Welcome to Nick Aiva 's blog!: 12/01/2010


db options screen shot

Last time I attended the Oracle day in Athens, Greece, I was impressed by a presales consultant stating that the real difficulties of SOA projects arise not in the first project, but in the second. That is when there is already a prebuilt foundation of services, on which one needs to base the new applications of the second project. This is the time to prove whether the initial design is worth of the effort, time and money spent.You have guessed it right, it is all about agility, adaptability to business, or IT changes, and service reuse!
In this new post the installation traits of Oracle service registry 11.1.1 will be mentioned. No need to clarify the purpose of existence of a service registry within the scope of SOA in this post. You might consult the current SOA governance literature, take for instance chapter 9 of: http://nickaiva.blogspot.com/2010/12/comments-on-ws-bpel-20-for-soa.html as an introduction. I quote some text: "In addition to reuse, a service registry can also be helpful when we need to migrate services from one server to the other. This can happen because of various reasons,
but one of the most common reasons is the migration between the development, test, and production environments. A service registry is also helpful when we need to version services and manage changes. With a service registry, we can also develop more loosely coupled composite applications, because we do not need to hard-code the service URLs. Rather, the application will resolve URLs at run time."
Let's now proceed with the setup. The first installation attempts failed with rather cryptic error messages. Well, another personality trait which is very important to programmers and pretty scarce to find, is not being too lazy to type a helpful error message, when exceptions occur. So, the technical data follow:

OS is windows 7 64bit, not officially tested by Oracle at present

DB version is 11.1.0.6.0 64bit

Java version 1.6.0_20 64bit

JDBC driver at C:\app\Nick\product\11.1.0\db_1\jdbc\lib\ojdbc6.jar

The log output follows:

Expanding C:\Users\Nick\Downloads\ofm_osr_generic_11.1.1.2.0_disk1_1of1\oracle-service-registry-11.1.1.jar to C:\Oracle\Middleware\registry111 ...
Building scripts ...
Platform is Windows
Preparing 'admin' account ...
Preparing account_list ...
Preparing permission_list ...
Preparing approval management ...
Creating standalone configuration ...

Java returned: 1
Installation failed. If accessible, see "C:\Oracle\Middleware\registry111\log\install.log".
To correct installation parameters and resume installation click Recovery.

Next come the contents of C:\Oracle\Middleware\registry111\log\install.log:
#
#Tue Dec 28 15:42:49 EET 2010
db.system.name.condition=oracle
install.server.operator.name=Oracle
oracle.database.admin.password=***
oracle.database.datafile=uddinode.dbf
oracle.server.host=hera
oracle.database.admin.user=system
install.server.smtp.port=25
oracle.database.password.confirmation=***
install.http.connector=8081
alldb.create.datasource.name=jdbc/registryDS
install.server.smtp.password.confirmation=***
install.server.admin.mail=nickaiva@
install.os.is.win.andcondition=true
create.desktop.icons=no
porting.standalone.http.port=8080
oracle.database.tablespace=uddinode
install.server.smtp.default.sender.name=
install.server.smtp.password=***
porting.https.use=yes
alldb.install.registry.name=Oracle Service Registry
account.backend.type.condition=database
install.server.smtp.title=
install.server.admin.name=admin
alldb.create.datasource.weblogic=no
security.ssl.password=***
alldb.install.demo.data=no
install.server.admin.password.confirmation=***
security.ssl.username=uddiadmin
dist.version=11.1.1
install.server.smtp.default.sender.email=
porting.standalone.https.port=8443
alldb.create.datasource=yes
alldb.jdbc.custom.uribox=no
install.type.condition=standalone
install.server.smtp.host=[ SMTP server hostname ]
alldb.install.demo.data.settings=
create.menu.items=yes
alldb.create.drop.condition=createComplete
oracle.database.name=orcl
install.directory=C\:\\Oracle\\Middleware
registry111
install.server.admin.password=***
oracle.server.port=1521
db.showall.condition=false
alldb.jdbc.custom.urifield=
alldb.jdbc.drivers.paths=C\:\\app\\Nick\\product\\11.1.0\\db_1\\jdbc\\lib
ojdbc6.jar
porting.hostname=hera
security.ssl.password.confirmation=***
porting.type.condition=jetty
install.server.smtp.account.name=
oracle.database.user=uddiuser
install.windows.menu=Oracle Service Registry 11.1.1
oracle.database.password=***
[echo] Expanding C:\Users\Nick\Downloads\ofm_osr_generic_11.1.1.2.0_disk1_1of1\oracle-service-registry-11.1.1.jar to C:\Oracle\Middleware\registry111 ...
[echo] Building scripts ...
[echo] Platform is Windows
[echo] Preparing 'admin' account ...
[echo] Preparing account_list ...
[echo] Preparing permission_list ...
[echo] Preparing approval management ...
[echo] Creating standalone configuration ...

[java] BUILD FAILED
[java] C:\Oracle\Middleware\registry111\etc\setup\database.xml:737: The following error occurred while executing this line:
[java] C:\Oracle\Middleware\registry111\etc\setup\database.xml:339: The following error occurred while executing this line:
[java] C:\Oracle\Middleware\registry111\etc\setup\database.xml:422: The following error occurred while executing this line:
[java] C:\Oracle\Middleware\registry111\etc\setup\database.xml:207: The following error occurred while executing this line:
[java] C:\Oracle\Middleware\registry111\etc\db\oracle\installOracleDB.xml:99: The following error occurred while executing this line:
[java] C:\Oracle\Middleware\registry111\etc\db\oracle\installOracleDB.xml:166: Java returned: 1

[java] Total time: 4 seconds
Java returned: 1
Installation failed. If accessible, see "C:\Oracle\Middleware\registry111\log\install.log".
To correct installation parameters and resume installation click Recovery.

However many times one tries, with the options selected as shown in the db options screen shot, the installation fails due to some build error of the db scripts. Although the installation appears to have failed, the db uddiuser schema has been actually created. On the contrary, some people report that one is better off to create the schema on his own, as you can see in the references. Thus, when one runs installation the next time, having selected an existing db schema "Connect to schema" option, all appears to go well. Well, not everything! If one uses jetty instead of weblogic server, the create data source option does not apply. Therefore, one needs to uncheck the selection, in order to avoid receiving a "Cannot obtain new connection" exception.
The morale of the story is quite obvious, if related to the introduction of the current post: the first time is just the basis, the second time is what matters most. Happy new year to you all!

Further references:
http://www.javamonamour.org/2010/05/trouble-installing-oracle-service.html
OSR - Oracle Service Registry won't create database datasource

On the bright side, the text is written in American English, formal, well organized and neat, having the last sentence of each paragraph linking to the following one. Although the title sounds pretty familiar, the content of the book is actually about the newer version of BPEL 2.0. That's what makes this particular book unique, as the time of this writing. I quote: "Oracle SOA Suite 11g PS2 supports BPEL 2.0. However, BPEL 2.0 is only supported at runtime and not in JDeveloper. BPEL 2.0 support in Oracle SOA Suite 11g PS2 is not yet production ready, so by default, BPEL version 1.1 is used. However, we can write BPEL 2.0 code in text mode (graphical mode is currently not supported)." This book will help readers utilize BPM suite for integrating BPEL with BPMN. Readers will be able to explore BPEL 2.0 activities, loops, decisions, flow control, variables, scopes and other constructs that will enable them to develop BPEL processes. The authors dig into advanced BPEL topics, such as fault handlers, event handlers, compensation, concurrent activities, links, correlations, message properties, dynamic partner links, process lifecycle, and more. The text is accompanied by two online appendices about the syntax of the BPEL versions 1.1 and the newer 2.0, the full source code, in addition to a sample chapter and its table of contents, which can be found here. Furthermore, the authors use UML sequence, activity diagrams to describe the composite applications, which is useful to the analysts and designers and scarce to find in competitive books.

On the dark side, there are a few spelling errors, the first 3 chapters are rather tedious to read, since there is no hands on practice, nor questions and answers for the reader to exercise. The action starts in chapter 4 and forward on. However, there is only purely descriptive text, with no full, step by step detailed instructions how to build from scratch the application, or how to setup the SOA suite. In addition, parts of the application source code is given as is, i.e. java classes, without any explanation how it was created, or how to deploy it correctly; For example, EmployeeTravelStatus, in chapter 4, should perhaps be deployed as a shared library, or a stand alone application?

All in all, the book is a complete and detailed treatise on BPEL 2.0, presenting its origins, other BPEL servers available in the market such as tibco, exotic themes such as Oracle service registry, Business process architect, and so on. Its project is an application about employees travel requests and booking the cheapest available ticket offered by the airline companies, etc. The book is no introduction to BPEL, but of fairly advanced level, since drag and drop operations are rarely mentioned, the authors prefer to edit the source BPEL and XML code directly, which can be error prone, especially for beginners. Its source code is full of advanced java classes, so developing web services using java, XML basics, look like prerequisites.
Further references:
You can visit the book page at the publisher's site