SAP Adapter : Configuring Database Repository

SAP Adapter(JCA config) supports both file based as well as database based repository. I have had some bad experiences with file based repository where maintaining the repository.xml has been more or less a nightmare. I have covered some of these errors in earlier posts.

targets-for-mysap-no-targets-configured.html

We sometimes end up with duplicate repository.xml files or 0kb repository.xml files after server restarts. This causes most BPEL processes to fail with Adapter exceptions. So I finally decided to migrate all file based repositories to DB repositories (Not sure why I didn't do this earlier :-( ). Now Oracle doesn't provide any migration tools as such. But this isn't a huge effort and we just need to create the targets/channels afresh and it is a one-time task.

Anyways below mentioned is the list of steps to be followed to configure DB repository for SAP adapter.

1. Create a new schema user on database where you want the repository to reside. (Eg: saprepo_user/xxxxx)

2. Execute the iwse.ora SQL script on the machine where the database is installed. The iwse.ora SQL script is located in the following directory:
$MW_HOME\Oracle_SOA1\soa\thirdparty\ApplicationAdapters\etc

This script creates the required tables that are used to store the adapterconfiguration information in the database. These tables are used by Application Explorer and by adapters during design time and runtime. It is recommended that you use the same credentials to create the database repository and also in the ra.xml file for database user credentials.

3. Create the jcatransport.properties file and save it in the following directory:
$MW_HOME\Oracle_SOA1\soa\thirdparty\ApplicationAdapters\config\Config_Name

4. Enter values for iwafjca.repo.url, iwafjca.repo.user and iwafjca.repo.password fields in the newly created jcatransport.properties file, as shown in the following example:

iwafjca.repo.url=jdbc:oracle:thin:@dbhostname:port:sid
iwafjca.repo.user=saprepo_user
iwafjca.repo.password=xxxx

5. Navigate to the following directory:
$MW_HOME\Oracle_SOA1\soa\thirdparty\ApplicationAdapters\iwafjca.rar\META-INF

6. Open the ra.xml file and provide the JDBC connection information: (Same values as step3)
IWAYRepo_URL property.
IWAYRepo_User property.
IWAYRepo_Password property.

Save your changes to the ra.xml file.

7. Copy the ojdbc14.jar file to the directory $MW_HOME\Oracle_SOA1\soa\thirdparty\ApplicationAdapters\lib

8. Redeploy the iwafjca rar file from Admin console->deployments section and Restart Weblogic server.

9. Now open Application Explorer and create the SAP target again with similar details as before. You can then connect to the DB repository and check the af_config table to find your details stored there.

NOTE:
The above steps are for SOA 11g. For SOA 10g the directory structures will be different.
* jcatransport.properties file in following directory \adapters\application\config\
* copy ojdbc14.jar to \adapters\application\lib\
* Update oc4j-ra.xml (\j2ee\oc4j_soa\application-deployments\default\jca-app-adapter)

I haven't faced any issues so far after migrating from File to DB repository. Will definitely post if I find any discrepancies. Till then some relief :-)

Custom XSLT Function in SOA 11g

Its been a while since I blogged and has been busy few months. I recently got a requirement to strip all special characters from an input string in XSLT. Tried checking the list of pre-defined XSLT functions in Jdeveloper 11g to see if we had something similar. Though we have few string functions to normalize whitespaces and others which match against regex patterns. But none which replaced/stripped special characters/regex patterns from a string. So decided to write some custom XSLT function which could do this.

First we create the java class which implements the logic

package customxslt;
import java.io.PrintStream;
public class AdditionalStringFunctions
{
  public static String replaceChars(String input, String regex, String replaceWith)
  {
    String output = input.replaceAll(regex, replaceWith);
    return output;
  }
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    AdditionalStringFunctions aSF = new AdditionalStringFunctions();
    String input = "(+91)80-55555555";
    System.out.println(replaceChars(input, "[^0-9]", ""));
  }
}

All the above code does is, check for input string and any characters apart from 0-9 is stripped.

Next create a configuration file.Name the file as ext-mapper-xpath-functions-config.xml. Sample file is provided below

<soa-xpath-functions version="11.1.1"
                     xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/soa/config/xpath"                 xmlns:regex="http://www.oracle.com/XSL/Transform/java/customxslt.AdditionalStringFunctions">
   <function name="regex:replaceChars">
    <classname>customxslt.AdditionalStringFunctions</className>
    <return type="string"/>
    <params>
      <param name="input" type="string"/>
      <param name="regex" type="string"/>
      <param name="replaceWith" type="string"/>
    </params>
    <desc/>
    <detail>
      <![CDATA[This function returns the value after stripping special characters.]]>
    </detail>
  </function>
 </soa-xpath-functions>

Create a folder called META-INF under the JDeveloper\mywork\Regex\TestRegex\classes directory and place the configuration file there.

Now create a jar file and make sure the class file and the ext-mapper-xpath-functions-config.xml are included in it.

Next register the JAR file in Jdeveloper designtime
This can be done via "Tools > Preferences… > SOA" add the JAR file and restart JDeveloper.

The newly created extension function will be available in the component palette under user defined functions page. You can make use it from there in your XSL code.

To make this function available at SOA runtime put the jar file under MW_Home/user_projects/domains/domain_name/lib

Restart the server and test your code.