Oracle B2B 12c - HTTP Generic Channel with transport callout

First of all, season's greetings to everyone! 

Then, let me introduce this post saying that, already in the version 11g, a generic HTTP listening channel for message posting to B2B using the HTTP protocol was available. Any configured trading partner could use this generic channel to post messages to B2B.

A single common URL was available by default:
http://[host-name]:[host-port]/b2b/httpReceiver 

In this way, a single listening channel is able to serve multiple trading partners for every HTTP communications with B2B. 

When this channel is used, the process follows the default steps for message processing, namely:

• Sender identification (i.e. using HTTP Header);
• Document protocol/version/type identification ;
• Agreement identification;
• Message processing (parsing and validation);
• Synchronous delivery to a back-end application.

The only differentiation factor is: since this channel is generic and not configurable or even available on the list of listening channels in B2B console, make it unavailable for channel callout configuration. 

This has now changed with the 12c version.

With the version 12c of B2B is now possible to define a generic HTTP transport callout and associate it with a specific transport level callout.

As of now, this is driven by an B2B configuration Fusion Middleware property that needs to be added on Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control (EM) 

b2b.HTTPTransportCalloutName= [callout name] 

i.e. b2b.HTTPTransportCalloutName= InboundGeneralCallout

Note: Access the following Oracle documentation for full instruction on how to set EM B2B properties here. 

This is also isolated from the regular HTTP functionality since a new ulr is provided to be able to establish this new feature. 

There is now a separated URL to be used in case of setting a generic HTTP channel callout: 

http://[host-name]:[host-port]/b2b/calloutReceiver

With this, the callout will be triggered when the message is received in this URL and EM property is configured for a valid transport callout.

Wish you all a very prosperous 2015!

Oracle B2B 12c - Listening Channel activation and deactivation in bulk

With the version 12c of B2B the possibility to activate and deactivate all listening channels in one single command was introduced. Previously, it was necessary to provide the name of the listening channels to perform the action, what, in scenarios with a considerable number of listening channels, made the task ineffective.

Different scenarios can be pointed out where this functionality is extremely useful:

• After importing a B2B configuration the channels are always in deactivated status. This command can be then executed in order to activate all the listening channels in bulk;
• Deactivate all listening channels to stop momentously all message consumption for corrective or preventive reasons into B2B or back-end applications;
• Switching the message consumption between two environments;

The feature is also provided in a command line based approach since is an extension to the already existing feature of enable/disable a particular listening channel. Therefore it is respecting the same prerequisites.

Prior to executing any B2B command line tool is necessary to set the following environment variables:

JAVA_HOME: Your Java home

ORACLE_HOME: Your oracle SOA home

ANT_HOME: Your ant home

For example:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.7.0_51

export ORACLE_HOME=/u01/fmw/soa/

export ANT_HOME=/u01/fmw/oracle_common/modules/org.apache.ant_1.9.2

export PATH=$PATH:$ANT_HOME/bin

After, the first command to execute is the one which create a jndi.properties file in the folder where the SOA ant build artefact are available. The jndi.properties file allows defining the connection details to execute any of the available B2B command tools.

cd $ORACLE_HOME\bin

ant -f ant-b2b-util.xml b2bcreate-prop

A jndi.properties files is created in the folder. Now is time to edit it in order to reflect the connection details.

java.naming.provider.url=t3://localhost:8001
java.naming.factory.initial=weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactory
java.naming.security.principal=weblogic
java.naming.security.credentials=weblogic_password

All ready to run authenticated commands as the listening channel activation and deactivation command.

From the same directory where ant-b2b-util.xml exists execute:

ant -f ant-b2b-util.xml updatechannel -Dchannelname="*" -Dstate=active

ant -f ant-b2b-util.xml updatechannel -Dchannelname="*" -Dstate=inactive

By providing the channelname as “*” all the listening channels can be activated / deactivated.

Note: The operation is performed incrementally going throughout the listening channels and activating one by one. With a large number of listening channels it can take some time between the activation and the moment that all the channels start to consume messages. Be patient and check your logs and monitor B2B in order to check the message consumption is starting.

Oracle B2B 12c - Document Callouts: The Concept

One of the coolest new features of that Oracle B2B 12c brings is the document callout.

Callouts had already an important role on previous releases of Oracle B2B and they allow for execution of custom Java code on different steps of a message process.

On previous versions we had already 2 types of callouts:

• Transport or channel callouts: this type of callouts add the possibility to execute custom java code on the wire message, as soon as it is received on the channel on the inbound or before being sent for final delivery on the outbound
• Agreement callouts: this type of callouts add the possibility to execute custom java code on the application message (the XML representation of the message) , just before being sent to the backend on the inbound or immediately after being received from the backend on the outbound.

With the new document callout B2B brings the possibility of executing custom java code to convert your raw format message into XML or vice-versa replacing the default xEngine as your parsing tool.

This is particularly useful for those complex messages that can not be defined using the document editor.

Note: For those of you still using Oracle B2B 11g this feature (and many others) is available by installation of patch SOA bundle Patch 19190139 11.1.1.7.5 

On a future post I will show you how to use this cool new feature!

Stay tunned!

Oracle B2B 12c – What’s New!

This post serves as the first of a series of posts dedicated to Oracle B2B.

What better way to start this series than to highlight the many new features have been added to Oracle B2B 12c which can change the landscape of the target usage for B2B.

Let's look at some of these new features:

• Document Translation Callout Framework
• Introduced Document Callout for custom document parsing (inbound), validation and construction (outbound)
• Regular Expression Document Identification
• Trading Partner Metadata API
• Parameters, Identifiers and TP Agreements accessible via Java API and WS
• SSL Support for SMTP
• Trading Partner Identifier via Regular Expression
• Batching of Custom Documents
• xPath payload extraction from SOAP Body
• xEngine (B2B Native Parser) API for EDIFACT
• Bulk Listening Channel activation
• Enriched exchange information on message metadata
• Channel used
• Agreement 
• Priority on Document Identification
• Message IN/OUT Collaboration by ID
• Improved Provisioning Self Service 
• Callouts
• Identifiers
• Parameters
• Channel details
• Incremental Update

Note: All of this features are available for the version 11g of SOA Suite by installation of patch SOA bundle Patch 19190139 11.1.1.7.5 

In 12.1.3 there's:

• Support for streaming (effective process for large payloads)
• MFT as an integration channel
• Enhanced End2End monitoring and integration with Error Hospital
• Local Policy Attachment for Web Services

In future posts we will go into more details on these and other B2B features.

Stay tunned!

Resolving localhost on clustered environment

After a clustered SOA Suite installation we were setting the deployment script to point to localhost when referencing another composites. Although, we were unable to resolve localhost connection in run time trowing the following exception every time that a composite tried to reference another composite:

oracle.fabric.common.FabricInvocationException
Tried all: '2' addresses, but could not connect over HTTP to server: 'localhost', port: '8101'

Turns out that the reason was related with the fact that the port 8101 was not listening on the localhost address. This was reveled executing the following command:

:~$ netstat -na | grep 8101

10.1.5.67.8101       172.28.251.83.53878  65840      0 129100      0 TIME_WAIT
10.1.5.67.8101       172.28.251.83.53880  65840      0 129100      0 TIME_WAIT

The list reveled that only one ip was related with port 8101 so by this we could conclude that localhost was not listening to this port.

Therefore, in order to solve it, we needed to change the IP address range that the servers are listening for incoming connections.
Going to weblogic console and checking the server configuration we could observe that the listen address was set with the machine IP, so in this way limiting the incoming connection to the ones referencing only this IP:

The solution was to remove the IP from the Listen Address field leaving this undefined so clients can reach this server using localhost string.

Saving the changes, applying the modifications and restarting the server made available the composites on the servers to be invoked by clients using localhost in the reference.

Oracle Unveils Oracle SOA Suite 12c

Breaking news !!!

Official Press Release: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pressrelease/soa-suite-12c-062614

Fault Handling Framework JAVA Custom Faults using fault policies properties

What I'm trying to achieve: Custom fault handling action on my fault policies that can publish a file to my file system before any handled fault is delivered to manual intervention on recovery EM area. This way will allow me to alert via platform management tool that an error occurred. Now, I want this flexible enough so I can change file content and location based on different targeted environments during my application promotion.

Implementation

1. Create a generic JDeveloper project leaving the default options. 
2. Add JAVA technology. Accept the creation of a new project and define the name.
3. Define the default package where to create your java classes
4. Add the necessary libraries

• BPEL Runtime
• SOA Runtime

Note: Right Click on project and choose Project Properties to access to Libraries and Classpath option.

Now:

1. Create a new class (eg. Logging) inside the defined default package
2. Copy/Paste the following code to the created class (Note: the package name should match the default package name that you defined)

package sample.faulthandling.custom.action;

import com.collaxa.cube.engine.fp.BPELFaultRecoveryContextImpl;

import java.io.BufferedWriter;
import java.io.File;

import java.io.FileWriter;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Properties;

import oracle.integration.platform.faultpolicy.IFaultRecoveryContext;
import oracle.integration.platform.faultpolicy.IFaultRecoveryJavaClass;


public class logging implements IFaultRecoveryJavaClass {
    public void handleRetrySuccess(IFaultRecoveryContext ctx) {
        System.out.println("This is for retry success");
        handleFault(ctx);
    }

    public String handleFault(IFaultRecoveryContext ctx) {
        System.out.println(" #### EXAMPLE ###### Action context:\n" +
                ctx.toString());

        // Get BPEL specific context here
        BPELFaultRecoveryContextImpl bpelCtx =
            (BPELFaultRecoveryContextImpl)ctx;

        // Writing an audit entry
        bpelCtx.addAuditTrailEntry(" ### SAMPLE Custom Fault Handling Example ### ");

        // Getting details
        System.out.println("Policy Id: " + ctx.getPolicyId());
        System.out.println("Composite Name: " + bpelCtx.getCompositeName());
            
        Map<String, ArrayList> props = ctx.getProperties();
        
        String logFileName = (String)((ArrayList)props.get("logFileName")).get(0);
        String logFileDir = (String)((ArrayList)props.get("logFileDir")).get(0);
        String message = (String)((ArrayList)props.get("message")).get(0);

        String content = message + " - Composite:" + bpelCtx.getCompositeName() + " InstanceID:" + bpelCtx.getCompositeInstanceId()
            + " Activity:" + bpelCtx.getActivityName() + " Fault:" + bpelCtx.getFault();

        File file = new File(logFileDir + logFileName);
        try {
            if (!file.exists()) {
                file.createNewFile();
            }

            FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(file.getAbsoluteFile());
            BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(fw);
            bw.write(content);
            bw.close();

        } catch (Exception e) {
            
        }
            return "MANUAL";

    }
}

1.      Create a new deployment profile to generate a JAR file (e.g. CustomFaultJavaAction.jar)

Note: Right Click on project and choose Project Properties to access to Deployment Profiles.

Now, deploy to a JAR file using the created deployment profile.

Deployment

1. Copy the deployed JAR file to the "oracle.soa.ext_11.1.1" directory
Note: You will find this SOA extension in [fmw_home]/Oracle_SOA1/soa/modules/oracle.soa.ext_11.1.1/

2. Update the environment variables running the appropriate domain setDomainEnv.sh
Note: [fmw_home]/user_projects/domains/[your_domain]/bin

3. soa.ext build file uses If condition, default ANT installation available on SOA suite is not ready to use If conditions by default. It will be necessary to update both Ant Library and soa.ext build file to be able to incorporate this functionality. So you have to:

• Download ant contrib jar file http://switch.dl.sourceforge.net/project/ant-contrib/ant-contrib/ant-contrib-1.0b2/ant-contrib-1.0b2-bin.zip
• Unzip file and copy lib/ant-contrib.jar to your Ant lib folder
  Note: Ant is available on your SOA Suite installations. The location is: [fmw_home]/modules/org.apache.ant_1.7.1
• It is necessary to reference now the Ant Contrib library from the build.xml file used to build the SOA ext. So edit the build.xml file contained on oracle.soa.ext_11.1.1 folder and add the element <taskdef resource="net/sf/antcontrib/antlib.xml"/> after the project element.

4. Run Ant on oracle.soa.ext_11.1.1 folder. Your build target should produce then the following output:

[oracle@soabpm-vm oracle.soa.ext_11.1.1]$ /oracle/fmwhome/modules/org.apache.ant_1.7.1/bin/ant

Buildfile: build.xml

create-manifest-jar:

     [echo] Creating oracle.soa.ext at /oracle/fmwhome/Oracle_SOA1/soa/modules/oracle.soa.ext_11.1.1/oracle.soa.ext.jar :/oracle/fmwhome/Oracle_SOA1/soa/modules/oracle.soa.ext_11.1.1/CustomFaultJavaAction.jar:/oracle/fmwhome/Oracle_SOA1/soa/modules/oracle.soa.ext_11.1.1/classes

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

Total time: 0 seconds

Note: Ant is available on your installations of SOA suite in:[fmw_home]/modules/org.apache.ant_1.7.1

5. Now it is time to restart your SOA server. :)

Fault Policy Configuration

1. The following example can be follow to be able to use the implemented custom fault action. Change your fault policy file to include the custom action following the next example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<faultPolicies xmlns="http://schemas.oracle.com/bpel/faultpolicy"

               xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

  <faultPolicy version="0.0.1" id="FusionMidFaults"

               xmlns:env="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"

               xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"

               xmlns="http://schemas.oracle.com/bpel/faultpolicy"

               xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

    <Conditions>

      <faultName>

        <condition>

          <action ref="ora-retry"/>

        </condition>

      </faultName>

    </Conditions>

    <Actions>

      <Action id="ora-retry">

        <retry>

          <retryCount>3</retryCount>

          <retryInterval>2</retryInterval>

          <exponentialBackoff/>

          <retryFailureAction ref="my-custom-java"/>

        </retry>

      </Action>

      <Action id="my-custom-java">

        <!-- this is user provided class-->

        <javaAction className="sample.faulthandling.custom.action.logging"

                    defaultAction="default-human-intervention"

                    propertySet="prop-for-my-monitoring">

          <returnValue value="MANUAL" ref="default-human-intervention"/>

          <returnValue value="ABORT" ref="default-terminate"/>

          <returnValue value="RETHROW" ref="default-rethrow-fault"/>

        </javaAction>

      </Action>

      <!-- Generics -->

      <Action id="default-terminate">

        <abort/>

      </Action>

      <Action id="default-replay-scope">

        <replayScope/>

      </Action>

      <Action id="default-rethrow-fault">

        <rethrowFault/>

      </Action>

      <Action id="default-human-intervention">

        <humanIntervention/>

      </Action>

    </Actions>

    <Properties>

      <propertySet name="prop-for-my-monitoring">

        <property name="logFileName">my-soa-faults.log</property>

        <property name="logFileDir">/home/oracle/logs/</property>

        <property name="message">### SAMPLE Custom Fault Handling Example ###</property>

      </propertySet>

    </Properties>

  </faultPolicy>

</faultPolicies>

2. Deploy the policies file (composite or MDS) and test.

Conclusions

This will allow you to manage your properties per fault-policy referencing fault policies files that are available on MDS of the targeted server, managing this way the properties that will influence your fault handling custom actions depending on the environment of your application life cycle.

QTJava.zip exception starting local weblogic jdeveloper instance

Problem: Starting a new jDeveloper 11.1.17 Weblogic instance get the error - \Java\jre7\lib\ext\QTJava.zip was unexpected at this time. Process exited.

Solution: Check if QTJava.zip is set on the $CLASSPATH environment variable, if it is remove it from the variable and restart the machine.

Use proxy configuration when invoking webservices

Introduction

Sometimes, its necessary to access webservices only accessible through web proxy. This configuration can be maintained both server level or composite level. Of course maintaining this on server level you are maintaining the proxy configuration for every service invocation.

Maintained on composite level, better, on reference level guarantees different configuration during invocation time.

Server Level

The proxy configuration at server level can be accessed  on EM SOA Aministration / Common Properties / More SOA Advanced Configuration / Properties

Here you will find the properties:

• HttpProxyHost
• HttpProxyPort
• HttpProxyUsername 
• HttpProxyPassword

Restart the server after changing them.

Composite Level

At the composite level the proxy configuration is maintained at the reference webservice: select the reference, change the binding properties 

This changes can be delivered directely on the composite.xml aswell

  <reference name="thisWS" ui:wsdlLocation="thisWS.wsdl">
    <interface.wsdl interface="https:/host/#wsdl.interface(thisWsaSoap)"/>
    <binding.ws port="https://host/#wsdl.endpoint(thisWsa/thisWsaSoap12)"
                location="thisWs.wsdl" soapVersion="1.2">
      <property name="oracle.webservices.proxyHost" type="xs:anyURI"
                many="false" override="may">10.xxx.xxx.xx</property>
      <property name="oracle.webservices.proxyPort" type="xs:integer"
                many="false" override="may">8080</property>
    </binding.ws>
    <binding.ws port="https:/host/#wsdl.endpoint(thisWs/thisWsSoap)"
                location="thisWs.wsdl" soapVersion="1.1">
      <property name="weblogic.wsee.wsat.transaction.flowOption"
                type="xs:string" many="false">WSDLDriven</property>
      </binding.ws>
  </reference>

After deployment the properties are accessible from the Enterprise Manager console on the composite administration area. Just need to access the reference available on adapter list and configure the properties directly in the console.

Other considerations

• Of course have in mind that you should maintain this reference properties on SOA configuration plans to manage the composite migration between environments.

Installing Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 on Red Hat

Introduction

First of all, many thanks for John Piowar for sharing this post on how to install Oracle EBS. This post was then my guidelines to perform an fresh installation of Oracle e-business suite version 12.2.0. The intention of this post is not to copy what John wrote, its to share my experience on top of what is written on the blog and on official Oracle Documentation.

Server Specifications

• OS - Red Hat EL 6 - 64bit
• Disk - 420 Gb
• Memory 16Gb

• Hostame: ebs001.mydomain.com
• DB SID: VIS

Users

used and created the following users:

root/password

oracle/oracle

oravis/oracle

applvis/oracle

weblogic/welcome1

For other users default passwords follow the defined on official documentation:

apps/apps

SYSADMIN/SYSADMIN

Folders

Created the following folders.

/oracle/

/oracle/zips

/oracle/soPackages

/oracle/oraInventory

/oracle/Stage1222

/oracle/VIS

/oracle/Stage122/startCD/Disk1/rapidwiz

Note: run rapidInstall with root

On Wizard use oravis and applvis users

Bare in mind

Following this instructions can keep you from spending hours and hours of bad installation attempts, read it carefully ! :)

• Be sure about all steps on the installation documents before starting installing. OUI installation will take !!! hours !!! to complete or raise an exception if not all steps are followed.
• Change hostname if hostname + DbSid longer than 30 characters
• Use wget to get rapidly the files from e-delivery and Oracle Support (wget "<URL>" -O <ZIP_NAME>) or use cookies.txt
• Maintain the name of the zip files when downloading
• Download only VISION. PROD Is not necessary
• Use yum install `cat packages.txt to install all required OS packages in once action (check http://www.pythian.com/blog/getting-ready-to-install-ebs-12-2-vision-quickstart-notes/#os)
• Be careful with what you maintain on zip folder when creating the staging area. Most of the problems are coming from here. Keep there only the required ZIP on zip folder - that can lead you to installation issues  - check My Oracle Support Doc ID 1588372.1
• Do Include
• V35803-01 - applTOP 
• V35804-01 - applTOP CD2
• V29764-01 - webTier utilites
• V29856-01 - weblogic
• V35813-01 - one-off patches
• V35802-01 - OAS
• V35230-01 - DB rapid Install
• V35231 (1-5)- DB rapid install
• V35807 - VISION DB 1
• V35808 - VISION DB 2
• V35809 - VISION DB 3
• V35810 - VISION DB 4
• V35811 - VISION DB 5
• V35812 - VISION DB 6
• DO NOT Include
• V35215-01
• V37515-01 (1-6)
• Any other file
• Be sure to use the latest startCD to create the staging area - on 28/02/2014 was Patch 17873425: RI STARTCD 12.2.0.47_5
• After a failed install, to start installing clean contents of /oracle/VIS and /oracle/oraInventory

Documentation for Installation

This is the documentation that was followed to perform the installation of EBS environment.

Blogs

http://www.pythian.com/blog/getting-ready-to-install-ebs-12-2-vision-quickstart-notes/#os

http://www.pythian.com/blog/step-by-step-installation-of-an-ebs-12-2-vision-instance/

https://gist.github.com/jpiwowar/6725209#file-get_files-sh

My Oracle Support

Doc ID 1330701.1

Doc ID 1378579.1

Doc ID 1320300.1

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/V39571_01/current/acrobat/122oaig.pdf

Environment Management

Order of StartUp of Services Should be 

First DB Listener, Database & then Application Tier Services

Order of ShutDown of Services Should be

First Application Tier Services then Database & DB Listener 

Startup

su - oravis

1-Database Startup

Database listener startup Script

cd /oracle/VIS/11.2.0/appsutil/scripts/VIS_ebsstf01

./addlnctl.sh start VIS

Database startup script

cd /oracle/VIS/11.2.0/appsutil/scripts/VIS_ebsstf01

./addbctl.sh start

2-Application Tier Startup

su - applvis

cd /oracle/VIS/fs1/inst/apps/VIS_ebsstf01/admin/scripts

./adstrtal.sh apps/apps

Shutdown

1-Application Tier Stop

su - applvis

cd /oracle/VIS/fs1/inst/apps/VIS_ebsstf01/admin/scripts

./adstpall.sh apps/apps

2-Database Stop

su - oravis

Database shutdown script

cd /oracle/VIS/11.2.0/appsutil/scripts/VIS_ebsstf01

./addbctl.sh stop

Database listener shutdown Script

cd /oracle/VIS/11.2.0/appsutil/scripts/VIS_ebsstf01

./addlnctl.sh stop VIS

My experience

Problem: 

Some exceptions that appeared during the installation,mainly during the environment health check.

RW-00048: Error: Verify that the format of the file /etc/hosts is of the form "IPAddress hostname.domainname hostname"

Solution: On the host files, be sure the file is having only on space between the ip and the host name, do not use tabs. Be sure your hostname exceeds the 30 characters.

127.0.0.1 [host name].[full domain name] [hostname]

Problem: 

Not able to run DB installer. Check staging area.

Solution: Allways check using md5sum the downloaded zips. You have the digest area one-delivery to check the md5 tokens.

Problem: 

oracle.apps.fnd.txk.config.ProcessStateException: OUI process failed : Exit=139 See log for details.

Solution: Check in this post the list of zip files that should be on the zip folder when running createStage script. Fo not maintain any zip that is not on the list in this folder or else you can have this exception.

Problem: 

Established connection with the WebLogic AdminServer.
Trying to establish connection using the AppsJDBCConnector
jdbc:oracle:thin:@(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS_LIST=(LOAD_BALANCE=YES)(FAILOVER=YES)(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=ip-10-33-203-79.eu-west-1.compute.internal)(PORT=1521)))(CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=VIS)))
Could not obtain connection using the AppsJDBCConnectorORA-01005: null password given; logon denied

Trying to get connection using SID based connect descriptor
Database connection could not be established.
Exiting.

Solution: hostname + domain + SID is bigger than 30 characters. Change the hostname for something smaller.

BPM Workspace and Webforms customization

Overview

Under the propose of a project customization customization on BPM workspace and designed webforms were applied using custom css and used as skin and as webforms theme. Its important also to highlight that a workspace skin appliance is enough to bring customization to your webforms since they will inherit the workspace skin customization, nevertheless, themes offers you the possibility to enrich that customization or even to overlap it if desired. This blog post shares my experience trying what is available today as sample from Oracle Samples site but also how I found it starting from scratch.

I have follow the following contents to achieve a full workspace and webforms customization:

https://blogs.oracle.com/bpmtech/entry/customizing_the_look_and_feel

https://java.net/projects/oraclebpmsuite11g/downloads/directory/Samples/bpm-CustomizingWorkspace/

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E28280_01/user.1111/e15175/bpmug_ws_admin.htm

Try it !

How about trying to check one possible final result ? Try to enable the new created Skin workspace skin and new created theme !

1. Download the provided sample file in here
2. Extract custom.client.applib.jar from WorkspaceAndFormsCustomization\SampleSkin\SharedLib folder
3. Deploy it via weblogic deployment as shared library
4. Restart the applications (force stop, – Worklist (worklist-wls), Workspace(OracleBPMWorkspace) and DefaultToDoTaskFlow
5. Go to workspace, log in as weblogic
6. Go to Administration
7. Choose a skin: mySkin
8. Set branding logo to: /faces/logo.png
9. Set branding title to: BPM Workspace or other
10. Go to BPM Composer, login
11. Change the theme applied on the forms to mySkin
12. Redeploy the project

Note: Until a form is loaded for a first time the new theme will not appear on the list. So, to be able to access the webform themes you need to deploy (if there is none already deployed) a process with webforms and load a webform for the first time on your workspace. Doing that will make the theme available on webform edition back on BPM composer.

Build it !

Now, build it from scratch ! You can create your own workspace skin using Oracle ADF skin editor, apply it on workspace and all forms opened with it, and you can also change the webforms theme CSS and build your own webforms customization.

Start by downloading the latest ADF Skin Editor Application to define your custom workspace skin:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/adf/downloads/index.html
http://download.oracle.com/otn_hosted_doc/jdeveloper/111demos/ADFSkinEditor/ADFSkinEditor.html

If you have already experiences with ADF Skin Editor this will be very simple for you, if not, version 12c allows you to gain experience checking always the result of your changes on sample page. In fact, there is not much that workspace uses that you can configure visually using Skin Editor. I would say that you should focus on the headers, links and buttons behavior.

Workspace Customized Skin

1. Create a new skin project with Skin Editor
2. Make a new project deployment as ADF JAR Library
3. The deploy JAR name should be allways custom.client.applib.jar
4. Add the following META-INF/MANIFEST.MF file that must exist outside the project and be imported as append MANIFEST.MS file (get it form the sample project)
5. Deploy via weblogic as shares lib
6. Restart the application on weblogic deployments – Worklist (worklistApp), Workspace(OracleBPMWorkspace) and DefaultToDoTaskFlow
7. Access the workspace as administrator and check the preferences. Change on the drop box to your customized skin.

Just as note, the content of the MANIFEST.MF file should be:

Manifest-Version: 1.0

Ant-Version: Apache Ant 1.7.1

Created-By: 19.1-b02 (Sun Microsystems Inc.)

Implementation-Vendor: Oracle

Implementation-Title: Custom Client Applib

Implementation-Version: 1.0

Product-Name: Custom Client Applib

Product-Version: 11.1.1.4.0

Specification-Version: 1.0

Extension-Name: custom.client.applib

Note: Due to dependencies, to update the custom.client.applib.jar you will need to undeploy OracleBPMWorkspace, worklistApp and DefaultToDoTaskFlow. No worries, you can do it and deploy them again because the EAR file is available on [fmw_home]/Oracle_SOA1/soa/applications.

Webforms Customization

From the moment you apply a new workspace skin it will be applied to your webforms. Nevertheless, you can perform customization at webforms level creating a new theme to be applied on webforms design time. These themes are defined changing CSSs files and making available new themes part of custom.client.applib.jar file. Images can also be deployed together with this new theme in order to make them available on your webforms.

The webforms are based in Frevvo forms, it then necessary to change this Fevvo webforms CSS to meet your look and feel requirements. The best way is to expand WorkspaceAndFormsCustomization\SampleSkin\SharedLib\custom.client.applib\themes\mySkin.zip file available on Oracle customization sample and refer to mySkin\minimal\readme.txt to know which components you should change.

If there is images that you want to include on your css, copy all images to be used to mySkin\minimal\images

After you performed all the desired changes on CSS to reflect your needs, zip them and give them a name (e.g. mySkin.zip)

Note: Remember that the extension should be zip.

Now, this must be added to to your custom.client.applib jar file. Here they are the steps to be followed:

1. Create a folder named themes on the root of your custom.client.applib
2. Create a zip file containing the webforms folder structure css
3. Create a file named themes.txt inside the themes folder
4. Fill in with the name of the webform customization zip file created on step 2
5. Copy the folder themes to root on custom.client.applib
6. Deploy a BPM process and run until you can open a first task on workspace. Note: until a form is loaded a first time the new theme will not appear on the list.
7. On BPM Composer you should now be able to access the new theme on Style tab when editing a form. Changing the theme will apply the new CSS.

Resource Bundle Configurations

Workspace configuration can also be extended to provide label that refers to a key-value pair in the Resource Bundle. In this way, you can internationalize your workspace title for example using LABEL_WORKLIST_TITLE key.

It is possible also customize other workspace areas like link area working also with resource bundle changes. Since I didn't explore much this area, please refer to Oracle documentation.