What's stopping you from upgrading to Oracle SOA Suite 12c?

© OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH 2015 Slide 1What's Stopping You from Upgrading to Oracle SOA Suite 12c?
Birmingham, 08/12/2015
What's stopping you from upgrading
Danilo Schmiedel
Solution Architect | Oracle ACE Director
OPITZ CONSULTING Deutschland GmbH
to Oracle SOA Suite 12c?

About OPITZ CONSULTING
 Oracle Platinum Partner, founded in 1990, located in Germany and Poland
 Business IT Alignment, BPM, SOA and system integration, Application development, IT Infrastructure Management
 2 Oracle ACE Directors and 2 Oracle ACEs
 Recognized as one of the leading Oracle Fusion Middleware Partners
 Specialized in SOA, BPM, ADF & Application Grid, Exadata,
Business Intelligence Foundation, Oracle Database,
Oracle Enterprise Linux, Real Application Cluster, Oracle VM,
Data Warehousing, DB11g Performance Tuning
 2015 & 2014: Oracle BPM Partner Community Award
 2010: Oracle Fusion Middleware Award
 2008 – 2010: Oracle EMEA SOA Community Award

Agenda
1. SOA / BPM Evolution
2. Reasons for Upgrading to 12c
3. Upgrade Strategies
4. Results
5. Upgrade to 12.2.1

1 SOA / BPM Evolution

Important Milestones for SOA / BPM

From 10g to 11g - Why not just an „upgrade“?
 Product foundation changed to
Weblogic Server
 Introduction of Service
Component Architecture (SCA)
 Oracle Service Bus & Mediator
instead of OESB

From 11g to 12c - Evolution instead of revolution
 No fundamental changes in the
underlying platform
 Same architecture (SCA) and
same container
 Evolution of existing products &
components

2 Reasons for Upgrading to 12c

Top3 Benefits | 1. Error Hospital
 Ability to aggregate
instances based on
various criteria
 Bulk recovery and
bulk abort on
aggregated instance
 Extensive filter and
search panel similar
to instance tracking

Top3 Benefits | 2. Business Activity Monitoring

Top3 Benefits | 2. Business Activity Monitoring
Drill-Down

Top3 Benefits | 3. Sensor Actions
(already available in 11g but great in combination with BAM)

Additional Benefits of SOA 12c
 Developer Productivity
 One IDE for SOA and OSB
 Pipeline Templates
 Activity Templates
 Embedded SOA Suite in JDeveloper
 REST / JSON Support
 Free choice between XSLT / XQuery
 Maven Support
 Integrated Testsuites
 Share artifacts within and across applications (MDS)
 12.2.1 is based on Java 8

3 Upgrade Strategies

Upgrade Strategies

SOA / BPM 11g to 12c | Overview

3.1 Pre-Upgrade Steps

Side-by-Side Upgrade (Migration)
 New installation of schemas and
domains
 New deployment & configuration
of the existing 11g projects
 Suitable in stateless & short-
running scenarios
 Adequate if the targeted sytem
architecture should be diferent
than with 11g or if the current
topology is not supported
In-Place Upgrade
 Schemas and domain directory
upgrades are performed "in place"
(updates existing 11g files)
 Oracle Home binaries are
upgraded "out of place" (binaries
are installed in a new directory)
 No need to redeploy composites
after upgrade
 Long running instances resume
after upgrade
Defining an upgrade strategy

Performing pre-upgrade tasks (in general)
 Execute a complete backup of your 11g environment
 Apply recommended database parameters
 Save copies of customized start scripts, configuration files, policies
 Is your database supported?
 Infrastructure Database must be a supported Oracle 11g or 12c Database
 Is your operating system supported?
 Upgrading from a 32-Bit to a 64-Bit Operating System
 Is your JVM supported?
 64 Bit JVM
 More details: Upgrade Planning Guide and Interoperability and Compatibility Guide

Pre-upgrade tasks for the in-place approach
 Do you regulary clean your SOA Repository?
 Purge unused instance data
(upgrade will upgrade all open
instances)
 Can your version of SOA be upgraded?
 Starting points are:
11.1.1.6 (PS5) or 11.1.1.7 (PS6)
 Is your topology supported?
 11g and 12c Oracle_Homes located on same host but in different directories
 Domain is not integrated with non-12c products (OSR, OER, WebCenter)
 OPSS to use DB or LDAP based policy store (note that Audit Store does not support re-association through EM)
 SOA/BPM is running on WebLogic Server

Installing 12c software
 Install 12c FMW Infrastucture
Distributions
 Install 12c SOA Suite
 Install other components
as needed
 New and Deprecated Terminology
 MW_HOME (11g) => ORACLE_HOME (12c)
 PRODUCT_ORACLE_HOME => PRODUCT_DIR
 Oracle Fusion Middleware farm (used in 11g to refer to a
container for a WLS domain) => term is eliminated in 12c

3.2 In-Place Upgrade Steps

In-Place Upgrade Steps
1. Create DB schemas for 12c via RCU
2. Execute Upgrade Assistant to
upgrade 11g Database Schemas
3. Reconfigure the 11g domain using
Reconfiguration Wizard
4. Execute the Upgrade Assistant to
upgrade SOA Suite 11g

3.3 Post-Upgrade Steps

Post-Upgrade Steps
 Verify file permissions
 Re-apply customizations to scripts and configuration files
 setDomainEnv script (e.g. JVM memory settings, Truststore, etc.)
 config.xml
 Start Servers
 Admin Server
 Node Managers
 Managed Servers
 Other components…
 Testing

4 Upgrade Results

4.1 In-Place Upgrade Results

Small Installation - Components in use
 As part of the 10g to 11g migration we already replaced all long-
running processes with scheduled short-running processes
 All processes are implemented in BPEL 1.1 / BPEL 2.0 (no SB /
OER / BAM)
 Usage of: Component Properties, DB Adapter, XSLT, Calls to
external Web Services, Fault Management Framework, Business
Rules, DVMs, File Adapter, FTP Adapter, EDN
 Environment with one Admin Server and one Managed Server SOA
(configured as a cluster for scalability reasons)

Small Installation – Composite Tests
 Testcases successfully
completed and without
any manual rework
 Database Adapter for
stored procedure calls
performed well

Upgrade Results | Configuration Changes
 Successfully transferred
the following config
changes
 JTA Transaction Timeout
 Transaction Timeout of
BPELDeliveryBean
 SyncMaxWaitTime

Upgrade Results | Composite Availability
 EM shows list of
composites with start-up
issues
 Extended deployment
pre-validations
 e.g. wrong File Adapter
configuration
 Start-Up issues we
identified:
 Composites with EDN
 Embedded Java with non-
supported API calls

Upgrade Results | Auto Purge
 Purging of instance data is an
important part of SOA Suite
maintenance
 It can now be scheduled
through the enterprise
manager
 Auto Purge is enabled by
default (only) for new
installations;
for upgrades it is not enabled
by default

Upgrade Results | EDN Composites
 Error with EDN Composites:
“… Unable to create Topic producer due to JMSException …“
 Usually EDN 12c comes with a set of JMS administered objects for
WebLogic JMS type
 JMS topic JNDI: "jms/fabric/EDNTopic“
 JMS Adapter with a set of 4 connection factories
Patches / Workarounds
 If the EDN topic does not happen to be provisioned, automatically
after upgrade, you can manually provision it (fixed in 12.2.1)

Upgrade Results | setCompositeInstanceTitle
 In 12c the EM no longer displays what setComposite-
InstanceTitle sets
 EM 12c displays the newly added Flow Instance Title which is set
using the setFlowInstanceTitle(...) method (logged in
18310693)

Upgrade Results | Server Start
 SOA Server started only in ADMIN mode
 Clean-up of the server-cache directory helped to solve the problem
 Solution was already documented under Doc ID: 1330224.1
 Additionally check that the setDomainEnv.sh changes from the previous environment were
reapplied to the 12c domain. Compare the setDomainEnv file from 11g to the new 12c
setDomainEnv file and then add any custom changes after the upgrade.

Upgrade Results | Composites in EM
Composite Definition in EM not available (not critical – new feature)

4.2 Installation / Enterprise Deployment Guide

Installation / Setup Topics
 Whole Server Migration
 Set CrashRecoveryEnabled=TRUE in nodemanager.properties
 EDG: ignore the comments in WLS EDG and follow the SOA EDG (differences in pack /
unpack vs. nmenroll and nodemanager.properties)
 EDG: the interface/netmask syntax is being deprecated but still can be used
 .out files of soa_servers show “Stopping Derby server... Derby server
stopped.”
 You can work it around by setting DERBY_FLAG=false in setDomainEnv.sh
 Method 'getMiddlewareHome' cannot be invoked without
administrator access.
 Apply Patch 18559995

4.3 Design Time

Design Time | MDS Import First
 Import MDS artifacts into Design Time MDS first, then open the
project
 Check library dependencies
 Check and modify settings in adf-config.xml (if needed)

Design Time | Ant Scripts
 oracle.home variable set differently in 12c then in 11g. This caused
problems using AntScripts and MDS
 Logged under 21190183
 Fixed in version 12.2.2

Design Time | Opening 11g project in JDev 12c
 Migration Assistent starts to
migrate the project

Design Time | Project Structure
 Project folder structure has slightly
changed
 *.componentType files have been removed
(content is now part of composite.xml)

Design Time | Migrating large Composites
“Composite fails to migrate in JDev 12c with:
java.lang.RuntimeException:
SOA component <process_name> does not have a
<componentType> element.”
 Fixed in version 12.1.3.0.1 (Doc ID 2021736.1)

Design Time | Namespaces of Ext. Functions
„The XPath expression failed to execute; the reason was:
javax.xml.transform.TransformerException …
XML-22015: (Error) Function
'http://schemas.oracle.com/xpath/extension:node-set‘ not
found”
 Replace prefix “ora” with “oraxslt”
 11g => xmlns:ora=“http://schemas.oracle.com/xpath/extension“
 12c => xmlns:oraxslt=“http://www.oracle.com/XSL/Transform/java“

Business Activity Monitoring
 Has been completely re-implemented in 12c
 Consumed a lot of CPU and Memory under 12.1.3.0.1
 Either run BAM on 12.1.3 BP1 with all mandatory patches installed
 Mandatory Patches to Install on BAM 12c (Doc ID 1682371.1)
 BUT: those mandatory patches are not available for BP2+
 Or run BAM on 12.2.1 (recommended)

5 Upgrade to 12.2.1

Oracle SOA / BPM Suite 12.2.1
 The following schemas will be updated
 UMS, OPSS, WLS, MDS, ESS, STB, IAU,
IAU_APPEND, IAU_VIEWER, SOAINFRA
Pre-Upgrade Steps
 Create a Backup
 Install JDK 8
 Install Weblogic 12.2.1
 Install SOA / OSB / BPM 12.2.1
 Purge previous installation
 SOAINFRA and IAS_TEMP need a minimum
of 1GB free space
 Shutdown all managed server

 Run Check-Script (AdminServer online)
 cd /oracle/products/fmw1221/oracle_common/upgrade/bin ./ua –readiness
 Upgrade
 Database Schemas
 Domain Configuration
 Adjust startup scripts
and setDomainEnv.sh

Conclusion
 The collection of challenges shown on the previous slides
 summarizes our experience from various upgrade projects (based on 12.1.3)
 we found patches / workarounds for each of the issues
 most of the things we found are fixed in 12.2.1
 Pre-upgrade steps are the key point of success
 Documentation about changed config parameters as well as a proper
testing concept are important
 Blogpost: Best Practices for SOA 11g to 12c Upgrade
https://blogs.oracle.com/SOA/entry/best_practices_for_soa_11g
 Documentation: http://docs.oracle.com/middleware/1213/cross/upgradetasks.htm
 Video:
http://docs.oracle.com/middleware/1213/cross/upgrade_videos.htm

Contact
Danilo Schmiedel
Solution Architect
OPITZ CONSULTING Deutschland GmbH
Tempelhofer Weg 64, 12347 Berlin, Germany
Phone: +49 173 7279001
Mail: danilo.schmiedel@opitz-consulting.com
Twitter: @dschmied
Blog: http://inside-bpm-and-soa.blogspot.com

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