Undeploy SOA Composite : Workaround

Introduction:
Recently I was trying to undeploy a BPEL process from EM console, by following normal process i.e. Right clicking on Process name -- SOA Deployment -- Undeploy, but it was throwing error and not allowing me to do so.

I did a workaround and got ride of the composite. Below steps will show how to achieve the same.

Note: This was done on Oracle 12c

Undeploy Steps:
1. Login to EM console and click on soa-infra, below screen shot shows BPEL processes.

2. On Right pane window, click on SOA Infrastructure -- Administration -- MDS Configuration

3. You will see MDS configuration page, just click on Export. This will download soa-infra_metadata.zip file

4. Unzip the file, you will see a folder deployed-composites, and under that a file deployed-composites.xml as shown in below screen shot

5. Open the file, select the composite which you want to delete (every composite entry it starts with composite-series). Remove composite-series entry for that composite and Save the file.

6. Once the file is saved, Zip the file again. Keep the Zip file name same as before (soa-infra_metadata.zip)

7. Go back to EM Console and to the Same MDS Configuration window (SOA Infrastructure -- Administration -- MDS Configuration). You will see an Import option.

Choose the location and Import the file.

8. Restart Server and check EM. The project which you Deleted will disappear.

Resetting Console login Password

Problem:
How do you change the password for BPEL Console user 'oc4jadmin'?

Solution:
Follow the below mentioned steps to accomplish this:

1) Connect to SOA Suite EM Console (Application Server Control)
2) Click on appropriate container name. (Home or oc4j_soa, depending upon where your BPEL is available)
3) Click on Administration tab
4) Then click and Goto Task icon for Security Providers task
5) Click Instance Level Security
6) Click Realms
7) Click number under Users
8) Now search for 'oc4jadmin' in list
9) Now click it to change the password for BPEL Console and you are done

ORABPEL-02182

Problem:
ORABPEL-02182

JTA transaction is not present or the transaction is not in active state.
The current JTA transaction is not present or it is not in active state when processing activity or instance "4260005-BpInv5-BpTry7.13-1". Please consult your administrator regarding this error.

Some Thoughts:
You can encounter this error if response time of adapter is greater than the predefined waiting time for a BPEL instance.As a result process does not get dehydrated on time and fails by throwing this error.

Solution:
A better solution for above problem should be to increase the transaction-timeout values in order to make the BPEL instance to wait more time until a response returns from the adapter.

Following are the steps you should follow to acheive the result:

1) Stop SOA Server

1) Goto SOA_Home\j2ee\config\transaction-manager.xml, serach for transaction-timeout and set transaction-timeout for e.g. to 7200 or more (default value is 30).

2) Goto SOA_Home\j2ee\application-deployments\orabpel\ejb_ob_engine\orion-ejb-jar.xml and set all transaction-timeout to 3600 or more. The value passed here should be always less than the value which is mentioned in step 2.

3) Goto SOA_Home\bpel\domains\config\domain.xml and set syncMaxWaitTime to 240 or more. The value passed here should be always less than the value which is mentioned in step 3. (Default value is 45)

4) Start SOA server and run the process again. Process should work fine.

OPMNCTL command

Problem:
Running OPMNCTL commands on Windows and Linux servers.

Solution:
For running OPMNCTL command on Windows:

Ensure that before running you be at opmn\bin folder
To Start:
>opmnctl startall

To Stop:
>opmnctl stopall

To check the status:
>opmnctl status

To know opmnctl command:
>opmnctl

For running OPMNCTL command on Unix/Linux:

Connect to server using Telnet. Ensure that before running you be at opmn/bin folder
To Start:
>\.opmnctl startall

To Stop:
>\.opmnctl stopall

To check the status:
>\.opmnctl status

To know opmnctl command:
>\.opmnctl

Logging System.out statements

Problem:
Need to log System.out statements under Oracle Application Server 10g.

Thoughts:
For this requirement, I was searching on Internet and I got a solution which worked. Just thought of publishing this on this blog for readers.

This entry which give you an insight view about how to log system.out outputs on our SOA Servers. By default, this is not logged anywhere. For example, a Java code might include the following line:-
System.out.println("Test_123");

Solution:
You can configure this in two ways, either manually updating SOA Server files or via Enterprise Manager Console.

Configure System.out logging manually on SOA Server:
1) Stop the SOA Server
2) Navigate to <SOA_HOME>\opmn\conf
3) Open and edit opmn.xml file
4) Add the following entry to the start-parameters section of the container.
For example:
<data id="oc4j-options" value="-out d:\oracle\product\SOA\j2ee\<container_name>\log\Custom_log\systemout.log"/>
5) Restart SOA Server

Configure System.out logging via EM Console:
1) Log in to the EM Console
2) Click on proper container name
3) Click on Administration tab
4) Click on Server Properties link
5) Add the following under Start-parameters:- OC4J Options;
For example:
-out d:\oracle\product\SOA\j2ee\<container_name>\log\Custom_log\systemout.log
6. Restart the SOA Server

The output should now appear in the log file you configured:
<SOA_HOME>\j2ee\<container_name>\log\Custom_log\systemout.log

Application Server HTTP 404 problem - Part 2

Follow this post if the solution published on my blog dated 16th April 2009 is not working.

If making changes to default-web-site.xml file does not work, then try to change an entry in the server.xml file. The file is located under:
<SOA_HOME>\j2ee\home\config\server.xml

Note: Stop the server before making any changes to the server files.

In the file, change the below property to true:
application name="ascontrol" path="../../home/applications/ascontrol.ear" parent="system" start="true" /

Now start the SOA Server and try launching the enterprise manager. You should be able to see the AS control page now.

Creating Database JNDI w/o EM

Problem:
Create JNDI without using Oracle Application Enterprise Manager

Solution:
While you create Database JNDI using Oracle Application Enterprise Manager, it modifies two files in the SOA installed location.

1) data-sources.xml
2) oc4j-ra.xml

We can manually create JNDIs by adding contents to these files. This try was made just to make sure that JNDIs can be created without the help of Enterprise manager.
So here you go,

1) First you need to modify the data-sources.xml file located at <SOA_Home>\j2ee\<Active container name>\config. Open the file in notepad. Add your new pool information as:

<connection-pool name="TestPOOL">
<connection-factory factory-class="oracle.jdbc.pool.OracleDataSource" user="database username" password="database password" url="jdbc:oracle:thin:@//host name:port/service name" commit-record-table-name=""/>
</connection-pool>

Give a pool name. You need to provide the database connection details such as username, password, host name, port, service name. Save the changes.

2) As the second step, you need to modify the oc4j-ra.xml file located at <SOA_Home>\j2ee\<Active container name>\application-deployments\default\DbAdapter. Open the file in notepad. Add your new JNDI information as:

<connector-factory location="eis/DB/Test" connector-name="Test DB Adapter JNDI">
<config-property name="xADataSourceName" value="jdbc/Test"/>
<config-property name="dataSourceName" value=""/>
<config-property name="platformClassName" value="oracle.toplink.platform.database.Oracle9Platform"/>
<config-property name="usesNativeSequencing" value="true"/>
<config-property name="sequencePreallocationSize" value="50"/>
<config-property name="defaultNChar" value="false"/>
<config-property name="usesBatchWriting" value="true"/>
<connection-pooling use="none">
</connection-pooling>
<security-config use="none">
</security-config>
</connector-factory>

Provide the JNDI location and also the datasource name. Save the changes.

After the changes bounce the SOA Server. Now your database JNDI is ready to use.

Application Server HTTP 404 problem

Hi SOA lovers

Writing blog after a long gap, this time with new flavors.

INTRODUCTION:
Sometimes when you navigate to the Enterprise Manager’s Application Server Control you will hit a 404 "Page not found exception".

REASON:
The most probable reason is that Application Server Control has no routing relationship defined with the Oracle HTTP Server by default.

SOLUTION:
To establish this relationship you have to set the ohs-routing attribute to true (default value in the file will be false) in the default-web-site.xml file at SOA server location: <SOA home>/j2ee/home/config. Make sure to make the changes always in the home container.

Make the changes as follws in the file:
<web-app application="ascontrol" name="ascontrol" load-on-startup="true" root="/em" ohs-routing="true" />

Now restart the SOA Server and try it. It should work.

If this solution doesn't work, follow my latest finding, posted on 22nd December 2009.