BPM 11g Workspace - Initiator Task: No Applications Found

Of late, I have been seeing users getting this issue of not being able to initiate the BPM process due to non-availability of the process under the "Available Processes" panel in the BPM workspace.

This issue is not specific to Initiator tasks and can occur for any human task in a BPM process. Note that this issue is tough to reproduce and is very intermittent.

Not to worry. It is curable ;)

Check 1:

Ensure that the role mapping is done for the BPM application roles in the BPM workspace

Check 2:

1. Login to EM console as administrator
2. Choose your BPM application under soa-infra -> default
3. On the RHS, click on the appropriate human task under the "Component Metrics" section
4. On the resulting screen, go to Administration tab
5. Check if taskform URI information is available

More often, this information might be missing and you may have to manually configure this;

Sample information is provided below (Click on the "Add URI" button)

Application Name: worklist
Host Name: localhost (provide appropriate hostname information here)
HTTP Port: 8001 (SOA managed server port)
HTTPS Port: 0
URI: /workflow/ManageOrderUI/faces/adf.task-flow?_id=ManageOrderTask_TaskFlow&_document=WEB-INF/ManageOrderTask_TaskFlow.xml

URI information is just an example. Update it to match your ADF taskflow definition.

Hope this helps in the resolution of the issue.

Unable to Login BPM Workspace/Composer

Last week I installed BPM PS6 on one of my local servers. Since it was intended to be a development environment, I configured my WebLogic domain to have a single server which would double up as my SOA/BPM server in additions to its Admin server capabilities.

After a clean install, while trying to login as weblogic [the administrator user] in to the BPM workspace or BPM composer, these applications wouldn't allow access throwing "Login Error" & "Authentication Error" respectively. However, I was successfully able to login to the WebLogic console & EM with same credentials.

On investigating the server logs, the following errors were reported by the managed server;

[APP: BPMComposer] BPM-80102: Error while creating the security service.  Cause: Identity Service Configuration error.[[ Identity Service Configuration has error.
Please refer to the identity service configuration guidelines and correct the Identity Service configurations. Contact Oracle Support Services if error is not fixable.
javax.security.auth.login.LoginException: BPM-80102: Error while creating the security service.  Cause: Identity Service Configuration error.
........
........
........
Caused by: ORABPEL-10555
Identity Service Configuration error.
Identity Service Configuration has error.
........
........
Caused by: oracle.bpel.services.workflow.client.WorkflowServiceClientException: javax.xml.ws.WebServiceException: oracle.fabric.common.PolicyEnforcementException: PolicySet Invalid: WSM-02557 oracle.wsm.policymanager.accessor.BeanAccessor The documents required to configure the Oracle Web Services Manager runtime have not been retrieved from the Policy Manager application (wsm-pm), possibly because the application is not running or has not been deployed in the environment. The query "&(policysets:global/%)(@appliesTo~="WS-Client()")" is queued for later retrieval. WSM-02557 oracle.wsm.policymanager.accessor.BeanAccessor The documents required to configure the Oracle Web Services Manager runtime have not been retrieved from the Policy Manager application (wsm-pm), possibly because the application is not running or has not been deployed in the environment. The query "/policies/oracle/no_authentication_client_policy" is queued for later retrieval.

Clearly the error states an issue with the policy manager under OWSM (Oracle WebServices Manager).

Solution:

Step 1:

1. Login to WLS console (http://hostname:port/console) as weblogic [Admin user]
2. Under the Data Sources, ensure that the mds-owsm jdbc data source is targeted at the SOA managed server [If you have a single server install verify that it is targeted at AdminServer]. If not, edit the data source & update targets

Step 2:

1. Under the "Deployments" section of WLS console, make sure that the wsm-pm enterprise application is running. If the deployment state is other than "Active", there is a good posibility that this application is not targeted on the SOA managed server.
2. Solution here is to target this application manually on the SOA server. To do this, click on the wsm-pm application -> Go to Targets tab -> choose the wsm-pm root component -> Click on "Change Targets" -> Check the SOA managed server (or AdminServer in case of single server install) and choose "Yes".

Now, you should be able to successfully login to the BPM workspace & BPM composer applications.

JDeveloper SOA Deployment Error: Unable to find a WSDL that has a definition for service

This is one of the strange errors that I encountered recently. While trying to deploy a SOA project, JDeveloper reported the following error;


Received HTTP response from the server, response code=500
Error deploying archive sca_CreditCardProcess_rev1.0.jar to partition "default" on server soa_server1 [http://bpmsrv.example.com:8001] 
HTTP error code returned [500]
Error message from server:
There was an error deploying the composite on soa_server1: Deployment Failed: Unable to find a WSDL that has a definition for service {http://xmlns.oracle.com/bpmn/bpmnProcess/CreditCardProcess}CreditCardProcess.service and port CreditCardProcessPort.  Please make sure that the port attribute for the binding defined in the composite file is correct by checking the namespace, service name, and port name.  In addition, check that the WSDL associated with the binding namespace is imported and currently reachable (check the import nodes at the top of the composite file). Finally, validate the HTTP proxy settings for the server..

Check server log for more details.
Error deploying archive sca_CreditCardProcess_rev1.0.jar to partition "default" on server soa_server1 [http://bpmsrv.example.com:8001] 
####  Deployment incomplete.  ####

The error reported in JDeveloper is very misleading and it took me significant amount of time & effort to figure out the actual root cause. This was particularly strange in my case because the code was deployed multiple times successfully without errors in my dev environment.

Root Cause:

On closer observation into the soa server logs, I noted that a webservice reference was not "reachable" by the SOA composite and hence this error. This had nothing to do with the "exposed" service, its port or definitions whatsoever.

Fix:

In my case, the referenced webservice's hostname mapping was missing in my "new" environment because of which the SOA composite was unable to find the WSDL during deployment. It is fair for JDeveloper not to complain because it usually runs on client machine/laptop where the hostname mappings might exist. The deployment error is thrown at the server side and hence the key is to analyze the SOA server logs to figure the actual issue for a fix.

Hope this will help users with similar issues.

BPM & Case Management Exemplified

Trigger for this post has been the recent buzz about Case Management. Where does case management fit in an enterprise? Is this a new invention? - certainly not.

Successful businesses & their strategies have always been agile & unstructured - it was the information technology which was not! BPM was a technology that came much closer to business - addressing business process automation & promising agility on demand.

Technically speaking, Case Management has been around for a long time (How different was an insurance claim or loan process today than it was in the 80's?) - this time only IT trying to frame standards & techniques around it - obviously bringing along 'must-have' competitive advantages to the business such as speed, performance & visibility.

More and more businesses are unanimously voting up for a BPM initiative at their organizations. Traditional IT development/programming model doesn't stand a chance to win 'budgets' from the LOBs. This change is owing to the fact that a lot of organizations realize that all IT initiatives must equip them with "Competitive Advantage" allowing quick 'Go-To Market', better response to competition moves, align with ever-changing business strategies, visibility into key business performance indicators etc.. to name a few.

What better solution than a Business Process Management (BPM) initiative. There are plenty of BPM vendors in the market which an Organization can evaluate for a better fit.

But what is case management?

Case Management has its roots in BPM.

A business process which cannot be repeatable in all situations - and the process flow/steps purely depend on the judgement/decision of a human resource (knowledge worker). Plenty of industries/domains such as medical, healthcare, legal, financials largely depend on skilled knowledge workers (doctors, physicians, lawyers, investigator) to make decisions on a situation/scenario where there could be process flow steps that are 'unknown' at design time (unlike a BPM process where the process flow is 'rigid').

For a good case management solution the following are key requirements;

• Dynamic Process Flow - A case worker must have the ability to determine 'next steps', create ad-hoc tasks in the process flow
• Collaborate - Often a knowledge worker has a need to collaborate/discuss with fellow case worker(s) to effectively handle a 'case'
• Share Artifacts - One of the important requirement. A case in most cases involve plenty of document sharing (including customer call records, agreements, contracts etc..) which must be shared/stored preferably in a digital asset management system
• Reporting - Solution must have the ability to generate reports to track status, monitor KPIs & take actions (Very important competitive edge to any business)

Now that we understood what case management is let us ponder upon some FAQs;

What are the key differences between BPM & Case Management?
Are they complementary technologies?
Where should one use case management against BPM & vice-versa?

I will try to answer these questions through this blog post.

Key differences b/w BPM & Case Management:

BPM complementing Case Management:

Absolutely. As discussed earlier, a case management solution may comprise of several BPM processes which can be triggered from within a case to complete a certain aspect of a milestone.

From a perspective, BPM can be considered a more 'mature' state of a 'case' where all process steps are well known & defined.

Should I choose BPM / Case Management?

Answer to this question is not straight forward. A business process/scenario must be assessed before determining the choice. But, here are some simple questions - If the answer is yes for any of the below then it could be a classic 'case-management'

Do you think your business process cannot be 'repeated' under one/more situations?
Does your business process rely on users who will determine the 'rules' rather than by a system defined rule?
Do you have trouble defining process flow for 'all' scenarios?

SOA 11g File Adapter Pre & Post Processing Technique

File Adapter is one of the most feature rich & powerful technology adapter that is available with Oracle SOA Suite. In this article, I will be explaining how to perform pre-processing of a file when it is being read by the File Adapter in SOA suite with a use-case.

In an enterprise scenario a file process operation is not as simple as we would like it to be. Often there are situations where files of different formats that might be required to be processed selectively. Also, the files could be packaged & encrypted in one common format. How do we handle this scenario?

In Oracle SOA Suite, the File Adapter based on JCA 1.5 architecture provides feasibility to perform pre/post processing of file that are being processed (read or write). This feature is known as the "Pipeline & Valve" concept of the File Adapter. As you can see from the diagram below, the file adapter polls a specific folder from the file system - The file stream then passes through the pipeline (which holds a sequence of custom defined valves). A pipeline can have 'n' number of valves which will be processed in the order specified. The valves are nothing but content processors where a Java call be made.

The scenario that we are going to consider in this post is a toned down version of a real-time business use-case but sufficient enough to drive home the pre/post processing capabilities of the file adapter.

Use-Case:

A bunch of applications publish files of various different formats to a common folder which should be processed. However, only files of certain formats must be picked up for processing and the rest left to be processed by a different system.

This is a classic case where the SOA suite file adapter's pre-processing technique could be put to use in determining the file format before processing a file.

Step 1: Building the custom valve to determine mime type of the file

Let us first start by creating the valve (Java class) which will determine the file format. All valves must implement either the Valve interface or StagedValve interface. Optionally, to make it easier, the custom valve class can also extend AbstractValve or AbstractStagedValve classes.

In this case, I have created a MimeValidationValve Java class which extends AbstractValve. Only files which have the following mime types are allowed.


text/plain
application/pdf
application/msword


This is configurable in the properties file. I have made use of Apache Tika open source toolkit which is very powerful in extracting metadata information of the files polled. Read more on Apache Tika here.

One important point to note here is that you will need to add the bpm-infra.jar library to the Java project in order to compile the valve class. This library is available under  <Middleware_Home>/Oracle_soa1/soa/modules/oracle.soa.fabric_11.1.1

Project Properties -> Libraries & Classpath -> Add Jar/Directory

You can download the valve Java project here

Step 2: Building the SOA application to process files

You can download the SOA project here. This project has a 'Read' file adapter to poll for files from the file system, a 'Write' file adapter to write files back to file system and a BPEL process connecting these adapters.

Step 3: Creating the Pipeline XML file

Recall that a pipeline can have one or more valves which will be processed in the order specified. The pipeline XML file will hold references to the various different valves that must be invoked by the file adapter before the translation phase or handing it over to the SOA runtime.

Let us now go back to the SOA project and create the pipeline XML file. Let us review the FilePipeLine.xml under the DGFileProcessor SOA application.


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252" ?>
<pipeline xmlns="http://www.oracle.com/adapter/pipeline">
  <valves>
    <valve>mimetype.MimeValidationValve</valve>
  </valves>
</pipeline>

Note that any number of valves can be added to the pipeline by just adding the <valve> elements.

Step 4: Plumbing the Pipeline with the appropriate file adapter

Now that we have the valves created and the pipeline/valve configurations done, the final piece that remains to be done is to let the file adapter trigger pipeline processing. To do this, open the corresponding file adapter's jca file and add the following property.

<property name="PipelineFile" value="FilePipeLine.xml"/>

That completes the solution for the use-case.

WebCenter Spaces OBIEE Integration

This post is more of a self-reference material for the future. Thought it might help others looking for it as well.

Wouldn't it be a great idea for enterprises which already have WebCenter Spaces & OBIEE technologies to leverage the integration feature? Yes, think about showing BI analytics to your business users / stakeholders through the WebCenter spaces portal solution.

There are a set of configurations that needs to be done at both OBIEE and the WebLogic server level to enable single sign-on for seamless integration. A very good detailed step-by-step instruction on achieving the integration is documented here.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/webcenter/portal/learnmore/wc-biappsconfig-396418.pdf

SOA 11g MDS - Share Common Artifacts

As promised on my previous post, I am detailing the step-by-step instructions which allows for sharing of common artifacts (schema files/WSDLs) among SOA projects and more importantly helps in loose coupling of service bindings & remove service dependencies.

A typical use case is where the abstract WSDL definition of an external service can be stored in MDS and referenced from the SOA composite which will loosely couple the services and also guard against 'SOA Composite Invalidation' issues.

SOA 11g provides us with MDS repository (both file based & DB based) where common artifacts can be stored and referenced by all projects in the SOA infrastructure.

File based MDS is used during design/deploy time where as DB based MDS is used at run-time by the SOA infra. A configuration file named adf-config.xml that is part of every SOA project manages this partition mapping to be used by JDeveloper during design/deploy time.

All SOA projects that are deployed on the SOA infrastructure are stored in the MDS repository. If you create a connection from the JDeveloper 'Resource Palette' to the SOA MDS, there will be a 'deployed composites' folder which will contain all deployed artifacts.

Connection Information for the MDS connection:
username: XXX_MDS (usually DEV_MDS)
password: xxxxxxxxx
MDS Partition: soa-infra

The file based MDS repository is generally the 'seed' partition under a typical JDeveloper install;

<JDev_Home>\integration\seed


Under this partition there is a root folder (soa) available by default which contains all the configuration files, schemas & WSDLs required by various different SOA components during design time. These files are also pre-deployed on the database MDS repository.

We are now free to create custom folders under the 'seed' partition to hold artifacts that are common references in a SOA environment. Generally, we create an 'apps' folder under the 'seed' partition which in turn holds various folders to hold various artifact types;

 Once the artifacts that needs to be shared/referenced are placed under the appropriate namespace (in this case 'apps'), we can let the SOA project in JDeveloper to point to MDS for these artifacts from a common location.

adf-config.xml configuration:

As noted earlier, adf-config.xml is an important configuration file which holds the details regarding the MDS (both file based & DB based). By default, this file declares the 'seed' partition & the metadata store for 'soa' namespace.

This file can be found under <YourApplication>\.adf\META-INF.
Alternatively, in JDeveloper, expand the 'Application Resources' panel; drill through Descriptors -> ADF META-INF to find this file

Step 1: Just add the metadata store namespace for '/apps' in additions to default '/soa/shared' namespace - This is to let the JDeveloper reference the artifacts under the '/apps' during the design time from the file system metadata store.

<adf-mds-config xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/adf/mds/config">
    <mds-config xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/mds/config">
      <persistence-config>
        <metadata-namespaces>
          <namespace path="/soa/shared" metadata-store-usage="mstore-usage_1"/>
          <namespace path="/apps" metadata-store-usage="mstore-usage_1"/>
        </metadata-namespaces>
        <metadata-store-usages>
          <metadata-store-usage id="mstore-usage_1">
            <metadata-store class-name="oracle.mds.persistence.stores.file.FileMetadataStore">
              <property name="metadata-path"
                        value="${oracle.home}/integration"/>
              <property name="partition-name" value="seed"/>
            </metadata-store>
          </metadata-store-usage>
        </metadata-store-usages>
      </persistence-config>
    </mds-config>
  </adf-mds-config> 

Step 2: In the SOA composite, reference the common artifacts from MDS as shown below;

 <import namespace="http://xmlns.oracle.com/bpmn/bpmnProcess/CreditCardProcess"
          location="oramds:/apps/orderprocess/common/CreditServiceProcess.wsdl"
          importType="wsdl"/>

Now that we have successfully referenced the SOA project to refer the file based MDS it is barely enough only during design time. For deploy time & run time, these artifacts must be made available in the DB based MDS.

There are two methods available for us to deploy the artifacts in SOA DB based MDS;

Approach 1: Ant based script which allows to deploy the artifacts into SOA MDS. I am not going to get to the details of this as this has been blogged in detail by Edwin Biemond; Reference below;

http://biemond.blogspot.com/2009/11/soa-suite-11g-mds-deploy-and-removal.html

Approach 2: For a simple JDeveloper based SOA deployment follow the steps below;

Step 1: Create a new application (Generic Application)

Step 2: Name the application (eg., OrderProcessMDSApp) and click 'Next'

 Step 3: Provide a name to the project (eg., OrderProcessMDSProj) and click 'Finish'

 

 Step 4: Now, right click on the OrderProcessMDSProj and choose 'Project Properties'. In the 'Project Properties' dialog, choose 'Deployment' and create a new deployment profile by clicking on 'New...' button

 Step 5: In the 'Create Deployment Profile' dialog, leave the default 'Archive Type' to 'JAR File' and name the deployment profile (eg., soamdsarchive) and click 'OK'

 Step 6: This will open up the 'Edit JAR Deployment Profile Properties' dialog. Click on the 'Contributors' section under 'File Groups -> Project Output'.

Step 7: Click on the 'Add..' button and choose the folder where the 'content to be deployed' is present. Here the '/apps' namespace under the file based MDS can be chosen where the content is already placed & available.

Step 8: Now, click on the 'Filters' section and choose the artifacts under the '/apps' that you would like to deploy or upload to MDS database repository

Step 9: Click on OK to complete the deployment profile creation process. Now, we have created a project JAR deployment profile which contains the artifacts to be deployed on to the SOA MDS. Now, we will have to create a application deployment profile of 'soa bundle' type which will be deployed to the soa-infra.

Step 10: From the 'Application Menu', choose 'Deploy' -> 'New Deployment Profile..' option

Step 11: Under the 'New Gallery' go to 'Deployment Profiles' choose 'SOA Bundle' and click OK

Step 11: Under the 'Create Deployment Profile', provide a name to the application deployment profile (eg., soabundle1) and click OK.

Step 12: In the 'SOA Bundle Deployment Profile Properties' go to 'Dependencies' and choose the JAR archive that we created earlier eg., soamdsarchive and click OK

Finally, deploy the application to the soa server. This will ensure that the artifacts under the '/apps' metadata namespace is deployed on to the SOA MDS database repository.

You can verify the same from the SOA MDS connection created under the 'Resource Palette'. This should now reflect the 'apps' folder at the same level as 'soa' metadata store.

Now, if you try to deploy the SOA project which references MDS you may hit a deployment error complaining that the resource referenced is not found. This is because the JDeveloper consults adf-config.xml configuration file during design & deploy time (refer back to the initial architecture diagram). Since there is no information about the DB based MDS in the adf-config the deployer complains.

To fix this, go back to the adf-config.xml file and add the DB metadata store information so that the deployer can read & locate the referenced resources from MDS.

<adf-mds-config xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/adf/mds/config">
    <mds-config xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/mds/config">
      <persistence-config>
        <metadata-namespaces>
          <namespace path="/soa/shared" metadata-store-usage="mstore-usage_2"/>
          <namespace path="/apps" metadata-store-usage="mstore-usage_2"/>
        </metadata-namespaces>
        <metadata-store-usages>
          <metadata-store-usage id="mstore-usage_2">
            <metadata-store class-name="oracle.mds.persistence.stores.db.DBMetadataStore">
              <property value="DEV_MDS" name="jdbc-userid"/>
              <property value="xxxxxxx" name="jdbc-password"/>
              <property value="jdbc:oracle:thin:@hostname:1521:orcl"
                        name="jdbc-url"/>
              <property value="soa-infra" name="partition-name"/>
            </metadata-store>
          </metadata-store-usage>
        </metadata-store-usages>
      </persistence-config>
    </mds-config>
  </adf-mds-config>

That completes our configuration and eventually this elaborate post. Now, the deployment will be smooth as we have referenced the DB MDS in the adf-config.xml file.

Hope this post helped you understand & implement the SOA MDS related activities. Let me know your feedback through comments.