External File Storage

The system supports using Oracle Cloud Object Storage for managing files in cloud implementations and can be configured to read files from or write files to this external location. Refer to Oracle Cloud Object Storage documentation for more information about obtaining an account and defining appropriate file locations or "buckets".

Once your cloud storage information is defined, the following points highlight the configuration steps required in the application.

  • Define a signature key ring. When the system tries to communicate with cloud object storage, it must provide a signature key so that cloud storage can confirm that the request is from a trusted source.

    • Navigate to Key Ring in add mode and select the RSA Signature Key Pair business object.

    • Define a key ring code, which will be used in the File Storage configuration (below) along with a description.

    • Once the key ring is added, click Generate Key to generate a private / public key pair.

    • Click View Public Key to launch a pop-up that displays the public key, allowing the user to copy the key.

  • At this point, the user should navigate to cloud object storage and register the public key. Refer to Cloud Services Administration Guide for more information on this step. Once this is done, the key ring is now ready to be configured in file storage configuration.

  • Next, confirm that the region where your object storage is defined is configured in the system and if not, define the value.
    • Navigate to Extendable Lookup and search for the OCI Region lookup. Review the list of regions already provided.
    • If your region is not listed, click the Add button. Be sure that the Region Key and the Region Identifier match the values defined in the OCI region documentation. The region key is a three digit identifier. For example, the one for Sydney region in Australia is SYD. The region identifier follows a pattern of a two digit realm id followed by the city name, followed by a single digit, all separated by hyphens. For example, the one for the Sydney region is "ap-sydney-1".

  • Use a File Storage extendable lookup to define the location and connection information so that you may reference this location in system configuration. The following points highlight the steps to take for this option.

    • Navigate to Extendable Lookup and search for the File Storage Configuration lookup.

    • Click Add to create a new entry. Define a lookup value name. Note that the lookup value should not have a slash or backslash in its name. This will be used when configuring a file path that uses this value. Choose the File Adapter value of Oracle Cloud Object Storage. Provide the following information that identifies the cloud storage options: User, Tenancy, Compartment, Namespace and Region. For the Key Ring, choose the value defined above.

  • To reference this value in system configuration, use the syntax file-storage://XXXX/..., where XXXX is the extendable lookup value and any additional path information that is appropriate. For example, if you define an extendable lookup value of CM-CloudStorage and you have a bucket defined in Cloud Storage for processUpload, when configuring the file path for the upload batch job, enter file-storage://CM-CloudStorage/processUpload.

  • The product supports referencing virtual folders for a bucket. Simply add the virtual folder name(s) after the bucket name. For example, if there is a bucket called 'financials' and a virtual folder for 'paymentUpload', the file path may have this value: file-storage://CM-CloudStorage/financials/paymentUpload. For extract processes, if the file path references a virtual folder that does not exist for the referenced bucket, the virtual folder is created as part of the extract process.

  • You may optionally use a Bucket Name Prefix on the file storage configuration to support defining different Bucket Names for different environments. For example, imagine you want to have a separate "processUpload" bucket for a development region, a test region and a production region. In the Cloud Storage configuration you can define separate buckets for "DEV_​processUpload", "TEST_​processUpload" and "PROD_​processUpload". If you needed to define the full bucket on each file path reference on various batch jobs, migrating the batch job configuration from one environment to another would require a manual step to change all the bucket references. Instead, the system supports defining a Bucket Name Prefix, which if populated will be prepended to bucket reference before connecting to Cloud Storage. This means that the prefix is defined once and all the references throughout the system can keep the common part of the Bucket name (such as "processUpload"). Then only the File Storage configuration needs to differ between the different regions.

  • If your implementation integrates with an external reporting tool that can write the report output to specific delivery channels (buckets) check the Reporting Configuration switch. Define one or more Bucket Names for the buckets that the reporting tool may use for delivery channel options.
Note: Refer to the Key Ring documentation for information about practicing key rotation.