The third step in getting started with Governance is to install Solution Packs and Harvest Targeted Assets into Oracle Enterprise Repository.
This chapter contains the following sections:
An organization can not govern what it can not see. Therefore, the first step of any Governance initiative is to get visibility into the assets that you want to manage.
To that end, a number of Oracle Enterprise Repository Solution Packs are available:
Base Data Pack
Harvester Solution Pack (includes Adapter Solution Pack)
AIA Solution Pack (available with the purchase of Oracle's Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack and PIPs)
Existing assets can also be harvested into the enterprise repository. The process through which organizations initially gather assets into the Enterprise Repository is called "bootstrapping". Bootstrapping uses a programmatic approach to loading assets and asset metadata into the Enterprise repository. The Enterprise Repository can be bootstrapped from a number of sources:
A service registry
The runtime environment
Artifacts and artifact stores
Excel spreadsheets and other metadata stores
Organizations might also choose to use a manual approach for entering the assets in the portfolio. In addition, manual validation after harvesting ensures that the imported assets were harvested properly, and additional, business-focused metadata can be added.
This section describes the various Oracle Enterprise Repository solution packs available:
The asset types delivered as part of Base Data Pack are templates. They include the business-focused asset metadata that organizations track. The metadata fields in these asset types have been collected from the best practices of organizations worldwide. The Base Data Pack is automatically installed with a new installation of Oracle Enterprise Repository. Base Data types can be copied and customized to suit specific organizational assets.
Harvester Solution Pack (Includes Adapter Solution Pack)
The asset types delivered as part of the Harvester Solution Pack are required by the Harvester tool. The Harvester and Harvester Solution Pack provide metadata about the implementation of an asset and the assets's relationships. Oracle Enterprise Repository harvests artifacts into a pre-specified format defined by the Harvester Solution Pack.
The Oracle Enterprise Repository Harvester Solution Pack includes asset types for Oracle's Application Adapters and Applications. These asset types allow an organization to harvest application integrations into Oracle Enterprise Repository and have end-to-end visibility into the integrations between two or more applications.
The Oracle Enterprise Repository Harvester tool provides visibility into the assets generated by many of Oracle's products, including Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Service Bus, Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle BPEL PM, UDDI Registries, and others. The Oracle Enterprise Repository Harvester tool also allows organizations to harvest any standards-based WSDL, BPEL, XSD, and XSLT artifacts generated by third-party tooling. The harvesting process requires the Harvester Solution Pack.
The Harvester is available in 11.1.1.2.0-OER-Harvester-Solution-Pack.zip, which is bundled with the Oracle Enterprise Repository 11g Release 1(11.1.1) installation in the following .zip file:
<ORACLE_HOME>/repository111/core/tools/solutions/11.1.1.2.0-SOA-BPM-Harvester.zip
For more information, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuration Guide for Oracle Enterprise Repository.
For more information about the AIA Solution Pack, see the Oracle Application Integration Architecture - Foundation Pack: Development Guide, "Configuring and Using Oracle Enterprise Repository as the Oracle AIA SOA Repository," Introduction to Using Oracle Enterprise Repository as the Oracle AIA SOA Repository, available on My Oracle Support .
This section describes the bootstrapping of Oracle Enterprise Repository. It contains the following topics:
Section 3.3.1, "Bootstrapping the Enterprise Repository from a Service Registry"
Section 3.3.2, "Bootstrapping the Enterprise Repository from the Runtime Environment"
Section 3.3.3, "Bootstrapping the Enterprise Repository from Artifacts and Artifact Stores"
Since effective SOA Governance requires an Enterprise Repository working in combination with a Service Registry, it is necessary to synchronize the two tools.
The Oracle Registry Repository Exchange Utility synchronizes Oracle Enterprise Repository and Oracle Service Registry bi-directionally so that the metadata from each of these products can flow in either direction through the utility.
To bootstrap the Oracle Enterprise Repository from a Service Registry, follow these steps:
Configure the Oracle Registry Repository Exchange Utility
Understand how Metadata is Synchronized between Oracle Service Registry and Oracle Enterprise Repository
Review Known Issues
The Enterprise Repository can be bootstrapped from assets that reside in the organization's runtime containers. Oracle Enterprise Repository uses the Harvester tool to access deployed artifacts. The Harvester reads standards-based files including BPEL, WSDL, XSD and XSLT files, as assets generated by Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle Service Bus. The Harvester automatically creates assets, populates asset metadata, and generates relationship links based on the information in the artifact files. Note that the Harvester is not restricted to Oracle products - it can be used to harvest standards-based artifacts generated from any tooling. In the runtime environment, the Harvester can be used from the command line or it can be invoked using an Ant task.
What do we want to say about harvesting BPEL Suitcase files and SAR files?
For more information about harvesting from runtime containers, see "Runtime Harvesting Details" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuration Guide for Oracle Enterprise Repository.
The Enterprise Repository can be bootstrapped from production-grade assets that reside in the organization's version control systems or file systems. Oracle Enterprise Repository uses the Harvester to access the artifacts in various artifact stores. The Harvester can be invoked from the command line to harvest from artifact stores.
For more information about harvesting production-grade artifacts from artifact stores, see "Configuring the Harvester for the Command Line" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuration Guide for Oracle Enterprise Repository.
Organizations just beginning to explore Governance practices might track asset metadata and dependencies in a spreadsheet, on a wiki, or through some other type of tool. At a certain point, however, this becomes unmanageable and it then makes sense to move the information to an Enterprise Repository.
The Oracle Enterprise Repository includes a Web Services based API called the Repository Extensibility (REX) Framework that can be used to bootstrap Oracle Enterprise Repository from spreadsheets and other metadata stores. This requires customization and coding, and is covered as an advanced topic.
If you're interested in finding out more about the Enterprise Repository's API, see "Developing Custom Integrations" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Integration Guide for Oracle Enterprise Repository.