23 Managing Generic Technology Connectors

The generic technology connector framework offers features that enable you to modify a generic technology connector. In addition, you can export or import a generic technology connector by using the Deployment Manager.

These features of the generic technology connector framework are discussed in the following sections:

• Modifying Generic Technology Connectors

• Exporting Generic Technology Connectors

• Importing Generic Technology Connectors

• Upgrading Generic Technology Connectors to Oracle Identity Manager Release 9.1.0.1

23.1 Modifying Generic Technology Connectors

Caution:

The Design Console can be used to modify connector objects that are automatically created at the end of the generic technology connector creation process. If you use the Manage Generic Technology Connector feature to modify a generic technology connector whose connector objects have been customized by using the Design Console, then all the customization work done using the Design Console would get overwritten. Therefore, Oracle recommends that you to follow one of the following guidelines:

• Do not use the Design Console to modify generic technology connector objects.

  The exception to this guideline is the IT resource. You can modify the parameters of the IT resource by using the Design Console. However, for the changes to take effect, you must purge the cache either before or after you modify IT resource parameters. See Oracle Identity Manager Best Practices Guide for information about running the PurgeCache utility.

• If you use the Design Console to modify generic technology connector objects, then do not use the Manage Generic Technology Connector feature to modify the generic technology connector.

See Chapter 28 for information about connector objects that are created automatically by the generic technology connector framework.

In addition, you can modify only one connector at a time. If you try to use the Modify pages for two different connectors at the same time on the same computer, then the Modify features would not work correctly.

Chapter 26, "Known Issues of Generic Technology Connectors" discusses both these points.

To modify a generic technology connector:

1. Open the Administrative and User Console.

2. Expand Generic Technology Connector.

3. Click Manage.

4. Search for the connector that you want to modify. To simplify your search, you can use a combination of the search criteria provided on this page. Alternatively, to view all the generic technology connectors that have been created on this Oracle Identity Manager installation, click Search connectors without specifying any search criteria.

5. In the results that are displayed, click the generic technology connector that you want to modify.

6. Click Edit Parameters. The Step 2: Specify Parameter Values page of the connector creation process is displayed. From this point onward, follow the procedure described in the "Step 2: Specify Parameter Values Page" section.

   Note:

   The only difference between this procedure and the procedure that you follow to create the generic technology connector procedure is that automatic metadata detection does not take place when you modify an existing generic technology connector.

   Caution:

   If you modify attributes of fields of the OIM - Account data set or its child data sets, then corresponding changes are not made in the Oracle Identity Manager database entries for these data sets. At the same time, no error message is displayed.

   Therefore, for this release of Oracle Identity Manager, Oracle recommends that you do not modify the fields or child data sets of the OIM - Account data set.

   This point has also been discussed in the "Step 3: Modify Connector Configuration Page" section of the "Known Issues" chapter.

23.2 Exporting Generic Technology Connectors

You can export the XML file of a generic technology connector. This XML file contains definitions for all the objects that are part of the connector. If you want to use the same generic technology connector on a new Oracle Identity Manager installation, you must first export the XML file and then import it into the new Oracle Identity Manager installation.

To export the connector XML file:

See Also:

The "Exporting Deployments" section

1. Open the Administrative and User Console.

2. Expand Deployment Management.

3. Click Export.

4. On the first page of the Deployment Manager Wizard, select Generic Connector from the list and then click Search.

5. In the search results, select the generic technology connector whose XML file you want to export.

6. Click Select Children.

7. For the selected generic technology connector, select the child entities that you want to export and then click Select Dependencies.

8. Select the dependencies that you want to export, and then click Confirmation.

9. After you verify that the elements displayed on the page cover your export requirements, click Add for Export.

10. Click Exit wizard and show full selection, and then click OK.

23.3 Importing Generic Technology Connectors

To copy a generic technology connector to a different Oracle Identity Manager installation:

1. If the connector uses custom providers, then you must copy the files created during provider creation to the appropriate directories on the destination Oracle Identity Manager installation.

   See Also:

   Chapter 21, "Creating Custom Providers for Generic Technology Connectors" for more information about these provider files and the directories into which you must copy them

2. Export the connector XML file on the source Oracle Identity Manager installation.

3. Import the connector XML file on the destination Oracle Identity Manager installation.

Caution:

You must ensure that the names you select for a generic technology connector and its constituent objects on a staging server do not cause naming conflicts with existing connectors and objects on the production server.

The following scenario explains why you must follow this guideline:

Suppose you create a generic technology connector on a staging server, and then want to import the connector to a production server. While creating the generic technology connector on the staging server, you would have ensured that the names of the generic technology connector and the connector objects are unique on that server. At the same time, you must also ensure that the names are not the same as the names of connectors and connector objects on the production server.

If any of the names happen to be the same, then the old objects would be overwritten by the new objects when you import the connector XML file from the staging server to the production server. No message is displayed during the overwrite process, and the process would lead to eventual failure of the affected connectors.

This is also mentioned in the "Names of Generic Technology Connectors and Connector Objects" section of the "Known Issues" chapter.

To ensure that you are able to revert to a working state in the event that an object is overwritten, you must create a backup of the destination Oracle Identity Manager database before you import a connector XML file.

To import the connector XML file:

1. Open the Administrative and User Console.

2. Click the Deployment Management link on the left navigation bar.

3. Click the Import link under Deployment Management. A dialog box for locating files is displayed.

4. Locate and open the connector XML file from the directory into which you copy it.

5. Click Add File.

6. Click Next, Next, and then Skip.

7. Click View Selections.

   The contents of the connector XML file are displayed on the Import page. You may see a cross-shaped icon along with some nodes. These nodes represent Oracle Identity Manager entities that are redundant. Before you import the connector XML file, you must remove these entities by right-clicking each node and then selecting Remove.

8. Click Import. The connector file is imported into Oracle Identity Manager.

After you import the connector XML file, you must update the run-time parameters of the generic technology connector.

Note:

These values are not copied in the connector XML file when you export it.

To update the values of the run-time parameters, follow the procedure described in the "Modifying Generic Technology Connectors" section.

23.4 Upgrading Generic Technology Connectors to Oracle Identity Manager Release 9.1.0.1

If you upgrade from Oracle Identity Manager release 9.0.3.x to release 9.1.0.1, you must also upgrade the generic technology connectors that you created by using Oracle Identity Manager release 9.0.3.x. The procedure to upgrade generic technology connectors depends on the conditions under which you want to perform the upgrade operation:

• Scenario 1: You created a generic technology connector on Oracle Identity Manager 9.0.3.x. Later, you upgrade to Oracle Identity Manager 9.1.0.1.

• Scenario 2: You created a generic technology connector on Oracle Identity Manager release 9.0.3.x. You want to port the generic technology connector to an Oracle Identity Manager release 9.1.0.1 installation. To achieve this, you first export the generic technology connector XML file on the release 9.0.3.x installation and then import this XML file on the release 9.1.0.1 installation.

In both scenarios, the next step is to perform the procedure described in the "Modifying Generic Technology Connectors" section. While performing that procedure, you can change the values such as provider parameter values, field definitions, and field mappings according to your requirements. At the same time, you must specify or change values as prompted by the validations on the Manage Generic Technology Connector pages.

In Scenario 2, when you import a release 9.0.3.x generic technology connector into a release 9.1.0.1 Oracle Identity Manager installation, a non-fatal exception is recorded in the application server log file. This occurs only if the connector supports provisioning, regardless of whether or not it supports reconciliation. You can ignore this exception. No error message is displayed on the Administrative and User Console. This is also documented in the "General Known Issues" section.