1. Administering Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle Business Process Management Suite
  2. Administering Oracle BPMN Process Service Components and Engines
  3. Configuring Oracle BPMN Process Service Components and Engines

35 Configuring Oracle BPMN Process Service Components and Engines

Learn how to configure the BPMN process service engine, including configuring properties used by the engine during processing of BPMN service components.

For more information about BPMN process tuning and performance properties, see Tuning Performance.

Configuring BPMN Process Service Engine Properties

Learn how to configure BPMN Process Service Engine properties.

To configure BPMN process service engine properties:

  1. Access this page through one of the following options:

    From the SOA Infrastructure Menu... From the SOA Folder in the Navigator...

    1. Select SOA Administration > BPMN Properties.

    1. Right-click soa-infra.

    2. Select SOA Administration > BPMN Properties.

    The BPMN Service Engine Properties page displays properties for setting audit trail and large document thresholds, validating payload schema, and setting the audit trail level.

    Description of soaadmin_bpmn_props.png follows
    Description of the illustration soaadmin_bpmn_props.png

  2. Make changes to the service engine properties that are appropriate to your environment.

    Property Description

    Audit Level

    Select one of the following options:

    • Off: No logging is performed. Business flow instance tracking and payload tracking information are not collected. If measurement is enabled, then this level is overridden to Minimal.

    • Inherit (default): Logging equals the SOA Infrastructure audit level. This allows the BPMN audit level to automatically change when the global setting is changed. Setting a different audit level tracking in this page overrides the tracking set at the SOA Infrastructure level.

    • Minimal: Instance tracking information is collected, but not payload details; no payload details are available in the flow audit trails.

    • Production: Instance tracking information is collected, payload details are collected only for out data associations for asynchronous activities. This level is optimal for most normal operations and testing.

    • Development: Allows both the business flow instance tracking and payload tracking. However it may impact the performance. This level is useful mostly for debugging purposes.

    Note: If you do not want audit entries to be displayed, then you must turn off both the audit level and the metrics. If metrics are enabled, then audit entries are displayed even if the audit level is set to Off.

    Audit Trail Threshold

    Enter the maximum size in bytes of an instance audit trail before it is chunked and saved in a dehydration store table separate from the audit trail. If the threshold is exceeded, the View XML link is shown in the audit trail instead of the payload.

    Large Document Threshold

    Enter the maximum size of a generated document within a BPMN process component instance before it is stored in a separate table in the dehydration store.

    Payload Validation

    Select to enable validation of inbound and outbound messages. Nonschema-compliant payload data is intercepted and displayed as a fault.

    Note: This setting is independent of the SOA composite application and SOA Infrastructure payload validation level settings. If payload validation is enabled at both the service engine and SOA Infrastructure levels, data is checked twice: once when it enters the SOA Infrastructure, and again when it enters the service engine.

    Disable BPMN Monitors and Sensors

    Select this checkbox to disable all BPMN monitors and sensors defined for all BPMN components across all deployed SOA composite applications.

  3. Click Apply.

  4. If you want to configure advanced BPMN properties in the System MBean Browser, click More BPMN Configuration Properties. Properties that display include the following. Descriptions are provided for each property.

    • AuditDetailThreshold: The maximum size (in bytes) an audit trail details string can be before it is stored separately from the audit trail.

    • AuditLevel: Controls the amount of audit events logged by a process; currently supported logging levels are: off: absolutely no logging performed whatsoever; may result in a slight performance boost for processing instances.

    • AuditKeyExtents: The extent size for the BPMN Audit Query ID generation. This value specifies the amount by which the BPMN Audit Query sequence will increase each time a new set of IDs are requested.

    • AuditUpdateBatchSize: The batch size used when marking BPMN process audit information as aborted during undeployment.

    • BpelcClasspath: The extra class path must be included when compiling BPMN generated java sources.

    • ConfigMBean: If true, it indicates that this MBean is a Config MBean.

    • cleanupCompletedTask: If set to false, Me and my group assignment filter and Completed status, get completed tasks. Default is cleanupCompletedTask=true, which cleans up table to show the completed tasks with Me (previous) assignment filter and Completed status at improved performance.

    • DebugIgnore: Lists BPMN activities (localName only) that are ignored by the debugger agent. The BPMN activity names are separated by comma ( , ), semi-colon ( ; ), or white space.

    • DisableProcessBroker: If set to false the process broker service is enabled. The default value is true.

    • DisableProcessTracking: If set to true, the audit disables process tracking. The default value is false.

    • DisableSensors: If set to true, the service engine disables all calls to sensors. The default value is false.

    • DispatcherEngineThreads: The total number of threads that are allocated to process engine dispatcher messages.

    • DispatcherInvokeThreads: The total number of threads that are allocated to process invocation dispatcher messages.

    • DispatcherMaxRequestDepth: Maximum number of internal messages the service engine processes. If this number is exceeded, new messages are not dispatched. The default value is 600.

    • DispatcherSystemThreads: The total number of threads that are allocated to process system dispatcher messages.

    • eventProvider: If set to true, indicates that this MBean is an event provider as defined by JSR-77.

    • eventTypes: All the event's types emitted by this MBean.

    • ExpirationMaxRetry: The maximum number of times a failed expiration call (wait/onAlarm) is retried before failing.

    • ExpirationRetryDelay: The delay between the expiration retries. The default value is 120 seconds.

    • InstanceKeyBlockSize: The size of the block of instance IDs to allocate from the dehydration store during each fetch.

    • LargeDocumentThreshold: The maximum size (in bytes) a BPMN variable can be before it is stored in a separate location from the rest of the instance scope data.

    • MaximumNumberOfInvokeMessagesInCache: Specify the number of invoke messages that can be kept in the in-memory cache, once the service engine reaches this limit, it pushes the message to dispatcher in-memory cache, instead it saves the message in the database, and these saved messages can be recovered using recovery job. Use value -1 to disable this property.

    • MaxOptimizationDataToFetch: Maximum depth of data to fetch from database for optimization features.

    • objectName: The MBean's unique JMX name.

    • OERCredentialMapName: Set the OER Credential map name here.

    • OERPublisherCsfKeyName: Set the OER Credential map name to use when publishing the Business Architecture Project to OER.

    • OERServerURL: The URL of the OER server including the port name. This server name is used for publishing assets to the OER.

    • OneWayDeliveryPolicy: Changes whether the one-way invocation messages are delivered.

    • OptimizationDataUpdateInterval: Attribute exposed for management.

    • OptimizationDisabledProcesses: List of processes for which optimization features are disabled.

    • OptimizationEnabled: Globally enable or disable the process optimization features. This must be set to true to enable the Process Monitor dashboard in Oracle Business Process Management Workspace.

    • PeopleQueryTimeout: Specify quartz cron expression People Query. People Query in Logical People Group is reevaluated based on this cron expression.

    • QualityOfService: Flag to enable or disable Oracle Coherence cache for BPMN service engine. Use CacheEnabled for enabling Oracle Coherence.

    • ReadOnly: If set to true, indicates that this MBean is a read only MBean.

    • RecoveryConfig: Set recovery configuration values.

    • RepositoryType: Set the repository type to use for Business Architecture Reports. Possible values are RDFRepository or OERRepository. OER specific parameters are used only when OERRepository type is specified.

    • RestartNeeded: Indicates whether a restart is needed.

    • StatsLastN: The size of the most recently processed request list.

    • SystemMBean: If set to true, indicates that this MBean is a System MBean.

    • TimeEstimationToBamUpdateInterval: The time interval in seconds in which the process instances estimated completion times are populated in BAM.

    • UserInitiateProcessCleanupAction: The action to be performed for the cleanup procedure: OFF (default), ABORT or DELETE. OFF will disable the cleanup process on the next scheduled activation of the process.

    • UserInitiateProcessCleanupCronExpression: The cron type expression indicates when and how often the cleanup procedure should take place. Any changes to the schedule will take effect on the next scheduled activation of the cleanup process.

    • UserInitiateProcessCleanupRetentionDays: Only the user-initiated processes older than number of days old will be processed. Zero is not allowed. Fractions of a day can be specified as a decimal.

    • UserInitiateProcessCleanupTaskStates: The task states to be considered during the cleanup procedure.

      Note:

      The UserInitiateProcessCleanup properties support the cleanup of properties created using the initiator task.

    • ValidateXML: If set to true, the service engine applies schema validation for incoming and outgoing XML documents. The default value false.

    • Version: Version of the configuration file.

    • Visible: If set to true, this MBean is visible to the current user.

Configuring the BPMN Service Engine for Process Monitoring

Process monitor dashboards in Oracle Business Process Management Workspace allow you to monitor and optimize process execution by identifying bottlenecks and other performance problems.

To configure support for process monitor dashboards:

  1. Access BPMN Service Engine Properties as described above, click More BPMN Configuration Properties... and set the OptimizationEnabled property to true.
  2. Locate the AnalyticsConfig:analytics mbean. In the System MBean Browser click Filter (View and configure the filters applied to the mbean browser).
  3. In the Filtering Settings dialog, specify the MBean Pattern Filter as oracle.as.soainfra.config:name=analytics,*.
  4. Set DisableAnalytics to false.
  5. Set DisableProcessMetrics to false.
  6. Click Apply.

Integrating Oracle BPM with Oracle BAM 12c

When a BPM composite with enabled measurements (either standard or user-defined) is created, composite specific derived physical and logical data objects are created in Oracle Business Activity Monitoring (Oracle BAM) 12c.

These data objects have the columns for standard metrics and user-defined metrics.

Physical Data Objects

Composite specific process physical derived data object

Name: ORACLE_PROCESSANALYTICS_<COMPOSITE>_PROCESS

Display Name: oracle/processanalytics/<COMPOSITE>/Process (physical)

Composite specific activity physical derived data object

Name: ORACLE_PROCESSANALYTICS_<COMPOSITE>_ACTIVITY

Display Name: oracle/processanalytics/<COMPOSITE>/Activity (physical)

Logical Data Objects

Composite specific process logical data object

Name: ORACLE_PROCESSANALYTICS_<COMPOSITE>_BPM_PROCESS

Display Name: oracle/processanalytics/<COMPOSITE>/Process

Composite specific activity logical data object

Name: ORACLE_PROCESSANALYTICS_<COMPOSITE>_BPM_ACTIVITY

Display Name: oracle/processanalytics/<COMPOSITE>/Activity

Process Star Schema Database Views

In a BPM composite, if the user has defined Analytics View Identifier for the composite, then synonyms to composite specific physical data object views are generated. These views are used to get SQL access to process analytics data. The naming convention of the view synonyms are:

BPM_PV_PRCS_<IDENTIFIER>_V - composite specific process fact

BPM_PV_ACTV_<IDENTIFIER>_V - composite specific activity fact

where <IDENTIFIER> is the Analytics View Identifier defined in the composite.

In addition to the creation of composite specific fact data objects in Oracle BAM 12c, the standard dimension data objects, such as COMPOSITE_DEFINITION, ACTIVITY_DEFINITION, PROCESS_DEFINITION, TASK_DEFINITION, ROLE_DEFINITION, and so on, are also populated with appropriate metadata information from the composite.

Task 1: Enable Oracle BPM Data Publish to Oracle BAM 12c

To do this task, you use the Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control.

To enable Oracle BPM Data Publish to Oracle BAM 12c:

  1. In Oracle Fusion Middleware Control, under WebLogic Domain, select your domain and server.
  2. Go to System MBean Browser.
  3. Select oracle.as.soainfra.config > Server > BPMNConfig > bpmn.
  4. Click Analytics.

    To the right, set disableProcessMetrics to false. (Default is true.)

    Note:

    The ProcessMetrics target can be enabled only if an Oracle BAM 12c server is detected.

  5. Click Save and Submit.

Note:

If a new BPM composite configured with measurement is deployed before enabling ProcessMetrics, or when the Oracle BAM 12c server is down; then all data publishing to Oracle BAM 12c Process Star Schema from such composites is permanently disabled (even if Oracle BAM 12c comes up later). This is because some mandatory artifacts, required for allowing runtime analytics population, could not be created in Oracle BAM 12c during composite deployment time. In order to allow such composites to publish data to Oracle BAM 12c Process star schema, they must be redeployed when Oracle BAM 12c is up.

Integrating Oracle BPM with Oracle BAM 11g

Learn how to integrate Oracle BPM with Oracle BAM 11g.

When a BPMN composite application is deployed, the following Oracle BAM data objects are generated automatically:

  • Data object for the following business indicator:

    TEMPLATE_BI_Partition_Composite_Process

    Once this is imported, you should rename it to:

    BI_DEFAULT_Compositename_ProcessName

    This is created in the target folder. If the data object already exists, new columns are added to it, assuming the old columns match data types. Otherwise, an error is thrown.

  • COMPONENT, INTERVAL, COUNTER data objects if they are not present in the target folder.

The target Oracle BAM Server is specified by JNDI name parameter.

Note:

Data objects can be created only automatically at deployment. You cannot create them manually.

To configure Oracle BPM for use with Oracle BAM 11g, you perform these tasks:

Task 1: Configure the Oracle BAM Adapter on Oracle BPM Server

You must configure the Oracle BAM Adapter to use either SOAP or RMI for communicating with Oracle BAM.

To configure the Oracle BAM adapter on Oracle BPM server:

  1. In the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console, under Domain Structure, click Deployments.
  2. Click OracleBAMAdapter > Configuration > Outbound Connection Pools.
  3. Expand oracle.bam.adapter.adc.soap.SOAPConnectionFactory.
  4. Click either eis/bam/soap or eis/bam/rmi.

    The JNDI name used to configure the Oracle BAM adapter is used. For example, if you configured the Oracle BAM adapter to use SOAP, then the default JNDI name is eis/bam/soap. Similarly, if you configure the Oracle BAM adapter to use RMI, then the default JNDI name is eis/bam/rmi.

  5. Modify properties to match Oracle BAM Server. (Remember to press Enter after text entry).
  6. Click Save.
  7. Select the location for the deployment plan—for example, bam/Plan.xml, then complete the dialogs.
  8. Return to Deployments.
  9. Select OracleBAMAdapter.
  10. Click Update and complete the dialogs.

For more information about integrating Oracle BAM with Oracle SOA Suite composite applications, see Developing SOA Applications with Oracle SOA Suite.

Task 2: Enable Oracle BPM Data Publish to Oracle BAM 11g Monitor Express

To do this task, you use the Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control.

To enable Oracle BPM data publish to Oracle BAM 11g Monitor Express:

  1. In Oracle Fusion Middleware Control, under WebLogic Domain, select your domain and server.
  2. Go to System MBean Browser.
  3. Select oracle.as.soainfra.config > Server > BPMNConfig > bpmn.
  4. Click Analytics.

    To the right, set disableMonitorExpress to false. (Default is true.)

  5. Click Save and Submit.