Charles' SOA Blog

EL Expressions in Custom Tag Parameters

2011-06-15T11:09:00.004-04:00

When recently working on a custom Java tag library, I had forgotten one twist. If you need your tag to have a parameter accept an EL expression, your TLD attribute entry needs to include true.Also don't forget that the tag lib version should be at least 1.2 and the JSP version should be at least 2.0.

Shell script for file checking

2010-01-08T09:28:00.002-05:00

I recently found I needed a simple way to determine if the correct number of daily files had been received and processed on my BPEL server. Since the server NFS mounts to a Windows share that has files being FTP'd to, there were a lot of places where a file might not make it. The shell script below checks for the number of instances of a file that has the date stamp in the file name and emails

My Review of MBT Men's Tariki - Walnut Oiled Leather - On Sale!

2009-09-10T12:30:00.001-04:00

Footwear etc. Free shipping and free return shipping on all MBT Footwear. Each pair of MBTs include an instructional DVD instruction card. What... MBT Men's Tariki - Walnut Oiled Leather - On Sale!Best work shoes I've had Development geek Sanford, FL 9/10/2009 4 5Sizing: Feels true to sizeWidth: Feels too narrowPros: Stable, Looks Great, Comfortable,

Find a string in all file on Linux

2009-04-28T13:30:00.000-04:00

find . -exec grep -il 'string_to_find' {} \;

How to Access BPEL Variables in a Java Embed Activity

2008-12-30T10:44:00.001-05:00

In your embedded Java you can use:javaVar = getVariableData("BPEL_Variable_Name");andsetVariableData("BPEL_Variable_Name", javaVar);Obviously, the types need to match up!Also useful for debugging/logging purposes is:addAuditTrailEntry("My Message Goes Here:",optionalJavaVarValueToLog);

How to Create A Multiple Entry Point BPEL Process Using Pick

2008-10-29T13:28:00.003-04:00

In RIA development we want frequently want to consume web services. From a organizational point of view we typically want related methods to be provided by the same provider. If the web service is being provided via a BPEL process, how can we do that?The answer is to use a BPEL process with a Pick activity.Steps:1) Create a normal synchronous BPEL process. Let the wizard create it's default input

Enable/Unlock OID User Account Using Java API

2008-10-27T13:19:00.002-04:00

How to programmatically enable and/or unlock a user's OID account using the Java API? Let's take a step by step look:First get a reference to the directory context:ctx = oracle.ldap.util.jndi.ConnectionUtil.getDefaultDirCtx(ldapHost, ldapPort, ldapUserCN, ldapCred );ldapUserCN will most likely be something like "cn=orcladmin" and ldapCred will be the password for that CN.Next, we build an

Worklist Application Issue When Switching to OID Security Provider

2008-09-12T12:38:00.003-04:00

In the Oracle 10.1.3.3.x BPEL server there is an issue with tasks disappearing from everyone's task list after the server has been switched to use OID as the security provider.The issue is that along with user ID's, the worklist application maintains the user's identity context in several of the workflow data base tables, including: WFTASK, WFTASKHISTORY, WFUSERPREFERENCE, WFUSERTASKVIEW,

Switch OC4J from OID back to File Based Security

2008-09-10T09:10:00.003-04:00

The switch from file based security to OID (or LDAP) based security is well documented by Oracle, but what if you ever need to switch back?The obvious thing to do it do go into Enterprise Manager and change all of the providers back to "File Based Security". This will get you close, but not quite there.The next thing you need to do is to roll back the changes to the jazn.xml files that were made

Find the OPMN Port for Java BPEL API Calls

2008-07-30T12:18:00.003-04:00

Frequently, you'll need the OPMN request port for doing Java BPEL API calls.You can find this value by looking at the opmn.xml file on the mid tier application server. It is in the $ORACLE_SOA_HOME/opmn/conf directory. Around the 5th line down in the "port" tag, you'll need to use the port number specified in the "request" attribute.

Add attachment to BPEL Human Task at creation

2008-07-16T09:44:00.005-04:00

Consider the sample BPEL flow below, which contains a Human Task activity. It may be useful at times to have BPEL attach data to the task as an attachment file. How can this be done?We can do this by expanding the human task activity and providing some custom initialization code in the first, the AssignTaskAttributes, assignment section.By adding four additional Copy directives to the existing

Invoke BPEL Process with Java API

2008-07-14T10:43:00.003-04:00

This is a frequently asked question on the Oracle BPEL Forums, so I thought I would address it here.import com.oracle.bpel.client.Locator;import com.oracle.bpel.client.NormalizedMessage;import com.oracle.bpel.client.delivery.IDeliveryService;public class InvokeBpel { public static void main(String args[]) { Properties props = new java.util.Properties(); Locator locator = null;

Including Task History from Previous Task in Oracle BPEL Human Workflow

2008-04-28T11:37:00.004-04:00

Oracle BPEL allows the use of Human Task process activities, in conjunction with the Oracle Worklist Application, to allow human interaction with BPEL processes.Sometimes, it would be desirable to have two human flows that include the same information. Consider a purchase request -- such a request may have a management approval flow, and then a flow for the purchasing department to actually

Programatically controlling the length of expiration/escalation on BPEL Human Task

2008-03-22T09:30:00.003-04:00

By default Oracle BPEL lets you expire or escalate tasks on a pre-determined duration basis. But consider the situation where you want the task duration to be 8 working hours before expiration, and working hours are only the time between 8 am an 5 pm, Monday through Friday -- how can you do this?The options in the standard task dialog don't really accommodate this, but you can work around it. You

Programmatically determining BPEL manual recovery status

2008-03-22T09:28:00.003-04:00

It's been a while since I've written an article, and I hope no one has been waiting all this time for part 2 of my BAM/BPEL alert article. I promise to complete that write up soon.Today, however, I'd like to talk about an interesting problem I ran across this week. If anyone has experience with Oracle's BPEL product you know that sometimes BPEL processes can go to manual recovery. The two most

Oracle BAM - Calling an external web service as an alert - Part 1 - BAM Configuration

2008-03-22T09:28:00.001-04:00

Oracle's BAM tool is very useful not only for reporting on enterprise data, but also in taking action on certain events.For instance, suppose you have a BAM object defined and other processes are interested in the fact that the BAM object has been populated with a new row. In the SOA world, there are many ways we could notify another process -- via a message queue or simply by calling a web

JNDI URL in High Availability Environments

2008-03-22T09:27:00.001-04:00

In high availability environments you'll want to specify more than one source for your JNDI provider. How can you do that? With a simple URL change you can switch from only specifying one provider:jndiProviderURL = "ormi://localhost/Service"to a list of nodes which can serve as the provider:jndiProviderURL = "opmn:ormi://host1:port1:oc4j/Service, opmn:ormi://host2:port2:oc4j/Service"

Debugging a failing BPEL process - How to force dehydration

2008-03-22T09:26:00.000-04:00

Sometimes a failing BPEL process will fail without much trace, not even showing that an instance was ever created in Oracle process manager. In this case it may be useful to force dehydration to aid debugging. You can try to force dehydration in your process by:1) Adding a Java execution block to your process at the point you wish to dehydrate the process2) Calling the checkpoint() method You

Changing an Asynchronous Oracle BPEL process to be Synchronous

2008-03-22T09:21:00.002-04:00

One of the top suggestions Oracle has for tuning BPEL processes is to make sure that processes that can be synchronous are. This is because synchronous processes can be considered transient within the BPEL engine -- and the BPEL engine has several tunable parameters for transient processes that determine if and when they are pushed to the dehydration store. Fewer dehydration trips means better

Tips on the Oracle BPEL Java API - Part 2 - Using the Locator class to get a list of processes

2008-03-22T09:19:00.000-04:00

In part 1, we saw how to use the Server class to connect to the BPEL server and get a list of BPEL domains configured on that server. The Server class is useful for performing administrative tasks on the BPEL server. If we want to perform process oriented tasks, we need to use the Locator class and it's methods. First, you'll need to import several BPEL API classes: import

Sometimes Toplink's mergeEntity doesn't....

2008-03-22T09:17:00.000-04:00

If you use JDeveloper and you want to use a JPA, odds are you'll pick Toplink. Toplink works well for me, but if you use a session facade bean to access your Toplink queries and objects you may have had a run in, like I have in the past, with the mergeEntity() method. It seems like sometimes this method just will not save the data to the database, which can be very frustrating. I'll list some

Tips on the Oracle BPEL Java API - Part 1 - Using the Server class to get a list of domains

2008-03-22T09:13:00.002-04:00

In this post I'll describe some of the common things that need to be done to call the Oracle BPEL PM API from Java, and I'll show you how to put that to use to get a list of the current BPEL domains defined on you server. We'll be using the Server class, which is in the com.oracle.bpel.client package, and is useful for manipulating BPEL at the server level.First, for this example, you'll need to

A short note about our new site home

2008-03-22T09:09:00.003-04:00

This site contains the posts from my previous location for Charles' SOA Blog ( http://soablog.info ) through the end of 2007.Additional posts will be made here as the other account is phased out.