ADF and service dependencies

In order to keep the business-IT gap manageable, it is important for analysts, designers and architects to know what their implemented application landscape actually looks like. An important part of this is insight in dependencies between different components. In my previous blog post I’ve described how service dependencies can be determined. In this blog post I will provide a script for analyzing which services are called by ADF pages. Keep in mind both analyses are executed on source code. This can differ from the runtime environment.

The Oracle ADF framework consists (among other things) of several XML files which refer to each other. This comes in handy when you want to analyse ADF code since XML is easily parsed and queried. In order to determine service calls I have made the assumption that webservice calls are executed using the excellent the ADF EMG XML DataControl by Wilfred van der Deijl and Richard Olrichs as announced on http://www.olrichs.nl/2014/05/announcement-adf-emg-xml-datacontrol.html and presented at OOW 2014.

Oracle SOA Suite 11g and 12c: Determining composite dependencies to the level of individual operations

In large companies, often there are many services and dependencies between services. It is important to track service dependencies in order to for example estimate the impact of changes. Design documents or architecture views can be used for this but as everybody knows, there is often a gap between theory and practice (design and implementation).

In this blog post I provide code to determine dependencies between composites to the level of operation calls. In order to achieve this, I'll parse the composite.xml files, JCA files (used by adapters) and also the BPEL and BPMN files in order to determine the operations. The script can be used for SOA Suite 11g and 12c composites.

The above picture shows different parts of which a composite is composed and how they are linked. The script first determines references. The references specify which external services are called. Then by using wires, the relevant components are determined. Based on the component type, specific logic is used to extract the operation. Not shown in this picture is how database dependencies can also be determined by the script by parsing the JCA files specified in the reference. If you're in a hurry, you can go to the 'Executing the script' part directly and skip the explanation.

Database releases. How can we make things better?

Releases of Java (technology related) code often are easy. Releases of database code often are not. Why is that? An important difference and cause can be found in that database code tends to be incremental. Being incremental means that a database release is build on top of previous releases. A database release has to be incremental because often a production environment holds data which needs to be preserved. With Java code, the previous releases (EAR, WAR, JAR files and the like) are less important for the present release since usually they are overwritten. Of course Java releases have their own complexities, however often they do not hold data; that is the task of the database. In this blog I will describe some of the common issues and several suggestions to improve (database) releases. Even though I am a developer (with quite some experience in release automation), I tried to also describe the issues system operators are facing and provide suggestions to improve the process.

Oracle SOA Suite 12c: The LDAPAdapter, a quick and easy tutorial

In enterprises, LDAP servers are often used to store user credentials and groups and share them among applications. Oracle SOA Suite 12c introduces a new technology adapter; the LDAPAdapter which allows easy integration with LDAP servers. In this blog post I will provide a quick and easy howto on installation of an LDAP server and browser (ApacheDS and Apache Directory Studio). I will also describe the configuration required to use the LDAPAdapter and provide an example BPEL process which allows creation of new users in the ApacheDS LDAP server by means of webservice calls.

LDAP and Weblogic; Using ApacheDS as authentication provider for Weblogic

A Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) server is often used to centralize management of users/groups/credentials within enterprises. An LDAP server stores user information such as group memberships and often also authorization/authentication data. You can use this information to authenticate on Weblogic Server. In this blog post I will provide a small introduction, some suggestions on how LDAP connections can be debugged and an example how an LDAP server (ApacheDS in this example) can be used as an external authentication provider in Weblogic server.

SOA Suite 12c: Obtaining composite resources such as WSDLs, XSDs and WADLs

In SOA Suite 12c and 11g there are several options to obtain composite resources such as WSDL's and WADL's. In this blog post I will demonstrate some of them and provide some background information. First I'll describe how URL's can be used to access composite resources. Next I'll describe how and when the EM test console and the Webservice test client can be used to gain information about composite WSDL's and XSD's.

SOA Suite 12c: Introducing the REST Adapter

The REST Adapter is an important new feature of Oracle SOA Suite 12c. This new adapter allows easy calling/exposing of RESTful services (see http://javaoraclesoa.blogspot.nl/2014/05/what-is-rest.html for an introduction to REST) based on a WADL or configured manually. Not only does Oracle introduce the REST Adapter, but JSON support is also added in SOA Suite 12c. These features will greatly increase the integration options and flexibility of Oracle SOA Suite. In this blog I'll describe how a RESTful service can be called by using the REST adapter. Exposing a RESTful service will be described in a later blog.