Oracle BPEL 11g

Sensors in BPEL

2010-07-23T12:40:00.000-04:00

This is an excellent article by Peter Ebell on the usage of Sensors in BPEL.
http://technology.amis.nl/blog/3326/debug-logging-in-bpel-using-sensors-part-1

I could not find the Part2 of this article.

I intend to update this with more information.

Passing Userid and Password Credentials as SOAP Header in BPEL

2010-06-18T14:18:00.000-04:00

Problem
There may be Services that have policies enforced to receive the userid/password as part of the requests. If you do not have a Service Bus then this informaton has to be passed from the BPEL.

Solution

Right click on the Web Service in Composite Design view
Select "Configue WS Policies"
Add Client Security Policy as applies to your case. I had to us "oracle/wss_http_token_client_policy"
Add the following Binding Properties from the Property Inspector

"oracle.webservices.auth.username" : admin
"oracle.webservices.auth.password" : admin

If you look at the source generated in the composite .xml, you would see the following

  <reference name="...Service" ui:wsdlLocation="....wsdl">
   <interface.wsdl ...../>
   <binding.ws port="....."

   <property name="oracle.webservices.auth.username" type="xs:string"
   many="false" override="may">admin</property>
   <property name="oracle.webservices.auth.password" type="xs:string"
   many="false" override="may">admin</property>

   </binding.ws>
  </reference>

Increasing memory of JDeveloper IDE

2010-06-17T14:19:00.000-04:00

Problem
JDeveloper 11.1.1.3 by default comes with 768M of Max memory. When you have lot of files or objects in memory(I noticed this during XSLT of a large structure) JDeveloper runs out of memory and cannot open the file.

Solution

Go to C:\JDeveloperStudio11113\jdeveloper\ide\bin
Open ide.conf
And increase the memory to 1024 : AddVMOption -Xmx1024M
Restart the Jdeveloper and this should not cause any poblem.

Disabling WS Addressing in BPEL

2010-06-17T13:12:00.001-04:00

Background and Problem
In BPEL, the WS Addressing seems to be enabled by default. The external Web Service that is invoked from BPEL Service receives the WS Addressing and first verifies the end point. For some reason this end point that was generated by BPEL is incorrect and so throws an error. The only way the communication can be successful is to disable the WS Addressing.

Solution
In SOA 11.1.1.3, this can be achieved by adding a binding property in the BPEL.

Select the WebService and you will see the Property Inspector.
Add the Property "oracle.soa.ws.outbound.omitWSA" and set it to true. As of this version this property is not available in the dropdown. So you need to add this.
Save it and deploy the new Service to test it out.
The Steps are shown below as an image

Oracle BPMN2.0 : Important Things To Know

2010-05-11T17:46:00.000-04:00

Oracle 11gR1Ps2(11.1.1.3) was released on April 27, and supports BPMN2.0.

The Oracle documentation for BPMN is available at http://oracle-bpel.blogspot.com/2009/09/oracle-bpel-informative-web-sites.html

Following are the important points worth remembering

A BPM Process can be converted to BPEL process
BPM Process is a Composite Application
Different Types of Business process are

Synchronous
Asynchronous
Manual

To expose a process as a service, your process must begin with a message start event
The message start event enables you to specify input and output arguments to a process.
It supports Timer Start Event which can be scheduled to kickoff at a certain time
If you are invoking a process or service synchronously, use the service task.

SOA : Design Patterns : Foundational Service Design Patterns

2010-04-23T18:55:00.000-04:00

Decomposes the business processes/tasks/problems to smaller ones
Applies the separation of concerns
Helps greatly in Service Analysis and Service Modelling

Service Encapsulation (Service Identification Pattern)

If Service oriented design principles (http://oracle-bpel.blogspot.com/2010/04/soa-design-principles.html) can be applied to a meaningful extent then the logic can be encapsulated as a Service.

Agnostic Context (Service Definition Pattern)

Non Agnostic Context (Service Definition Pattern)

Agnostic Capability (Service Definition Pattern)

SOA : Design Patterns : Inventory Centralization Design Patterns

2010-04-23T10:24:00.000-04:00

SOA : Design Patterns : Service Governance Design Patterns

2010-04-23T09:58:00.028-04:00

This is the most frequently applied pattern once the Service is in maintenance phase.
The intent should be to make the change backward compatible to the existing Service Consumers.
Addition of new optional elements in the Schema is a Compatible change
Similarly any new operations, renaming, adding more messages, policy changes have to be reviewed to make the changes compatible.

Version Identification

Design the versioning of the service contract in such a way that the compatible and non compatible changes are expressed clearly to the service consumers.
The typical convention is the decimal format with major and minor versions.

Termination Notification

The scheduled expiry of service or operations can be expressed through Termination Notification.
This can be expressed through WS Policy language through ignorable assertions

Service Refactoring

Service Decomposition

Proxy Capability

When an existing Service has to be decomposed to multiple fine grained services then the original contract is still used as a Proxy so that the existing service Consumers can still be serviced while the new Service Consumers will start using the new decomposed Services.

Decomposed Capability

Distributed Capability

SOA : Design Patterns : Service Messaging Design Patterns

2010-04-23T09:43:00.000-04:00

Note : These are Design Patterns from "SOA Design Patterns" by Thomas Earl. The intent here is to simplify the patterns to a few lines so that they can be referred for a quick glance and also to document my experiences over time. This is by no means an effort to explain these patterns and I believe that the book has done an excellent job at that.

Since all the below patterns are incorporated by the SOAP Web Service and current Enterprise Service Buses they are not being elaborated here.

Service Messaging

Messaging Metadata

Service Agent

Intermediate Routing

State Messaging

Service Callback

Service Instance Routing

Asynchronous Queuing

Reliable Messaging

Event Driven Messaging

SOA : Design Patterns : Inventory Design Patterns

2010-04-23T09:31:00.000-04:00

Services developed in an enterprise are maintained in an Enterprise Service Inventory.
This helps in standardized contracts, avoids creation of redundant services and easy governance.

Domain Inventory

When Enterprise Inventory is not possible, then multiple Domain Inventories are created.
The boundary of domain inventory needs to be carefully established. The boundary could be functional.
Governance is established at the domain inventory level.

Service Normalization

This pattern normalizes the existing Services that have overlapping functional boundaries.
This is done by applying Logic Centralization and Service Abstraction

Logic Centralization

This pattern targets the creation of Agnostic Service that have a clearly defined boundary.
Helps in reuse and composability of these Services

Service Layers

Same as Service Modelling. http://oracle-bpel.blogspot.com/2010/04/soa-service-modelling.html

Canonical Protocol

Standardizes the transport and communication protocols for all services in the inventory.
This is to enable reusability and composability (avoiding the costly protocol bridging)
Example: WSDL, Schema, Policy, Transport(HTTP), Communication(SOAP) versions.

Canonical Schema

Standardizes the schema definitions in a service inventory.
This avoids data model transformation, redundant data definitions and helps in governance

SOA : Design Patterns : Legacy Encapsulation Design Patterns

2010-04-23T08:09:00.000-04:00

Legacy Wrapper

Legacy systems expose the access through wrapper services which do not have a standardized contract and have tight contract to logic coupling and little abstraction.
This is fixed by wrapping the legacy system with a new legacy wrapper service that has a standardized contract, loose coupling and abstraction.

Multi-Channel Endpoint

File Gateway

SOA : Design Patterns : Service Contract Design Patterns

2010-04-22T22:38:00.000-04:00

Decoupled Contract

A contract created by "contract first" approach decouples the Service Contract from the Service Logic.

Contract Centralization

Service Contract has to be the sole point to access the Service Logic

Contract Denormalization

Concurrent Contracts

Validation Abstraction

SOA : Design Patterns : Service Implementation Patterns

2010-04-22T22:23:00.000-04:00

If a Service Logic supports multiple Service Contracts then a Service Facade Logic helps to reduce the coupling between the Service Contracts and the Service Logic. This will help in the evolution of the Service Logic without affecting the Service Contracts as the Service Facade accommodates any changes.
The Service Facade Logic is primarily responsible for providing intermediate processing logic in support of the core Service Logic.

Redundant Implementation

Making multiple instances of the Service available so that it does not become a single point of failure.
Clustering of nodes and routing through ESB solves this issue

Service Data Replication

Requires replication of data so that it improves the Autonomy of the Service and improves the performance of the Service

Partial State Deferral

Partial Validation

UI Mediator

SOA : Design Principles

2010-04-22T19:16:00.001-04:00

The following service oriented principles should be applied to the extent possible so that the benefits of SOA can be realized.

1. Standardized Service Contracts

A SOAP Web Service has the following as part of the contract

WSDL
XSD
WS Policy
SLA (Service Level Agreement)

Service Contract is standardized through the application of design standards(contract first approach)

Standardized naming conventions(expressive)
Standardized data types(reduces the transformations between data types)

2. Loose Coupling

The different types of coupling are

Logic-to-Contract Coupling

Created when the "contract first" approach is followed
Tight coupling of Service Logic on the Service Contract
Positive

Contract-to-Logic Coupling

Created when the Service Contract is auto generated from the Service Logic
The Service Contract is dependent on the underlying Service Logic
Also, auto generation of schemas from the database tables
Negative

3. Service Abstraction

Hides the implementation details from the Service Consumers(to be hidden - includes technology, functional, programmatic logic and quality of service information)
This provides the freedom to evolve the service implementation as required.

4. Service Reusability

Services should contain and express agnostic logic so that they can be reused across the enterprise.
Achieving this is very important as the ROI is highly dependent on the degree of reuse achieved
Some of the design characteristics are

The Service is defined by an agnostic functional context
The Service Logic is highly generic
The Service Contract is generic and extensible
The Service Logic can be accessed concurrently

5. Service Autonomy

The level of control over the underlying runtime execution environment.
Task Services have less autonomy as they compose other services over which they have less control.

6. Service Statelessness

Stateless Services

Increase Service Scalability
Increase Service Reusability
Consume less computing resources
Orchestrated Task Services are expected to be stateful
Entity and Utility Services are generally stateless

7. Service Discoverability

Services are supplemented with meta data by which they can be effectively discovered

8. Service Composability

Services should be composable

SOA : Service Oriented Design

2010-04-22T14:00:00.000-04:00

This is a gist of Service Oriented Design from the "SOA : Principles of Service Design" by Thomas Earl.

Design Phase

The Service Oriented Design takes the service candidates and converts them to actual services by creating actual physical contracts.
It is highly recommended that a high level service inventory be defined prior to creating physical contracts.
It is better to follow the waterfall approach in doing the upfront service analysis and service modelling to be followed by agile approach in implementing the services.
"Contract First Design" is the ideal form of design where the service contract is created before developing the service logic.

SOA : Service Modelling

2010-04-22T13:15:00.001-04:00

This is a gist from the "SOA : Principles of Service Design" by Thomas Earl.

Service Modeling, which is a sub process of service oriented analysis produces conceptual service definitions called service candidates.

During Service Modelling, Services can be primarily classified as follows(Service Models)
1. Entity Services
2. Task Services
3. Utility Services

Entity Services

Also called as business entity services
Represents a business centric service that models a business entity
Considered to be a highly reusable service that can be composed by the business processes

Task Services

Models the business process
Typically this composes the entity services to accomplish the business process

Utility Services

Non business centric services
Provides reusable services that do not have business logic
Examples could be logging, notification, authorization, authentication, etc.

Oracle BPEL 11g Best Practices

2010-03-26T11:07:00.001-04:00

BPEL has to be primarily used for orchestrating the services.

Do not add complex business logic here. It should belong to the service layer.

Create scopes for each step of the flow in the process so as to make it modular. This will help in creating local variables within that scope. Use Global variables when required(just like your java or C++ programming style). This will help in maintainability. Note : Adding too many scopes may affect the performance. In that case you may want top consider creating sequences.
Adopt naming standards and comply to it. This should be part of the governance strategy. This looks trivial but is important if you want someone else to understand the code and make changes.
It is good practice to have a Mediator in the Composite. Try to get most of the transformations done by the Mediator.
Have all the business rules implemented by the Oracle Business Rules
Handle all the exceptions
Adopt test driven development. Create test cases with a tool like SoapUI for each process and make this part of your governance strategy.
Instead of BPEL, you should consider implementing the process in BPM. This has the advantage of modeling it in BPMN so that it can be easily understood by the Business and also helps the model and implementation to be synchronized at all times. If you haven't considered it so far then it is time you take a look at
The flow of the BPEL process should be very intuitive.

The reason enterprises are investing heavily in this to be agile to change. So, to make this happen , make the steps in the flow linear as much as possible so that a new step can be added/reordered easily by just drag and drop. I have seen very complex nested creation of the following flow which after refactoring looks as below.

Oracle Service Registry OSR 11g Installation

2010-03-26T09:59:00.000-04:00

Oracle Service Registry(OSR) is part of the Oracle SOA Governance strategy but comes as a separate download. The installation is 2 steps

Installation of OSR files into registry111 folder under oracle middleware home
Creation/Extension of a Weblogic 11g domain with the OSR server

Installation Steps

Execute java -jar oracle-service-registry-11.1.1.jar. This will launch the installation wizard.
I found it easier to create the tablespace and the schema user before hand. I had to do this as for some reason the installation failed to create the tablespace for me.
Once the registry111 folder is create then create or extend the existing weblogic11g domain
If you face any problem during the domain process then cleanup and create the tablespace again.

OER 11g Thoughts

2010-03-26T09:53:00.000-04:00

IMHO, the Oracle Enterprise Repository looks like a piece of work from interns(no disrespect to interns). It lacks the enterprise and professional quality that is expected from Oracle, BEA or any other enterprise vendor. This probably is a result of the acquisition and the need to have an extra check in the checklist.

The OER is deployed in the BEA domain. It has 2 parts. One is the the ability to search and view the assets and the second is the ability to manage the assets. The search can be done through the web while the asset management is through a Java Webstart application. Both the applications fall way short of usability.

I am not convinced that both OER and OSR(Oracle Service Registry) are required as they add to the clutter. The OER functionality could be built into the OSR so that the intra enterprise view could be the OER functionality while the extra enterprise view could be the OSR. This will reduce the amount of applications to be purchased, managed and maintained by the enterprises. This will also help in easier adoption of the Governance and in better governance by managing the assets well.

Oracle Enterprise Repository 11g Installation

2010-03-23T16:26:00.002-04:00

Installation

OER11g comes as a separate installation. It can be installed on an existing SOA/WL 11g.
Download OER 11g as OER111120_generic.jar
Execute the following DB scripts

CREATE TABLESPACE OER_SOA1_DATA

DATAFILE '/opt/oracle/oradata/oer/oer_soa1_data.dbf' SIZE 300M

AUTOEXTEND ON NEXT 10240K MAXSIZE UNLIMITED

EXTENT MANAGEMENT LOCAL AUTOALLOCATE

LOGGING

ONLINE

SEGMENT SPACE MANAGEMENT AUTO;

CREATE TABLESPACE OER_SOA1_INDEX

DATAFILE '/opt/oracle/oradata/oer/oer_soa1_index.dbf' SIZE 300M

AUTOEXTEND ON NEXT 5120K MAXSIZE UNLIMITED

EXTENT MANAGEMENT LOCAL AUTOALLOCATE

LOGGING

ONLINE

SEGMENT SPACE MANAGEMENT AUTO;

CREATE USER OER_SOA1 IDENTIFIED BY password

DEFAULT TABLESPACE OER_SOA1_DATA

TEMPORARY TABLESPACE TEMP

PROFILE DEFAULT

ACCOUNT UNLOCK;

GRANT "CONNECT" TO OER_SOA1;

ALTER USER OER_SOA1 DEFAULT ROLE "CONNECT", "RESOURCE";

GRANT CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW TO OER_SOA1;

GRANT CREATE SEQUENCE TO OER_SOA1;

GRANT CREATE SESSION TO OER_SOA1;

GRANT CREATE SYNONYM TO OER_SOA1;

GRANT CREATE SNAPSHOT TO OER_SOA1;

GRANT CREATE TABLE TO OER_SOA1;

GRANT CREATE TRIGGER TO OER_SOA1;

GRANT CREATE VIEW TO OER_SOA1;

GRANT UNLIMITED TABLESPACE TO OER_SOA1;

There are 2 steps involved. First is to install the OER in the middleware/repository111 folder. The second is to create a new domain or extend an existing one with the OER. See below for the steps.
Run java -jar OER111120_generic.jar This will launch the installation screen. Enter the DB information.
After installation, create a weblogic domain with OER
The default port is 7101.
Note : I could not install this on a SOA Suite. I tried to create a new domain and the installation wizard displays the status of 90% and hangs over there. So I installed a vanilla Weblogic11g and then installed OER on that. This works fine.
The URL is http://localhost:7101/oer
The login is "admin" and "admin"

Note: If you have face an error during the installation you have to clean the tablespace and redo the domain creation/extension process.

Testing strategy for Oracle SOA applications

2010-03-22T09:33:00.001-04:00

Following is what I felt to be working well as a testing strategy for Oracle SOA

Automated Unit Testing

The built in Oracle SOA Test Suite works well for testing BPEL processes. The test cases can be generated from JDeveloper. External Services can be emulated and the response can be asserted. This will help in testing the flow of the process.
The tests can be deployed and tested on the Enterprise Manager

Integration Testing

SoapUI, an open source test tool is very robust for doing integration testing
Provide a WSDL URL and it generates the test stubs for all the operations
The response can be asserted.
The test data can be generated through static "Parameters" or can be randomized.
WS-Security, WS-Addressing and WS-Reliability is supported

Performance Testing

Soap UI can be used for performance testing as well.
This will help the team to get used to one testing tool.
Supports spawning multiple threads, delay between requests.
JMeter is the other tool that you may want to use.

Oracle Business Rules 11g Best Practices

2010-03-19T15:39:00.014-04:00

Oracle Business Rules underwent a lot of changes since 10g and looks more sophisticated now. The Rules designer is very elegant(bug free, nice user experience, fast) and so is the Composer.(though I would like to see the Composer and Designer have a single user experience)

Oracle has made available a very exhaustive guide on Oracle rules which is available at http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/integration.1111/e10228.pdf

Best Practices

Try to model the rules as a "Decision Component".

Each decision function in the component can be exposed as a Web Service with both stateless and stateful operations(I think that there should be an option to make it a separate webservice or to expose it as an operation).
You may want to cleanup the stateful operations if you think that they should not be used. This will force the developers not to invoke the stateful operation accidentally as the unintended usage can create havoc.
This Decision Component then has multiple interfaces which can be used by the BPEL process. This will encapsulate all the rules in a single component and still be modular through Decision functions.
This will greatly help in resuse of this component.
The Decision Component is also easily testable.

Try to use "Decision Table" as much as possible

As it is very intuitive for the business analysts
All the rules can be viewed in a single readable view.
It also has the built in Gap analysis that will uncover any gaps or conflicts.

Tips

When you want to invoke the Rules Service, you should set the name of the Rules Service explicitly If not the rules service is not invoked. This seems to be a strange requirement.
The Oracle Rules Composer is available at http://host:[soa port]/soa/composer. I could not open this is IE7 and Chrome but could open in Mozilla Firefox.
The rules dictionary is stored in .rules file. This should be checked in the repository(CVS, etc) as a binary file. Please see the FAQ for the explanation.

Oracle SOA 11gR1 PS2 also called 11.1.1.3

2010-03-19T10:03:00.003-04:00

If you are one of those eagerly waiting for the next release/patch on Oracle SOA 11gR1 then the good news is here, though the release date is not yet known
http://blogs.oracle.com/soabpm/2010/03/11gr1_patchset_2_111130_soa_fe.html
http://blogs.oracle.com/soabpm/2010/03/soa_for_the_java_developer_a_f.html

The important features are below.(as collected from the above site)

Oracle OSB is to be part of the suite (currently it is a separate installation)
Support for WSIF (this was supported in 10 g and seems to be restored now). Support for EJB 2 and 3
Support for BPEL2.0(I believe the current supported version is 1.1. Not sure what are the new features in 2.0)
BPMN 2.0 design time and runtime support
Seamless Upgrade from 11gR1PS1!!!!
Domains for BPEL. Not sure how this compares to the regular WL domains.

X509 Certificate Testing

2010-03-12T17:38:00.002-05:00

Strategy

Generate a keystore for the "Service Provider"
Extract the "service provider's" certificate
Generate a separate keystore for the "Service Consumer"
Import the "service provider's" certificate into the service consumer's keystore
Configure the SOAP UI to perform Encryption, Signature, Password, DateTime as shown below.
Create a policy at the OWSM(copy from the system provided ones)
Add Assertions. Enforce logging as one of the assertions
Register the webservice and attach this policy with the web service.
Test the request with the SOAP UI.

Concepts

It is important to understand what happens during an outbound request
For Authentication - the consumer provides the "userid" and "password" which is used by the Provider to authenticate through the Security provider(by connecting to the LDAP or custom repository)
For Authorization - the consumer provides the "userid" and "password" which is used by the Provider to authenticate through the Security provider(by connecting to the LDAP or custom repository)
For Confidentiality - the message is encrypted by the public key of the Provider. Due to this reason you need to select the provider's certificate that has been imported by providing the alias
Based on the policy that is being enforced at the provider's OWSM, provide the corresponding "Key Identifier Type", "Encoding Algorithm", "Key Encryption Algorithm"
For Integrity - the message should be signed with the private key of the consumer. So provide the corresponding alias.

Generate a Keystore

Execute the following command in a single line

keytool -genkey -dname "cn=Chandu Sankuratri, ou=soa, o=CrystalTrain, c=US" -alias dssoa -keypass iag12345 -keystore C:\chandu\Keystore -storepass iag12345 -validity 365 -keyalg "RSA"

Note : Enusre that the Key Algorithm is "RSA" as SOAP UI expects this. If you do not provide this, the default is DSA and you will see an exception java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: not an RSA key

You should verify the certificate by executing the following commands

keytool -export -alias dssoa -file dssoa.cer -keystore C:\chandu\Keys\keystore -storepass iag12345

keytool -printcert -file C:\chandu\Keys\dssoa.cer

This should print out

Serial number: 4b9abe40

Valid from: Fri Mar 12 17:20:48 EST 2010 until: Sat Mar 12 17:20:48 EST 2011
Certificate fingerprints:
MD5: 53:DB:0B:86:71:2E:5D:95:E8:EA:8C:D6:89:B2:D2:06
SHA1: EA:B0:90:F5:A9:12:FF:E9:A0:7A:96:F9:77:79:71:6B:18:62:86:3F
Signature algorithm name: SHA1withRSA
Version: 3

Add the generated keystore to SoapUI

Configure the outgoing SOAP request for encryption with X509 certificate. Similarly, you can also add "user Name" ,"Password" and the Signature.

Associate the configured security to the request

SOAP Request with WS-Security

2010-03-12T11:45:00.001-05:00

Add the following to your SOAP request. Note the userid and Password. The Security Provider is the default Weblogic authentication Provider. This requires the weblogic userid and password that you login to Console. Use this to start your testing and build upon this by changing the security providers, encryption and signature.

<soap:Header>

<wsse:Security xmlns:wsse="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd">
<wsse:UsernameToken>
<wsse:Username>weblogic</wsse:Username>
<wsse:Password Type="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-username-token-profile-1.0#PasswordText">iag123456</wsse:Password>
<wsse:Nonce>71srki+B97R3XIoA7amwbA==</wsse:Nonce>
</wsse:UsernameToken>
</wsse:Security>
</soap:Header>

Generating a WSIL file from WSDL

2010-03-12T10:48:00.002-05:00

The OWSM11gR1 requires a WSIL file to register a service.

Following are the steps to generate a WSIL from WSDL

WSIL can be easily generated from a WSDL through Eclipse Galileo. At the time of writing this is not supported by JDeveloper.
Copy the WSDL file to your Eclispe project. Right click on it and follow the below instructions
The following is taken from Eclipse Help

To generate a WSIL file through the import utility:

From the File menu, select Import > WSIL > Next. The WSIL Import window opens.

If you have selected to perform step 1, the WSIL URI field should be prefilled with the name of your WSDL file, where the extension has been changed from .wsdl to .wsil. The WSDL section should contain the URLs to the selected WSDL files. You can also enter additional WSDL URLs. Alternately, you can browse to the location of a WSIL file, or manually enter the location of the WSIL and WSDL files in the appropriate locations.

Click Finish. A WSIL file will be generated in the specified location.

Oracle Web Services Manager (OWSM) 11g

2010-03-12T10:43:00.003-05:00

The official Developers Guide for OWSM 11gR1 from Oracle is available here
The FAQ on OWSM 11gR1 is available here

OWSM11gR1 is part of the Oracle SOA Suite11gR1. It does not need any separate installation if you are working with Oracle SOA. Enforcing the policy is straight forward as can be seen below.

Following are the steps to enforce a policy. Steps that need elaboration are entered as a separate blog

Create a Policy
Generate a WSIL for the Web Service
Register the Service
Associate the Service with the Policy
Generate SOAP requests through the SOAP UI to test the security

Using Java Embedding Task

2010-01-30T13:31:00.000-05:00

Peter Ebell has written an excellent article "Embedding Java in BPEL process" which explains the inner details of how BPEL engine invokes the java classes.

Another article "How to deploy Java classes with BPEL process" goes through the deployment process.

The System.out.println output can be found in the console.

Here is a sample code that outputs the request of type Element to an XML String.

Note : Debugging the problem is a time consuming activity.

try{

System.out.println("IN JAVA EMBEDDING*******************:");
org.w3c.dom.Element inputElement = (org.w3c.dom.Element)getVariableData("inputVariable","payload","/client:process");
System.out.println("*******************GOT THE ELEMENT:*******************");
String inputElementXML = com.collaxa.cube.xml.dom.DOMUtil.toXML(inputElement);
System.out.println("inputElementXML :" + inputElementXML);
setVariableData("outputVariable", "payload",
"/client:processResponse/client:result", inputElementXML);
}catch(Exception e){
System.out.println("Exception in Embedded Java:" + e.toString());
}

Processing request or response as String but with XML structure in BPEL

2010-01-29T19:15:00.000-05:00

When the process has been designed(bad design as it is not bound to schema) to accept the request as a String which is in XML format, then development becomes difficult. Oracle BPEL has been developed to deal with request and responses that are bound to schemas and so offer rich XML data manipulation.

Let us see what needs to be done when the request is receved as a Strng in XML format. The string needs to be mapped to an XML element to simplify the processing of payload

Use oraext:parseEscapedXML() to read the XML to an Element. If you encounter any problem in this please check the namespace as suggested here.

If the request to another webservice needs to be in a String format(again bad design) then let us see the available options

getContentAsString() converts the XML to string but escapes the '<' but leaves the '>' intact.
oraext:get-content-as-string() converts to XML but escapes both '<' and '>'. In em console, view the raw xml. If you view in the HTML it looks fine.
Use Java Embedding(this is covered in a separate blog)

Java Web Services : Metro vs Axis

2010-01-22T16:19:00.000-05:00

IBM has an excellent article covering the performance of Metro and Axis2 frameworks here. See how Axis2 slows when the payload is encrypted or signed. It looks like this performance hit is beyond the binding and could happen even if JAXB binding is used.

Following are excellent articles written in this series about Metro

Introducing Metro
WS-Security with Metro

Top 10 reasons to move to Oracle SOA Suite 11g

2010-01-14T14:09:00.000-05:00

Ths article summarizes the top 10 reasons why one should move to Oracle SOA Suite 11g. Please note that this comes from an Oracle insider.

SOA BPEL 11g examples

2010-01-14T12:56:00.002-05:00

Some BPEL examples based on SOA Suite 11g developed by the SOA/BPM development team are available here. Download the zip, extract the files and open the example in JDeveloper11g. Deploy and test them.

Note: The documentaton is minimal but the examples can be understood by going through the code and running them.

Career Survival Kit : What every developer needs to know?

2010-01-12T19:41:00.002-05:00

This is a must read for every developer. I shall call this as a Survival Kit for IT Developer in any economy.

The video from Jared Richardson is available at http://qik.com/video/1009098

This has been condensed as an article by a gentleman and is available as Career 2.0: Take control of Your Life

Performance Tuning of Oracle BPEL

2010-01-06T10:06:00.004-05:00

Following are the list of articles that are worth going through to improve the performance of BPEL

BPEL Performance Tuning : Excellent document from Oracle.
Article1
Article2. Though this is on OAS 10 g, this gives a very good overview.
Article3. This goes through the lower level configuration details that can improve the performance.
Article4. This is on 10g but is pretty good.
Oracle SOA Suite 11g Administrator's Guide . This explains where the parameters can be modified and what they mean.

The primary areas to look for performance tuning are below. Sometimes, it is a tradeoff between performance, reliability and security and the decision has to be made after carefully weighing the pros and cons.

Oracle Weblogic JVM Memory
Dehydration Store Database Performance Tuning
Should the process be stored in the dehydration store? By default the value is set to true so that there is no dehydration done. Set the idempotent flag to false if you need the process instance to be dehydrated.
DB Connection Pooling
InvokerBean thread value. By default it is 1 thread per process. But, if there are multiple branches/flows in the process this could be increased so that the processing is faster. Check the 'Dispatcher Invoke Threads' and 'Dispatcher Engine Threads' values.
Logging
Set Audit Level to 'Production'. Payload is not stored.
Feasibility for the usage of REST service as it is lightweight.
Security : Overhead increases as the level of security gets higher. The overhead directly affects the performance.

Unit Testing and Integration Testing with Oracle SOA Suite 11g

2010-01-05T17:16:00.001-05:00

This is an excellent presentation on testing.

SOAP vs REST

2010-01-05T12:15:00.001-05:00

This is an excellent article by David Chappell.

This article helps to understand why REST ful services are required and how the JSON format is useful for data exchange especially Ajax apps.

BPEL vs Workflow

2010-01-05T12:04:00.000-05:00

I liked this article which explains how a BPEL process can utilize a Workflow service.

BPEL Process Manager automates a business process. The part of business process that involves human interaction can be achieved through Workflow. So, BPEL PM being an ochestrator of services can invoke a Workflow Service to accomplish this part.

BPM vs Workflow

2010-01-05T10:27:00.000-05:00

There are conflicting articles on the difference between the two. Of all, the one that makes more sense to me is this

Scheduling BPEL Service

2009-12-16T12:16:00.000-05:00

If you would like to schedule a BPEL service every few hours then there is no direct support provided by the BPEL engine or Oracle Application Server to do this. This may be required when the service/process has to run as a batch process.

I have read about solutions using File Adapter, Database Adapter, process running in loop, etc.

The most elegant solution(in my view) is to develop a Java solution using Quartz Scheduler(open source) and deploy it as a war application in the Oracle Weblogc Server. You may want to externalize(from war) the jobs.xml so that the schedule time can be altered. You may also want to externalize the end points so that they can be modified as suited.

WS-Addressing

2009-12-16T11:05:00.031-05:00

Typically, Web Services communicate over SOAP through Http. Since Http is stateless in nature, there can be a maximum of 1 complete conversation at a time. This suits well for short request-response messages where the conversation is complete. But for conversations that span multiple asynchronous or synchronous message exchanges , there should be more information packed so that there is a callback information and a context for the message. This is standardized by the WS-Addressing specification by w3 which is available here

When an asynchronous process is invoked, the BPEL engine either invokes a new process or resumes a running process. It does this by looking at the Address information in the header of the SOAP message. A sample header can be seen below (it is taken from the w3 spec referred above).

Request
<S:Envelope xmlns:S="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope"
xmlns:wsa="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/08/addressing">
<S:Header>
<wsa:MessageID>uuid:6B29FC40-CA47-1067-B31D-00DD010662DA </wsa:MessageID>
<wsa:ReplyTo>
<wsa:Address>http://business456.example/client1</wsa:Address>
</wsa:ReplyTo>
<wsa:To>http://fabrikam123.example/Purchasing</wsa:To>
<wsa:Action>http://fabrikam123.example/SubmitPO</wsa:Action>
</S:Header>
<S:Body>
...
</S:Body>
</S:Envelope>

Note that the request has ReplyTo as the response end point and the context for the conversation as MessageID.

Response
<S:Envelope xmlns:f123="http://www.fabrikam123.example/svc53">
<S:Header>
<wsa:MessageID>uuid:aaaabbbb-cccc-dddd-eeee-wwwwwwwwwww</wsa:MessageID>
<wsa:RelatesTo>uuid:6B29FC40-CA47-1067-B31D-00DD010662DA </wsa:RelatesTo>
<wsa:To S:mustUnderstand="1">
http://business456.example/client1
</wsa:To>
<wsa:Action>http://fabrikam123.example/mail/DeleteAck</wsa:Action>
</S:Header>
<S:Body>
<f123:DeleteAck/>
</S:Body>
</S:Envelope>

Note that the response has RelatesTo as the context for the conversation.

All additional message exchanges in this conversations only require the RelatesTo element as the BPEL engine can invoke the process instance with this information.

Other informative artciles

http://www.javapassion.com/webservices/wsaddressing.pdf

Service Specification Template

2009-12-15T11:34:00.000-05:00

If you are looking for a Service defnition template then the following should be a good place to start with and customize it accordingly

This is available from CBDI

Web Services Security

2009-11-16T19:33:00.001-05:00

A common question that is asked is how security is implemented in Web Services.

I am copying the overview from this article

Overview of Information Security
It is important to have a general understanding of information security prior to addressing elements of web services security. There are six general security services that encompass the various functions required of a security facility. These can also be considered as requirements that define information security:

Authentication: Ensures that the sender and receiver are who they claim to be. Mechanisms such as username/password, smart cards, and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) can be used to assure authentication.
Authorization or Access Control: Ensures that an authenticated entity can access only those services they are allowed to access. Access control lists are used to implement this.
Availability: Requires that uninterrupted services are provided to authenticated and authorized users.
Confidentiality: This assures that information in storage and in-transit are accessible only for reading by authorized parties. Encryption is used to assure message confidentiality.
Integrity: Ensures that information, either in storage or in-transit cannot be modified intentionally or unintentionally. Digital signatures are used to assure message integrity.
Nonrepudiation: Requires that neither the sender nor the receiver of a message be able to legitimately claim they didn't send/receive the message.

I am listing some of the other interesting articles that I found on this subject

This article is a good place to start at.
This one by Axis covers the different types of attacks.
This one shows the solution in code.

Some important excerpts from this article are copied below

WS-Security from OASIS defines the mechanism for including integrity, confidentiality, and single message authentication features within a SOAP message. WS-Security makes use of the XML Signature and XML Encryption specifications and defines how to include digital signatures, message digests, and encrypted data in a SOAP message.

Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) from OASIS provides a means for partner applications to share user authentication and authorization information. This is essentially the single sign-on (SSO) feature being offered by all major vendors in their e-commerce products. In the absence of any standard protocol on sharing authentication information, vendors normally use cookies in HTTP communication to implement SSO. With the advent of SAML, this same data can be wrapped inside XML in a standard way, so that cookies are not needed and interoperable SSO can be achieved.

Adapters - Database and File Adapters

2009-11-14T17:36:00.002-05:00

Oracle SOA Suite comes along with some adapters that adapt the underlying Component and wraps it as a Service. Some of the Adapters that are shipped with the application are Database Adapter, File Adapter, JMS Adapter, etc.
Oracle makes the access to the underlying Services easy by wrapping them as Web Services.(There is a WSDL created for each operation you make). It is very tempting to use these adapters. But,thought should be applied if this is the best design. For example, in the case of Database Adapters, it is always better to use the existing Web Services to retrieve the required data. If the Web Service does not exist and if it is in our control then it would be better to write the business logic and expose that as a Web Service. This will increase the maintainablity and reusability of this Service. I think the Database Adapter should be used when all the above options are not feasible. Even when used, it may be a better practice to create this a Web Service and assign them a suitable namespace so that they can be categorised properly.

I was recently asked if a Database Adapter can be used to poll for Orders in the Order table. My solution would be to first see if a trigger can be written on the table to publish a JMS message on the receipt of a new order. I heard that this was possible and found some information here. (Haven't tried it yet though).

SOA Suite 11g Components

2009-11-09T18:56:00.000-05:00

The SOA Suite primarily comprises of BEA Application Server(J2EE) where the following Service Engines are embedded

BPEL
Mediator
Business Rules
Human Workflow

Oracle Service Bus is another important part of the SOA Suite but comes as a separate application.

The other helpful components/frameworks are

Web Service Manager - where policies are defined and enforced
B2B - A protocol engine that provides Business to Business communicaton over a variety of protocols like EDI, HL7, etc.
Adapters - Adapts non service based components as services. Examples are Database Adapter, File Adapter, JMS Adapter, eBusiness Suite Adapter.

Managing/Monitoring Tools

Enterprise Manager - A web based console to manage all fusion mddleware components
Business Activity Monitoring(BAM) - activity monitoring tool

The IDE to develop the SOA application is Java Developer. There is also an Eclipse plugin.

Mediator

2009-11-09T17:47:00.005-05:00

Mediator is a new component(originally Oracle Service Bus before it was replaced by the AcquaLogic Bus)that has been added to Oracle SOA Suite 11g.

This article explains the difference between Mediator and OSB.
The "The Big BPEL-ESB-OSB cook-off" by ToddBiske analyses the role of each one.

What does the Mediator do?

It mediates components/services within an SOA Composite Application.
Routes the requests to the Services
Data Transformation between formats and protocols
It DOES NOT do service localisation and it cannot act as a Gateway to the Services.

How is it different from Oracle Service Bus?

The main difference is in the scope. Mediator performs intra-composite mediation while Oracle Service Bus performs inter-composite mediation which means that it mediates different composites together.

What should be done by a Mediator?

In Oracle, every BPELProcess is a Composite Service. This Composite could be invoking multiple BPEL Processes or Components. The Contract is defined at the Composite Service and the Mediator plays the role of mediation between this Contract and the various contracts for other components within the Composite.
I think that it is a good practice to create a Mediator in all Composites even if the Composite has a single BPEL Process. The Mediator will help take care of additional operations that could be added to this Service in future.
I think that it is a good practice to do all data transformations at the Mediator.
Mediator can also perform routing of requests to different Services. But, I think that one should explore if this can be delegated to BPEL as its core stength is to orchestrate the services.
Anything that does not belong to a process has to be extracted out and put in the Mediator. For example, if the process needs the data in a certain format then that transformation can be done at the Mediator or the OSB but not in the BPEL.

Fresh Air over Oracle Fusion Middleware

2009-10-08T15:16:00.000-04:00

There is a lot of confusion over what Oracle Fusion Middleware is and what it comprises of. Google it and a few Oracle websites come up that are targeted for the CEOs and the CTOs which makes less sense for technical folks. Here are some helpful podcasts Fusion Podcast1, Fusion Podcast2

To keep it simple, my interpretation is that Oracle Fusion Middleware is a collection of technologies that are based on SOA technology platform that help the Customer develop, integrate, manage and monitor applications.

Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g

The Oracle Fusion Middleware11g is a fusion of technologies between Oracle and BEA products. I am listing the primary technologies that form the crux of this middleware and am also listing the origin of the technology which can help in understanding better. The SOA products of BEA were once called AcquaLogic Service Bus, etc.

Application Server from BEA which is called Oracle Weblogic Server. The Oracle Application Server based on oc4j does not seem to have found a place here.
Content Server from Oracle
Identity Manager from Oracle
Business Intelligence from Oracle
Transaction Processing from BEA which is Tuxedo
SOA Suite

BPEL Process Manager from BEA
Enterprise Service Bus from BEA
BAM from Oracle
Web Services Manager from Oracle
Business Rules from Oracle

Oracle Fusion Applications
It is the re implementation of Oracle's EBusiness Suite, Siebel, PeopleSoft and JDEdwards Enterprise as a single application.

Creation of a Synchronous BPEL Process

2009-09-19T23:48:00.000-04:00

This will cover the concepts, design, testing and deployment of Synchronous BPEL Process.

What this blog helps to understand

Using WebService PartnerLink
Using Invoke BPEL Activtiy
Using the webservice.
How to create a Synchronized BPEL Process

Note:

We will utilize the webservice that was created earlier. This will help in understanding how the webservice that you created before is being orchestrated by the BPEL Process.
We shall not do the data transformation between different data types. Fortunately, int to string and string to double conversion seems to be done out of the box.

Intent

To create a Synchronous BPEL Process that takes a FICO score(input) and determines the APR(output). Let us call this a MortgageProcess.

Prerequisite

Creation of webservice

Concepts of Synchronous Service

This article explains the Synchronous and Asynchronous webservices
The difference between Synchronous and Asynchronous BPEL Process is excellently defined here and I shall not duplicate this below.

Design

Choose "New Project ..."
In the "New Gallery" window, select "SOA Project"
In the "Create SOA Project Step1 of 2", enter Project Name as "SynchronousMortgage"
In the "Create SOA Project Step2 of 2", select the Composite Template "Composite with BPEL" and click on "Finish" button.
This will launch the "Create BPEL Process" window as seen below

After creation, the default design view of the MortgageProcess looks like below

Now, invoke the CreditService webservice. You can do this by dragging and dropping the "Partner Link (WebService/Adapter)" from the "BPEL Sevices" section in the Resource Palette(as shown below) to the Partner Links swim lane on the right side.

Once it is dropped, the "Create Partner Link" dialog appears where the partner link needs to be configured to invoke the CreditService.

Now, there should be a BPEL Activity to invoke the WebService through the Partner Link we configured in the previous step. For that, drag the "Invoke" BPEL Activity from Component Palette>BPEL Activities and Components and drop it into the middle lane and configure it as shown below.

Connect the InvokeActivity with the "SyncCreditProcess" PartnerLink and configure it as shown below.

Now, assign the "Invoke_CreditProcess_process_InputVariable" with the input received from the client which is the FICO score. When the process runs, the web service operation is invoked and this input value is passed to it.

Double click on the Assign Activity
In "General" tab, change the name to a meaningful one like "Assign_FICO"
Go to "Copy Operation" tab
Click on green + arrow to select the "Copy Operation..."
In the "Create Copy Operation" screen do the following

When the process runs, the web service operation returns the response instantaneously(synchronized). Since this value has to be returned to the client, assign "Invoke_CreditProcess_process_OutputVariable" to the response (output which is the APR)
Drag and drop the Assign Activity in between Receive and Reply activities as seen below

Double click on the Assign Activity
In "General" tab, change the name to a meaningful one like "Assign_APR"
Go to "Copy Operation" tab
Click on green + arrow to select the "Copy Operation..."
In the "Create Copy Operation" screen do the following

Deployment

Now save the .bpel file
Make the project
See the compiler log. You will see warning messages on assigning incompatible types. This is true since the FICO score should be integer and APR is returned as double. Since we wanted to focus only on the creation of synchronous process we shall ignore such wrong programming practice for this example.
Deploy to Crystal Domain
Check the Deployment log to see if the dployment is successull.

Testing

Go to Oracle Enterprise Manager
Under SOA>soa infro, you can see SynchronousMortgage deployed.
On the right side, clck on Test button
Enter the InputValue 500 and the system outputs 20.

Note

Note that it is the type of response(immediate or callback) that decides if the BPEL Process is Synchronous or Asynchronous.
Each domain has the attribute syncMaxWaitTime that by default is set to 60 seconds and can be reconfigured by the doman administrator. The Invoke Activity cannot wait for more than this time and will time out.

Real World Scenarios

A Credit Card Authorization during an online purchase is good case for a Synchronous Process as an authorizaton response is expected by the CardHolder immediately.

Oracle SOA Suite 11g Reference Documentation

2009-09-10T23:48:00.007-04:00

Here are some of the useful links I found on the Oracle SOA 11g. I shall keep updating them. Please drop a comment if you know of any.

Oracle Developers Guide for SOA Suite
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/integration.1111/e10224.pdf

Oracle BPEL Documentation
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12839_01/integration.1111/e10224.pdf

Oracle Business Rules Documentation

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/integration.1111/e10228.pdf

Oracle BPMN 2.0 Documentation

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/doc.1111/e15176.pdf

Oracle User Guide for BAM

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/integration.1111/e10230.pdf

Oracle User Guide For Technology Adapters(File, DB, JMS, etc)

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/integration.1111/e10231.pdf

Oracle Fusion Middleware List Of Books
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/nav/portal_booklist.htm
Oracle TN Podcasts
http://www.oracle.com/technology/syndication/arch2arch-podcasts/index.html

BPEL Blogs
http://orasoa.blogspot.com/2007/05/getting-started-with-oracle-soa-bpel.html

http://dietrichschroff.blogspot.com/search/label/BPEL

Oracle SOA 11g Memory Requirements

2009-09-10T23:44:00.000-04:00

For folks interested in installing Oracle SOA Suite 11g, please read this to check if your desktop/laptop is suitable.

I installed the Oracle SOA Suite 11g on my new laptop which has Windows Vista on a 4GB RAM. I profiled the memory hike on the start of each service. Here it is

When windows started up(only basic services) with OracleXE as Service: 39%
Started Oracle JDeveloper 11g : 47%
Started Oracle Weblogic Console : 66%
Started Node Manager : 69%
Started SOA Serve : 87%

If you plan to open a Office software or run other SOA Services like BAM then this machine crawls. You may want to plan for at least 6GB RAM. If not, you will end up watching the TaskManager every minutes to see f you can kill any process .

Creation of a Simple BPEL Process - Hello

2009-09-04T01:50:00.000-04:00

We shall create a very simple BPEL process. The intent is to learn the following

Overview of this exercise
BPEL Designer in JDeveloper
Partner Link
Process Activities - Receive, Invoke, Assign
Data Transformation
Compilation
Deployment
Accessing Enterprise Manager
Creation of Test Suite

Overview
We will create a very simple BPEL process. The process does not orchestrate any services. It just takes an input from the client and transforms it and sends it back as a response.
Example
Input = "Hello"
Output = "Hello CrystalTrain"

Creation of BPEL Process
This involves the following steps

Creation of Application
Creation of Project
Data Transformation
Compilation, Deployment and Testing

This prompts you to create a BPEL Process

The default process comprises of the following

Below is the design view of the process

Let us take a look at the Receive BPEL Activity. It receives the request from the client and holds the payload of the request in the inputVariable.

Let us take a look at the Reply BPEL Activity. It sends a response back to the client with the data stored in outputVariable.

Our intent is to modify the message received from the client. This is stored in inputVariable.

This can be done in Assign BPEL Activity as can be seen below.

Drag the Assign BPEL Activity that is avalable in the ComponentPalette>BPEL Activities and Components

Drag and Drop the Assign BPEL Activity in the highlighted circle in between Receive and Reply Activities

Now edit the Assign Operation.

In General Tab, Rename it to "TransformMessage"

In Copy tab,

You will see "Create Insert-After Operation" window

In the left hand side pane, select "Expression" as the Type

Now using "XPath Expression Builder", modify the inputVariable as seen below.

Assign the transformed value to the outputVariable

Build and Deploy

Save the project.

Right click on the project and make "HelloWorld.jpr". This will compile the project and output any errors to the log window.

Now right click on the project and select Deploy>HelloWorld>to Crystal

Note : Your ApplicationServer connection in the IDE should be up.

Accept the default values in "SOA Deployment Configuration Dialog".

Enter the domain credentials when asked.

Check the Deployment log to see that the status of the deployment.

Testing the BPEL Process

Go to EnterpriseManager at http://localhost:7001/

After entering your credentials you will be taken to the Home page (The login takes a looooong time)

To the left side, you will see

Click on the "Test" button

Enter the Input now

The response looks as follows

As show above, click on "Launch Message Flow Trace" to see the Audt Trail, Flow, XML from the request till the response.

Click on "Simple Process" to view the Flow Trace.

See below for the Audit Trail of this instance of the process.

Select the "Flow" tab to see the flow of request throgh the process actvities

Now, since you have successfully created your first BPEL process, start playing with the BPEL Designer and the EnterpriseManager. Make as many mistakes as possible and try to figure out the resolution for each. Be BOLD and try out the following. The more mistakes you make now the less you will make in future.

In the BPEL Designer in JDeveloper, view the Source of the .bpel file and see if you can make any sense of it.
Remve the expression from the Assign activity and try to build the project. See the compilation errors.
Open the logs at C:\oraclesoa\user_projects\domains\crystal_domain\servers\soa_server1\logs to familiarise yourselves.
Go to the Design mode and edit the Assign process activity and change the expression value. Save the changes and deploy it. Follow the steps shown in the figure below.

Understanding WSDL

2009-08-30T19:04:00.000-04:00

This is an attempt to explain WSDL in the simplest manner

About WSDL

WSDL stands for Web Service Definition Language.
It is a contract to the web service that is expressed in XML. To understand better this can be compared to an Interface in Java or a Package in Oracle which acts as a contract between the client and the system.

Structure of WSDL (parallels are drawn to Java wherever possible)

What are the capabilities of the Service?

What are the operations(methods) provided by the Service and what are the messages(parameters) that each operation requires?
The messages can be input(parameters), output(return value) or faults(exception)

How can the Service be accessed?

What is the protocol(SOAP) and what is the encoding(document)?

Where can the Service be accessed?

What is the endpoint(address) of the Service?

Illustration of the WSDL Structure
The CreditService web service developed earlier is used to illustrate

Installation of Oracle SOA Suite 11.1.1.3.0

2009-08-22T23:06:00.058-04:00

The instructions to install Oracle SOA Suite 11.1.1.3 is available at http://crystaltrain.com/training_soa_installation.html