Little Known Tips & Tricks from Across the Oracle SOA Landscape

Ahmed Aboulnaga
Technical Director
Raastech
Little Known Tips & Tricks from
Across the Oracle SOA Landscape
Manchester Central Convention Complex
Exchange 8
December 2, 2013
12:45 – 13:45

© Raastech, Inc. 2013 | All rights reserved. Slide 2 of 72raastech.com
About Me
 Ahmed Aboulnaga
 18+ years of Oracle middleware experience
 Focus on Oracle Fusion Middleware, with emphasis on
SOA, identity management, and portal technologies
 Oracle ACE, OCE, OCA
 Author / Presenter / Blogger
 President of WMOUG / EGOUG

About Raastech
 Systems integrator founded in 2009
 Headquartered in the Washington DC area
 Specializes in Oracle Fusion Middleware
 Oracle Gold Partner & Reseller
 Oracle SOA Suite Specialized
 Certified staff in multiple disciplines
 OCE, OCA, ITIL, CISSP, PMP, etc.
 Continued contributions to the technology community
 Sponsor and volunteer of numerous users groups
 Ongoing publishing of books, articles, whitepapers, and blogs
 Regular presenters at major conferences

What is this presentation about?
 For the experienced Oracle SOA technologist
 Random tips and tricks surrounding the following product
sets:
 SOA Suite 11g
 BAM 11g
 OSB 11g
 OWSM 11g
 OSR 11g
 Goal is to share things you may never have heard about
or come across

Agenda
1. Technology Placement & Design Patterns
2. BAM – What to avoid
3. OSB – What to avoid
4. SOA Suite – What to avoid
5. WebLogic Server – What to avoid
6. OSR – What to avoid

Technology Placement
 Some overlap between:
 Mediator & BPEL
 BPEL & OSB
 OSB & Mediator
 Some customers are BPEL only shops
 Some customers are OSB only shops
 What to use?
SOA Composite
(BPEL + Mediator)
SOA Composite
(BPEL)
OSB

BAM
Reporting
Design Patterns
Integration
Error
Framework
Gateway
 Always have a gateway
 Virtualization | Security | SLA management
 Integration can include any number of technologies
 Error framework is a must
 Think about transaction reporting (BAM?)

Asynchronous Design Pattern
Mediator
BPEL
BPEL
OSB
OSB
OEG
*
BAM

Mediator
BPEL
BPEL
OSB
OSB
OEG
*
BAM
First touch point should be a
gateway, provides:
• Abstraction/virtualization
• SLA monitoring
• First line of defense
• Could be in DMZ
1

Mediator
BPEL
BPEL
OSB
OSB
2
OEG
*
BAM
JMS queue provides:
• Immediate handoff from caller
• Message persistence
(which also supports recovery)

Mediator
BPEL
BPEL
OSB
OSB
OEG
1-way Async
*
BAM
Mediator used for:
• Routing
• Calls BPEL as 1-way async
(eliminates need for another queue)
3

Mediator
BPEL
BPEL
OSB
OSB
OEG
Synchronous
*
BAM
• Entire sub-process is synchronous
• Errors bubbled up to BPEL
• BPEL decides how to handle
exceptions
• OSB can be used for throttling or
caching
Throttle
Cache
4

Mediator
BPEL
BPEL
OSB
OSB
OEG
*
BAM
Create an error management
framework:
• Single async service
• Maintains errors in a table
• Auto-notify by email as required
5

Mediator
BPEL
BPEL
OSB
OSB
OEG
*
BAM
Create a message resubmission
framework:
• Payloads persisted
• Manually republished to
original queue for resubmission
6

Mediator
BPEL
BPEL
OSB
OSB
OEG
*
BAM
Use BAM:
• To store sensor data
• Easily lookup state of transactions
outside of main SOA engines
• Keep BAM server on separate
physical servers
7

Mediator
BPEL
BPEL
OSB
OSB
OEG
*
Gateway
BAM Reporting
Error Management & Message Resubmission Frameworks
Integration Design Pattern

Technology Placement (for Sensors)
 BPEL sensors?
 Composite sensors?
 BAM sensors?

Agenda
1. BAM stuff
2. OSB stuff
3. SOA Suite stuff
4. WebLogic stuff
5. Integration stuff
6. OSR stuff

Understand what BAM is designed for
 Not a data repository… use OBIEE instead
 Not intended for large amounts of data (think millions of
records per data object)
 Our mistake:
 Instead of composite sensors, dumped huge amount of sensor
data into BAM
 Why is this a problem?
 BAM unable to handle extremely large loads effectively
 BAM reports are exceptionally weak
 Who nowadays develops web apps that run only in IE?
 Best used for aggregated data that needs to be reported
against in near real-time

Weak BAM reporting capabilities
 No user sorting
 No field expansion
 Cumbersome navigation
 Weak search capabilities

BAM runs only on IE
 Yes, I know the history of BAM… but still unacceptable

Don’t forget about BAM purging
 People tend to forget about purging BAM Data Objects
 If data object is based on a database table:
 Simply create a scheduled PL/SQL package to purge the data
 Otherwise:
 Use BAM Alerts

Avoid BAM RMI Adapter
 BAM Adapter comes in 2 flavors; RMI and SOAP

Avoid BAM RMI Adapter
 BAM Adapter comes in 2 flavors; RMI and SOAP
 In your code:
 eis/bam/rmi
 eis/bam/soap
 Avoid RMI because:
 It is not as efficient as SOAP
 Bug in BAM Adapter leads to BPEL threads not being released

Understanding BAM inBatch=‘Y’
 The BAM Adapter property inBatch batches requests into
batches (Could this sentence sound any more messed up?)

 BAM Adapter reports ‘success’ 100% of the time, but
pushes the data as predetermined intervals
SOA
Composite
Instance
SOA
Composite
Instance
SOA
Composite
Instance
BAM
inBatch=N
inBatch=N
inBatch=N

 BAM Adapter reports ‘success’ 100% of the time, but
pushes the data as predetermined intervals
SOA
Composite
Instance
SOA
Composite
Instance
SOA
Composite
Instance
BAM
inBatch=Y
inBatch=Y
inBatch=Y

 Works great, but if there is an error in a single BAM
record:
 The entire batch fails
 Unknown which record failed
 Failure not always in SOA logs but sometimes in BAM logs
BAM
UP
BAM
Goes DOWN
SOA Suite
UP
SOA Suite
Goes DOWN
• Requests are batched in SOA
• Invocations always success
• Requests are batched in SOA
• Invocations always success
• Limit to how much can be
batched
• Batched requests are lost • Both are down idiot!

Agenda
1. BAM stuff
2. OSB stuff
3. SOA Suite stuff
4. WebLogic stuff
6. OSR stuff

OSB Summary
Pros 
 Stateless, so performance is superior
 Caching, throttling, service virtualization
 Can search indexes in payloads (if enabled)
Cons 
 Cannot reference MDS
 Shared custom code required for DVM support
 But cannot support multi-input DVMs
 Severe limitations in transactional visibility, tracing, and metrics
 WSDLs/XSDs must be copied locally

OSB vs. BPEL Performance
 1000 transactions (OSB) = 3:32 minutes
 1000 transactions (BPEL) = 10:19 minutes
 OSB is superior in performance to BPEL (68% better)
Service
OSB Med OSB OSB Med
Service
BPEL Med Med BPEL Med

OSB vs. Composite Tracing

OSB Report Action
 OSB performs 2x to 4x faster than BPEL (great!)
 OSB sucks in terms of transactional visibility
 Consider using the Report Action to capture SOAP
headers and SOAP bodies
 Consider creating a web service to log key metadata
(e.g., think BPEL sensors)

OSB Report Action
 Can filter by index
 Header and body are displayed separately
 Enabling header/body on both request/response 4x slower
 This is the only OSB functionality that is persisted

OSB Report Action
 For all Proxy Services, in the request stage:
1. Add a Report action for $header
2. Add a Report action for $body
3. Specify at least one “Key Name” for both
4. Add the “…Request” string to the name and use the same
value from the body

Using JCA Adapters in OSB
 OSB provides native adapters
 JCA Adapters must be created in JDeveloper 11g
 .JCA and .WSDL manually imported to OSB project
 Not supported for all adapters (DB Adapter yes, FTP
Adapter no)

OSB Caching
 Result Caching (Coherence) on Business Service
 To be used with data that is not frequently updated
 Will not re-query backend until it has expired
 15% to 25% performance improvement with DB Adapter

OSB on Exalogic – Problems
 On OSB installations on Exalogic, the following problems
were experienced:
 Client requests get a read time out error
 The BEA-380000 error “Request Entity Too Large” appears in
the logs
 OSB invocations retry multiple times every 5 minutes
 OSB invocations invoke target service twice

OSB on Exalogic – Solution
 For all Business Services
1. Under HTTP Transport Configuration
2. Set “Use Chunked Streaming Mode” to “Disabled”
 For all Proxy Services
1. View Message Flow
2. Edit Route Node(s)
3. Check on “Quality of Service” and set it to “Exactly Once”

Securing OSB Services with OWSM
1. Click on the Proxy Service
2. Click on the “Policies” tab
3. Select “From OWSM Policy Store” and click “Add”
4. Select the policy “oracle/wss_username_token_service_policy”
5. Update, activate, and submit the changes

Securing OSB services with OWSM
6. When testing, add the following SOAP header to the envelope:
<soap:Header xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<wsse:Security soap:mustUnderstand="1" xmlns:wsse="http://
docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd">
<wsse:UsernameToken wsu:Id="UsernameToken-tk6qMWkQ5hl3Md2INvp16Q22"
xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd">
<wsse:Username>oratest</wsse:Username>
<wsse:Password Type="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-username-token-
profile-1.0#PasswordText">password123</wsse:Password>
</wsse:UsernameToken>
</wsse:Security>
</soap:Header>

Agenda
1. BAM stuff
2. OSB stuff
3. SOA Suite stuff
4. WebLogic stuff
6. OSR stuff

Securing SOA services with OWSM
1. Navigate to the composite, scroll down, and click on the reference
2. Click on the “Policies” tab
3. Attach the policy “oracle/wss_username_token_service_policy”

Optimized calls if using ServiceURL
 Ensure that URLs used for composite-to-composite invocations are
identical to the setting in ServerURL
 SOA Suite optimizes these calls (uses RMI internally)

Optimized calls if using ServiceURL
 Ensure that URLs used for composite-to-composite invocations are
identical to the setting in ServerURL
 SOA Suite optimizes these calls (uses RMI internally)
soa_server1 soa_server2
ohs1 ohs2
soadev-vip

Use MDS for all WSDLs
 Consider ORAMDS instead of HTTP for composite-to-
external and/or composite-to-composite invocations
 Removes the composite loading dependency
(It’s still translated to an optimized call behind the scenes)
<reference name="AsyncStatus" ui:wsdlLocation="oramds:/apps/WSDLs/AsyncStatus.wsdl">
<interface.wsdl interface="http://xmlns.oracle.com/AsyncStatus#wsdl.interface(execute_ptt)"/>
<binding.ws location="oramds:/apps/WSDLs/AsyncStatus.wsdl"
port="http://xmlns.oracle.com/AsynStatus#wsdl.endpoint(AsyncStatus_ep/execute_pt)"
soapVersion="1.1“/>
</reference>

Avoid Mediator Parallel Routing Rules
 See this presentation for details why:
http://www.raastech.com/raastech/library/Raastech_2013_Collaborate_SOASuite1
1gPerformance.pdf
 This is because of the poor design that Oracle has
chosen for avoiding thread starvation
 Edit all “*.mplan” files for your asynchronous Mediator
operations and change the executionType as follows:
OLD: executionType="direct"
NEW: executionType="queued"

100 messages98 messages
Wait 1 second
 No messages here
Wait 1 second
Wait 1 second
99 messages
Avoid Mediator Parallel Routing Rules

Agenda
1. BAM stuff
2. OSB stuff
3. SOA Suite stuff
4. WebLogic stuff
6. OSR stuff

Singleton property with JMS Topics
 For inbound JMS Adapter from a topic, use the
“singleton” property to avoid consumption of multiple
messages in a cluster
 For more information:
<service name="JMSConsume" ui:wsdlLocation="JMSConsume.wsdl">
<interface.wsdl interface="http://xmlns.oracle.com/pcbpel/adapter/jms/JMS#wsdl.interface(Consume_ptt)"/>
<binding.jca config="JMSConsume_jms.jca">
<property name="singleton">true</property>
</binding.jca>
</service>
Single message consumption from distributed topic in WebLogic Server 11g
http://blog.raastech.com/2012/04/single-message-consumption-from.html
Understanding the "singleton" property with WebLogic JMS topics
http://blog.raastech.com/2012/07/understanding-singleton-property-with.html

 Forwarding Policy Replicated

 Forwarding Policy Replicated (with Singleton property)

 Forwarding Policy Partitioned

 Forwarding Policy Partitioned (with Singleton property)

Avoid Distributed Topics
 Not possible to have truly highly available JMS destinations
 Expectation:
1. With 1 consumer, if code is deployed to all 4 nodes of the cluster, the
message is consumed only once
2. Message is equally available to all nodes of the cluster, so if any node
fails, the message is still available and can be consumed without
manual intervention
 Reality:
 Point #1 is not possible if you set the forwarding policy to “Replicated”
 Point #2 is not possible if the destination's forwarding policy is set to
“Partitioned”
 Since these are the only two options available, unable to satisfy both
requirements
 See http://blog.raastech.com/2012/07/5-reasons-why-oracle-weblogic-
server.html

 Cannot have durable subscribers on distributed topics
SOA
Producer
SOA
Consumer
SOA
Consumer
SOA
Consumer
JMS
Topic

 Cannot have durable subscribers on distributed topics
SOA
Producer
SOA
Consumer
SOA
Consumer
SOA
Consumer
JMS
Queue
JMS
Queue
JMS
Queue

Agenda
1. BAM stuff
2. OSB stuff
3. SOA Suite stuff
4. WebLogic stuff
6. OSR stuff

Direct Binding in OSB? Yes or No?
1. Edit the business service
2. For Protocol, select “soa-direct”
3. For Load Balancing Algorithm, select “round-robin”
4. For Endpoint URI, use the format shown in the screenshot

Direct Binding in SOA? Yes or No?
1. Edit the proxy service
2. Under Transport Configuration, modify Protocol to “sb”
3. In the OSB proxy service, Export WSDL via the icon and
save it to your local file system
4. Extract the contents of the JAR file to your local file system
5. Create a Direct Binding reference
 Enter a name
 Ensure that Type is a “Reference”
 Ensure that Reference Target is “Oracle Service Bus”
 Manually import the WSDL and all referenced WSDLs/XSDs into
the project
 The Reference Binding Details will be automatically populated

Direct Binding in SOA? Yes or No?

Direct Binding? Yes or No?
 No
 Avoid direct binding between SOA Suite and OSB
 SOAP is a better performant protocol than RMI

PassThroughHeader Property
 Do you need to use the “passThroughHeader” property?
 Allows elements in the header to pass from one
composite to another
 Otherwise, elements in the header that are not explicitly
referenced will be dropped before they are passed to the
next composite.
<Header>
<Security>
<UsernameToken>
<Username>oratest</Username>
<Password>password123</Password>
</UsernameToken>
</Security>
</Header>
Composite 1 Composite 2 Composite 3
<Header>
<Security>
<UsernameToken>
<Username>oratest</Username>
</UsernameToken>
</Security>
</Header>
<Header>
</Header>

PassThroughHeader Property
 Do you need to use the “passThroughHeader” property?
 Allows elements in the header to pass from one
composite to another
 Otherwise, elements in the header that are not explicitly
referenced will be dropped before they are passed to the
next composite.
<component name="UpdateCustomer">
<implementation.mediator src="UpdateCustomer.mplan"/>
<property name="passThroughHeader">true</property>
</component>

Agenda
1. BAM stuff
2. OSB stuff
3. SOA Suite stuff
4. WebLogic stuff
6. OSR stuff

Why consider Oracle Service Registry?
 Over time, most organizations encounter the following
problems:
 No central service registry
 Creation of duplicate/redundant services
 Difficult to obtain interface specifics on existing services

Service
Oracle Service Registry
Some screenshots from: http://biemond.blogspot.com/2009/12/using-oracle-service-registry-in-soa.html
SOA
Suite
OSR
Register ServiceConfigure SOA Suite
Service
Service

Avoid Oracle Service Registry
 Do not use at all
 Was a hot topic 10 years ago, not so much nowadays
 Nobody really does dynamic service lookup
 OSR, at best, can be used as a service catalogue
 Consider Oracle Enterprise Repository (OER)

Agenda
1. BAM stuff
2. OSB stuff
3. SOA Suite stuff
4. WebLogic stuff
6. OSR stuff
7. Summary

Summary
 BAM: Use it for what it is intended for
 OSB: Superior performance, poor visibility
 SOA Suite: A lot of things to consider; learning about all
aspects of the products takes time and experience
 WebLogic Server: Avoid JMS topics
 Integration: Avoid direct binding
 OSR: Avoid altogether

Contact Information
 Ahmed Aboulnaga
Technical Director
ahmed.aboulnaga@raastech.com
@Ahmed_Aboulnaga

Little Known Tips & Tricks from Across the Oracle SOA Landscape

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