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Oracle® Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Getting Started with Oracle Fusion Middleware Management
12c Release 2 (12.1.0.2)

Part Number E24215-03
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11 Discovering and Monitoring the SOA Suite

This chapter describes how you can discover and configure the components of the SOA Suite 11g using Enterprise Manager Cloud Control.

In particular, this document covers the following:

New Features in This Release

The new features that have been introduced in the 12c version of the SOA Suite are:

Supported Versions

The following are the versions of the SOA Suite 11g that are supported in Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c:

Understanding the Discovery Process

The following describes the overall process involved in discovering and monitoring SOA Suite 11g in Enterprise Manager Cloud Control. Follow the instructions outlined against each step in this process to successfully discover and monitor the SOA Suite.

Table 11-1 Understanding the Discovery Process

Oracle SOA Suite Version Application Server Deployed To Discovery Mechanism Process

Oracle SOA Suite 11.1 PS2

Oracle WebLogic Managed Server

Manual Discovery

  1. First, manually discover Oracle WebLogic Managed Server. For procedures, see Discovering Oracle WebLogic Managed Server.

  2. To monitor the SOA Suite, you can use an agent running locally on the Administration Server of the WebLogic domain or a remote management agent running on another host that is not part of the WebLogic domain.

    Note: If you use a remote agent to monitor the SOA Suite, the Instance Tracing and View Recoverable Instances features are not supported.

  3. To ensure the all the metric data is collected, add the soa-infra-mgmt.jar and the oracle-soa-client-api.jar files to the $AGENT_HOME/plugins/oracle.sysman.emas.agent.plugin_12.1.0.0.0/archives/jlib/ (the Agent Home directory). If the extjlib directory does not exist, it can be created under $FMW_PLUGIN_HOME/archives/jlib. This step is required only if you are using a remote agent to monitor the SOA Suite.

    Note: For SOA PS3 and higher, the jrf-api.jar file must also be present in the Agent Home directory.


Discovering the SOA Suite

This section describes the procedure for discovering the SOA Suite 11g. You can use a local or a remote Management Agent to perform the discovery process. In the case of discovery using a local agent, you need to use a Management Agent that is running on the same host as the Administration Server.

  1. From the Targets menu, select Middleware.

    Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control displays the Middleware page that lists all the middleware targets being monitored.

  2. In the Middleware page, from the Add list, select Oracle Fusion Middleware / WebLogic Domain and click Go. Specify the Administration Server Host, Port, User Name, Password, Agent (local or remote) and the JMX Protocol and click Continue.

  3. You will return to the Middleware page. You will see the SOA instances under the WebLogic Domain.

    Note:

    SOA Composites that are created after the discovery of SOA Suite Domain are not displayed automatically. To view all the SOA Composites, navigate to the Home page of the WebLogic Server target and select the Refresh Domain option from the menu.

Discovering the SOA Suite Using a Remote Agent

You can discover the SOA Suite 11g using a remote agent which may be running on a host that is different from the host on which the Administration Server is running. In this case, you may not be able to perform certain operations like instance tracing and viewing recoverable instances.

To ensure the all the metric data is collected, add the soa-infra-mgmt.jar and the oracle-soa-client-api.jar files to the $AGENT_HOME/plugins/oracle.sysman.emas.agent.plugin_12.1.0.0.0/archives/jlib/ (the Agent Home directory). If the extjlib directory does not exist, it can be created. This step is required only if you are using a remote agent to monitor the SOA Suite.

Note:

For SOA PS3 and higher, the jrf-api.jar file must also be present in the Agent Home directory.

Post Discovery Steps

After discovering the SOA Suite 11g, you must perform the following additional configuration steps:

  1. Set the instance state in the Common Properties page:

    1. Click Fusion Middleware Control on the SOA Infrastructure Home Page.

    2. Navigate to the Home page of the SOA Infrastructure target.

    3. Select Common Properties from the SOA-Infra drop-down menu.

    4. On the Common Properties page, select the Capture Composite Instance State check box.

  2. Set the SOA database details like the host name, port, and credentials.

    1. Navigate to the Middleware page in Enterprise Manager Cloud Control.

    2. Select a SOA Infrastructure home from the list and click Configure.

    3. The SOA Infrastructure Home page is displayed. Click Monitoring Configuration from the SOA-Infra drop-down menu.

    4. Set the SOA database details in the Monitoring Configuration page.

  3. Set preferred credentials for the WebLogic Domain.

    1. From the Setup menu, select Security, then select Preferred Credentials.

    2. Select the Oracle WebLogic Domain target and click Managed Preferred Credentials.

    3. Select WebLogic Administrator Credentials in the Target Preferred Credentials and click Set.

    4. Enter the user name and password in the Select Named Credentials window and click Save.

Configuring Instance Tracing

To enable Instance Tracing for any SOA Infrastructure instances involved in executing composite instances:

  1. Follow the sequence listed under Step 3 of the Post Discovery Steps section.

  2. To view the state of the listed instances, enable the Capture Composite State flag by following the sequence listed Step 1 of the Post Discovery Steps section.

Viewing Application Dependency and Performance (ADP) Metrics

If the SOA instance is being monitored by the ADP Manager, additional metrics such as Arrival Rate, Minimum, Maximum, and Average Response Time will be collected.

Tip:

The ADP Manager must be registered before it can collect the metric data. For details on registering the ADP Manager, see Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Advanced Installation and Configuration Guide.

Setting Up and Using SOA Instance Tracing

To configure and trace a SOA Composite instance, follow these steps:

  1. Login to Enterprise Manager and navigate to the SOA Composite Home page of the instance to be traced.

  2. From the SOA Composite menu, select Trace Instance.

  3. Find the instance you want to trace by specifying search criteria such as Instance ID, Instance Creation Time Window, Instance Count, Sensor Values and so on. Click Search.

    Note:

    You must set the Preferred Credentials must be set for the WebLogic Domain and the Monitoring Agent Host to retrieve search data.
    • WebLogic Domain: To set the Administrator Credentials for the WebLogic Domain (SOA Domain Target), select Security, then select Preferred Credentials from the Setup menu. Select Oracle WebLogic Domain as the Target Type and click Manage Preferred Credentials. Specify the WebLogic Administrator credentials and click OK.

    • Monitoring Agent Host: To set the Preferred Credentials for the host on which the Management Agent has been installed, select Security, then select Preferred Credentials from the Setup menu. Select Host as the Target Type and click Manage Preferred Credentials. Specify the Normal Host Credentials for the host and click OK.

  4. The list of instances that match the search criteria is displayed. Select the instance you want to trace and click Trace.

  5. In the Select SOA Infrastructure window, select one or more SOA Infrastructure targets for which the trace information is to be gathered. Specify the WebLogic Administration and Host Credentials for these targets and click OK.

  6. A trace job is submitted to collect the instance trace data from the selected targets and the flow trace for the instance is generated.

  7. When the job has been completed, click Job Status to view the flow trace data. Click the Log Viewer link to access the log messages related to the instance.

  8. Click the Component Instance to drill down to the component instance audit trail which shows the activity level execution details.

Generating SOA Reports Using Information Publisher

This section describes the procedure to create SOA Reports.

  1. From the Targets menu, select Middleware, and click on a SOA Infrastructure target. The SOA Infrastructure Home page appears.

  2. From the SOA Infrastructure menu, select the Information Publisher Reports.

    The out-of-box SOA reports are displayed under the SOA Performance Reports section.

  3. Select a report from the section (for example, you can select Pending Instance Statistics) and click Create Like. The Create Report Definition page is displayed.

  4. In the General page, enter the following details:

    1. Enter the BPEL Process Name as the title.

    2. Click the Set Time Period to set the time interval for the report.

    3. Click the Run report using target privileges of the Report Owner (SYSMAN) check box in the Privileges section.

  5. Click the Elements tab and click the Set Parameters icon for the Pending Instance Statistics Element in the table.

  6. In the Set Parameters page, click the torch icon to select a Composite Name. The Result Set Size with default values for the Pending Instance Statistics report is displayed.

  7. Select a Component Name from the list, enter the Result Set Size and click Continue to return to the Elements page.

  8. The selected target name is displayed in the Elements table.

  9. To schedule periodic report generation, click the Schedule tab.

  10. Specify the schedule type and other details and click OK.

  11. You will return to the Report Home page where the newly scheduled report is displayed in the table. Click the report name to view the details.

Dehydration Store Monitoring

The Dehydration Store Diagnostics feature provides a dedicated view that allows you to analyze the behavior of the SOA Dehydration database. You can monitor SQL performance metrics and table growth specifically in the context of the SOA Suite's use of the database. The view displays both throughput and wait bottleneck data which allows you to monitor the general health of the target database instance. Using Active Session History, you can track usage data and display it as a table space chart, a growth rate chart, or an execution chart.

Enabling Monitoring of the SOA Dehydration Store

To configure and enable monitoring of the SOA Dehydration Store, follow these steps:

  1. From the Targets menu, select Databases to check if the database target representing the SOA Dehydration Store has been discovered in Enterprise Manager.

  2. Check if at least one configuration for the SOA Infrastructure and WebLogic Server targets is available.

  3. On the monitoring configuration for the SOA Infrastructure target, the following fields related to SOA Repository must be configured:

    • SOA Repository Connection Descriptor: The connection URL string specified for the JDBC data source on the WebLogic server. This configuration is collected as part of the configuration collection mechanism for the SOA Server instance. For example: jdbc.oracle.thin@host:port/sid (or service_name).

    • SOA Repository Host Name: The database listener host for the SOA database instance. This is optional if the connection string has already been configured.

    • SOA Repository Port: - The database listener port for the SOA database instance. This is optional if the connection string has already been configured.

    • SOA Repository Schema Name: The schema name configured for SOA Dehydration Store.

    • SOA Repository User Name: The schema name configured for SOA Dehydration Store.

    • SOA Repository Password: The password for the SOA schema user.SOA Repository SID: The SID for the SOA database instance.

If you do not see data after these configuration details have been specified, you must wait for the next collection interval.

Viewing the SOA Dehydration Store Data

To view the dehydration diagnostics data, follow these steps:

  1. From the Targets menu, select Middleware, then click on a SOA Infrastructure target.

  2. In the SOA Infrastructure Home page, click the Dehydration Store tab.

  3. The following details area displayed:

    • Throughput indicators that provide details of the general health of the database instance.

    • Wait bottleneck issues related to the CPU, I/O, and Wait events.

    • Tablespace utilization for the SOA schema.

    • Performance data recorded by the ASH.

    • Key SOA tables and tablespace details related to the SOA schema.

Service Topology

The Service Topology provides a graphical end to end view of the composite applications. It depicts the various application components and their interactions happening at runtime. It allows you to view the service level dependencies among the components and provides key performance statistics and incidents information for them. Composite applications are distributed in nature and this view helps you quickly visualize the structure, status, availability, dependencies, configuration changes, and performance of business-critical distributed applications from one place and easily identify any availability or performance issues.

The Service Topology Viewer shows the following:

For more details, refer to the Enterprise Manager Online Help.

UDDI Publishing

To publish a service to UDDI, navigate to the Services and References Home page, select a service from the table and click Publish to UDDI from the menu. The Publish Service to UDDI window is displayed with the following fields:

Click OK to start the process that publishes the web service to UDDI or click Cancel to cancel publishing the service.

Generating SOA Reports Using BI Publisher

You can use Enterprise Manager to print SOA reports using BI Publisher Enterprise Reports. Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Publisher is an enterprise reporting solution for authoring, managing, and delivering highly formatted documents. Oracle BI Publisher also allows you to build custom reporting applications that leverage existing infrastructure. Reports can be designed using familiar desktop products and viewed online or scheduled for delivery to a wide range of destinations.

The following table describes the SOA reports that can be generated using BI Publisher:

Table 11-2 SOA Reports

SOA Report Description

SOA Infrastructure Performance Report

The SOA Infrastructure Performance Summary Report provides information about the average response time, error rate, throughput, system faults, business faults, web service policy violation faults for selected SOA Composite. It displays a chart with the top 5 SOA Composites based on average response time or throughout across the selected SOA composites for specified time period. The report can be sorted based on performance metric (avg. response time) or the usage metric (instance count). As part of the report parameters setting, you can use options that allow you to select the SOA Composite by Partitions or by selecting individual composites.

SOA Composite Detailed Performance Report

The SOA Composite Detailed Performance Summary Report provides information about the average response time, error rate, throughput, system faults, business faults, web service policy violation faults for each selected composite assembly part such as service, reference, and service component. This is an in-depth report that provides complete details about the each assembly part in the SOA Composite.It displays a chart with the top 5 SOA Composites based on average response time or throughout across the selected SOA Composites for a specified time period. The report can be sorted based on performance metric (avg. response time) or the usage metric (instance count).

As part of the report parameters setting, you can use options that allow you to select the SOA Composite by Partitions or by selecting individual composites.

Top 5 SOA Composites (From Dehydration Store)

This report shows how the SOA Composites have been performing over a period of time. Charts listing the top 5 SOA composites are displayed and critical metric data for all the SOA composites are displayed in a table.


To print SOA reports using BI Publisher, follow these steps:

  1. From the Enterprise menu, select Reports, then select BI Publisher Enterprise Reports.

    Enterprise Manager Cloud Control displays the login page for BI Publisher Enterprise Reports.

  2. Enter your credentials to log into BI Publisher.

  3. The BI Publisher Enterprise page displays, showing you Recent reports, Others, and Favorites. You can use this page to create a new report, submit a report job, and perform other tasks.

  4. Click the Report you want to view.

  5. You can select different filters such as SOA Composite Name, Partition Name, Date Range, and so on to view the report. You can also select a Sort By option to sort the report on Composite Name, Sorted Instances, and so on.

  6. You can refresh the report anytime by clicking the Refresh icon on the upper right side of the SOA Report tab. You can hide or display the search parameters by clicking the Parameters icon. You can choose to view the report in various formats such as HTML, PDF, RTF, Excel, and PowerPoint by clicking the View Report icon. Likewise you can display more available actions by clicking the Actions icon. For more help about using BI Publisher, click the help icon.

Provisioning SOA Artifacts and Composites

The SOA Artifacts Deployment Procedure allows you to:

For more details on the SOA Artifacts Deployment Procedure, see the Enterprise Manager Administrator's Guide for Software and Server Provisioning and Patching.

Support Workbench

The Support Workbench page provides access to diagnostic data for problems and incidents. To view this page, navigate to the SOA Infrastructure Home page, and from the SOA Infrastructure menu, select Diagnostics, then select Support Workbench.

Enter the credentials for the host on which the WebLogic server is running and the WebLogic credentials for the WebLogic server. Click Continue to log into the Support Workbench page. On this page, you can do the following:

For more details on using this feature, see the Enterprise Manager Online Help.

Troubleshooting

This section describes the errors you might encounter while discovering the SOA Suite 11g and the workaround steps you can follow to resolve each of them.

This section covers the following:

Discovery

The following error occurs when the SOA instances are being discovered.

Table 11-3 Error Message:

Error Message Workaround Steps
New SOA Composite deployed on the SOA 
Server from JDeveloper are not 
displayed automatically in Enterprise 
Manager Cloud Control.

To discover the newly deployed SOA Composites in Enterprise Manager Cloud Control, you must run the Refresh Farm menu option for the associated WebLogic Domain.


Monitoring

The following error occurs when the collection frequency causes a delay in the collection of configuration data.

Table 11-4 Error Description

Error Description Workaround Steps
All metrics are not displayed.

Enterprise Manager Cloud Control uses the Management Agent to collect metric data. For the first collection, the agent may need 15 minutes to upload the metric data.


Instance Tracing

The following error occurs when the instance is traced.

Instance Search Fails - Same reason as BPEL first column. If Management Agent is down or unreachable.

Table 11-5 Error Message:

Error Message Workaround Steps
Instance Tracing Job Fails
  1. Navigate to the Jobs page and locate the Instance Tracing job (Composite Name + Instance ID + Timestamp in ms) and view the output to identify the step that has failed.

  2. Resolve the issue and run the job again by clicking Retry on the Jobs page.

  3. Navigate to the Instance Tracing page to view the trace results. You can also submit a new job by running the Trace Instance option on the Instance Tracing page.


Faults

The following errors occur when:

  • All instances with faults are not displayed as only the last 10 values are collected.

  • The most recently collected fault instances do not appear in the Faults and Messages page.

Table 11-6 Error Message:

Error Description Workaround Steps
All instances with faults are not
populated in Enterprise Manager Cloud
Control. 

By default, you can only view the latest 10 faults collected during the last 15 minutes. To view additional faults, navigate to Fusion Middleware by clicking the link in the General section on the target Home page.


Application Dependency and Performance Integration

When you click on the Application Dependency and Performance link in the SOA Instance Home page, you may see a blank page. This error may occur if:

  • Application Dependency and Performance is not being used to monitor the SOA instance.

  • Application Dependency and Performance has not been registered in Enterprise Manager Cloud Control.

Table 11-7 Error Message:

Error Message Workaround Steps
Missing ADP Data - Add the metrics - 
and add one for blank page.

To monitor data collected using ADP, the ADP Manager must be registered and configured.


Information Publisher Reports

This section lists report related errors.

Table 11-8 Error Message:

Error Description Workaround Steps
Report generation fails due to invalid
database details.
  1. Navigate to the All Targets page.

  2. Select the SOA Infrastructure target on which the specific SOA Composite has been deployed and click Configure.

  3. In the Monitoring Configuration page, specify the database connection details and the credentials and click OK.

No targets found message for Oracle
SOA Composite Reports.

You cannot use the out-of-box reports directly. You must use the Create Like option to generate custom reports based on the SOA Composite Target type.

Report generation fails due to invalid host details.

Set valid credentials for the host target on which the SOA Infrastructure instance is running.


BI Publisher Reports

This section lists BI Publisher report related errors.

Table 11-9 Error Message:

Error Description Workaround Steps
Exception Encountered For One of SOA BIP Report If SOA Dehydration Is Not Configured

If the SOA Dehydration store details are not configured in BI Publisher, the SOA Composite Report (from Dehydration Store) is not generated, and the following exception message is displayed:

The report cannot be rendered because of an error, please contact the administrator. Parameter name: P_PARTITION_NAME Can not establish database connection(EMSOA)

To work around this issue, you must manually create the SOA database connection by choosing JDBC Connection from the Administration menu after the BI Publisher setup has been configured. The name of the data source name should be EMSOA. Use the following steps to create the EMSOA data source:

  1. From the Enterprise menu, select Reports, and then select BI Publisher Reports. The BI Publisher Enterprise login page appears.

  2. Enter your credentials to log in to BI Publisher.

  3. Click the Administration link available at the top right corner.

  4. Navigate to the Data Sources page by clicking the JDBC Connection link in the Data Sources section. Click Add Data Source.

  5. Enter EMSOA in the Data Source field, specify the driver type, driver class, connection string, user name, and password. Click Test Connection to ensure that the connection can be established successfully.

  6. Click Apply. The newly created EMSOA jdbc data source appears on the Data Sources page.

Once you have created the EMSOA data source, the issue should be resolved.


Systems and Services

The following error occurs when you try to refresh a service that has not been created.

Table 11-10 Error Message:

Error Message Workaround Steps
Create Service option does not work.

System and service creation depends on the configuration collection of the SOA Infrastructure and related targets. Check the log file for details.

Refresh Service option does not work.

The Refresh Service function works for an existing Infrastructure service. In case the service does not exist, it should be created using the Create Service menu option.


BPEL Recovery

The following error occurs when invalid credentials are provided.

Table 11-11 Error Message:

Error Message Workaround Steps
Invalid Host and WebLogic Domain Credentials

For the BPEL Recovery functionality to work, the host credentials and WebLogic Domain credentials must to be available in the preferred credential store. Set the valid credentials and try again.


SOA License Issue

The following error occurs if the SOA Management Pack EE has not been enabled.

Table 11-12 Error Message

Error Message Workaround Steps
The page requested is part of the SOA Management Pack EE.

The SOA Management Pack EE must be enabled for the specific SOA Infrastructure target. To enable the license, follow these steps:

  1. From the Setup menu, select Management Packs, then select Management Pack Access.

  2. Select SOA Infrastructure in the Target Type drop-down box.

  3. Uncheck and check the SOA Management Pack EE.

  4. Click Apply and navigate to the SOA Composite page.


Dehydration Store Issue

Data is not displayed on the Dehydration Store page.

Table 11-13 Error Message

Error Message Workaround Steps
Data is not displayed in the Dehydration Store page.

This error may occur if there is a data mismatch between the values specified for the database target and the WebLogic Server Datasource. To resolve this issue, follow these steps:

  1. Compare the Database Host and SID value of the database target with the value collected for the WebLogic Server JDBC Datasource configuration.

  2. If the values are different, select Services from the Targets menu. Select DataSources, then select SOALocalTxtSource, then click Connection Pool to update the Datasource Connection URL