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

This guide is aimed at installations for developers and not for production machines. Unfortunately the installation of OSB is out of scope. I expect it to be upgraded to PS4 (11.1.1.5) soon. I could find any missing instructions while installing PS4 on a Windows7 VirtualBox.

This document looks very similar to the installation chapter in Getting Started with Oracle SOA Suite 11g R1.

Update

It was confirmed by Simone Geib, Product Manager in the Oracle SOA team, that both the OSB part and the PS4 update are coming soon.

Update September

The update for SOA Suite PS4 (11.1.1.5) including Oracle Service Bus is now available.

We could have learned all of the tips and tricks in a normal session or presentation. However by working this way there is a much stronger feel of how technologies and tools are used in a real world project. It was fun to watch and learn and I think the team had a great time as well!

At the en of the session the End-to-End flow worked really well. Great work in just a few hours time!

Fault Handling in SOA Suite

Ronald van Luttikhuizen en Guido Schmutz presented on Fault Handling in the SOA Suite. There is a clear need for another approach compared to say traditional systems. This is because SOA based systems differ from traditional system on the following aspects: level of heterogeneity, number of (different types of) consumers, asynchronous responses, and the way that transactions are handled.

Guido showed us around in the OSB with a focus on the following features: Result Caching, Service Throttling, Retry mechanism, Service pooling (talking to multiple endpoints) and Fault Message on callback (in async). Ronald gave a demo on how the Compensate and Fault Policy Framework work in BPEL.

This presentation on SOA Suite Fault Handling is also available on slideshare.

Using Oracle Apex as a replacement for BPEL Console

The company where this case was build has a high number of messages running through their BPEL 10g. This causes performance issues in the BPEL Console due to the high number of instances (millions on a daily basis) in the dehydration store (on which full table scans are performed). They created an own more lightweight console in Apex to manage both deployed BPELs as well as instances. Their solution uses the following ingredients:

• A BPEL api – which is included in a BPEL script. They import orabpel.jar for this.
• A BPEL script that exposes a part of the BPEL api as a web service. Embed Java in a BPEL and call the API.
• An Apex front end that calls the web service to perform maintenance tasks.

In my opinion this delivers value to this company, however are there better ways to expose Java as a web service. Besides that this adds additional BPEL instances to the bottleneck resource.

Tuning SOA Suite 11g for perfomance

This presentation was delivered by Vikas Anand. One of the best parts of his presentation was that he didn’t only address the tuning part but also the design part. This mainly focus on preventing the need for tuning afterwards. Some of the design considerations he mentioned were:

• Choose the right tool for the job.
• Design it right – Consider what parts of the integration have to be synchronous and what have to be asynchronous. To which he added the advise to be aware of transactional boundaries.
• Need a holistic view on sizing and capacity – Based on business requirements.
• Plan sizing of dehydration DB – make sure there is a retention strategy and implement dehydration strategy.
• Use the same JVM across (different) clusters.

Tools and Knowledge needed to develop SOA Suite 11g applications

Edwin, Torsten and Guido - Image by Markus Eisele

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.

The primary goal of BPMN is to provide a notation that is readily understandable by all business users, from the business analysts that create the initial drafts of the processes, to the technical developers responsible for implementing the technology that will perform those processes, and finally, to the business people who will manage and monitor those processes.

BPEL is an execution language. There is for example no standard graphical notation in the BPEL standard. The main focus is not on readability, it is on execution.
So BPMN and BPEL aim for different goals. It should come as no surprise that there is gap. There are several resources that describe the mapping, provide translation, or transforming BPMN to BPEL.

Guidelines

Here are some guidelines that help you bridge the BPMN to BPEL gap:

• Be as specific as possible in BPMN diagrams (In Oracle Business Process Analysis Suite you can use e.g. automated activity, notification , and human tasks.).
• Add additional information in BPMN activities. Sure this doesn’t enable automatic transformation, but it does reduce the need for additional design documentation. This will improve documentation consistency, and reduce the required governance.
• Use templates in your BPMN activities. Structure and check completeness of your descriptions.
• Use a Service repository. This will enable both designers and developer to communicate about “the same thing”
• Use a GUI components reposity, for the same reasons as you use a Service repository