare some for JDeveloper) with only a limited investment. Besides that it can be a good way to demo applications, and work together with my colleagues on these demos.


During the last months I noticed that there are several good blogpost on the subject. In this post I’ll show you the ones I used and provide some additions to them.

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.