On January 19, 2017, Oracle announced that it signed an agreement to acquire Apiary, which creates the most comprehensive API Integration Cloud by adding the leading API design and governance solution. The proposed transaction is subject to customary closing conditions. Until the transaction closes, each company will continue to operate independently.

Apiary's pioneering APIFlow solution provides the framework and tools for developing application programming interfaces (APIs) that share enterprise services and data and help create modern, cloud-based applications and experiences. APIFlow spans the API creation lifecycle, including design, governance, testing, and documentation, while supporting API Blueprint and OpenAPI industry standards. Apiary has helped companies create hundreds of thousands of APIs and products that their customers and partners love to use.

Together, Oracle and Apiary will help companies thrive in the digital economy by comprehensively managing connectivity complexity and API proliferation. Oracle's existing API Integration Cloud already enables companies to secure, consume, monetize, and analyze APIs. Apiary provides the front-end solution for designing, creating and governing APIs and the combination will deliver the most complete API creation and management platform in the cloud.

Read the press release here.

Get API hands-on trained at the PaaS Partner Community Forum here.

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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You may scramble data in E-Business Suite 12.1.3 cloned environments with EM13c using the My Oracle Support Note and template: 

• Using Oracle E-Business Suite Data Masking Pack, Release 12.1.3 with Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 13c (MOS Note: 2216575.1)
• E-Business Suite 12.1.3 Data Masking Template for Data Masking Pack with EM13c (Patch 24710203)
  

Based upon the knowledge of the Oracle E-Business Suite architecture and sensitive columns, application data masking does the following:

• De-identifies the data:  Scramble identifiers of individuals, also known as personally identifiable information (PII).  Examples include information such as name, account, address, location, and driver's license number.
• Masks sensitive data:  Mask data that, if associated with personally identifiable information (PII), would cause privacy concerns.  Examples include compensation, health and employment information.  
• Maintains data validity:  Provide a fully functional application.

• Data Masking Best Practice
• Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Online Documentation Library Release 13.1
  

Related Articles

• E-Business Suite 12.1.3 Data Masking Certified with Enterprise Manager 12c
• EBS 12.2 Data Masking Template Certified with EM 13c
• Scrambling Sensitive Data in E-Business Suite

Developers and programmers continue to be leading players in the IT world, with hiring managers report programming and application development as the top skills they'll seek in 2017.

As the Internet is the vehicle organizations use to connect employees, clients, partners and customers, it's not surprising that web development jobs remain a staple role within IT teams. Talented web developers continue to be in demand as companies add social and mobile platforms to their portfolios.

Employers expect top database analysts to have a range of skills. Recruiters say proficiency in data modeling and database design rank high, as does the ability to ensure database performance and data integrity.

According to Computerworld’s survey, companies want big data pros who are able to build out current data sets and have experience with specific technologies like Oracle and Hadoop. Companies are also looking for engineers and architects who know big-data-oriented computer languages, such as Scala.

And they want people with experience in specific industries, as industry experience helps big data professionals derive insights and value from the fire hose of data.

If you're an IT professional and you already have these skills, that's great news! Your services are in demand.

If you intend to refresh your tech skills for 2017, start preparing, as is where the action will be in the upcoming year.

Develop the Hottest Skills - Take Oracle University Training

If you want to pursue a career in the tech industry, Oracle University is an outstanding vehicle to get you there.

Cloud computing and big data analytics will constitute a significant driver of employment growth. Individuals who can process, analyze, visualize and present data will continue to be in demand. If you're a database passionate and want to get your skills on point, educational programs through Oracle University will help you elevate your skills.

While some skills lose their relevance every couple of years, LinkedIn and Computerworld’s data strongly suggests that tech skills will remain in demand for years to come, in every industry.

Use Oracle technology to secure your future. The IT industry is looking for well trained professionals, and with the right certification, IT companies will be looking for you.

Check out the most popular Oracle Certifications and choose the one that will become a solid base of a successful career in IT

Sources: Computerworld, World Economic Forum

 Happy New Year!

Now that you've had time to settle back into your routine, let's talk resolutions. Have you thought about resolutions to advance your career?

Resolve to earn an Oracle Certification this year and let us help you advance your career.

 Make this the year you invest in yourself!

VIEW AVAILABLE ORACLE CERTIFICATIONS

Oracle E-Business Suite is a collection of over 200 individual products.  These products are grouped into product families such as Financials, Supply Chain Management, Human Resources, and so on.  Each product has its own ID, officially called an "Applications Product Prefix." Product prefixes can be either two or three characters in length.

If you're looking at a patch's README or some technical documentation, you might see a product ID that you don't recognize, for example, "BNE."  How do you figure out what this means?

You can look up product prefixes here:

• Oracle E-Business Suite Electronic Technical Reference Manual (eTRM)

The eTRM covers the following EBS releases:

• EBS 12.2
• EBS 12.1
• EBS 12.0
• EBS 11.5.10 and earlier releases to EBS 11.5.7

The eTRM allows you to look up EBS database design and dependency information.  For example, you can enter the name of a database object (e.g. per_people_f) and see all of the information associated with that object.  You can also browse the FND Model or Oracle Data Diction from the FND or DBA tabs.

Lots of great new features, just in time for the Holiday Season.
Thanks to my colleague Kathryn L.
I will be adding to this post over time, so, currently, it is not an exhaustive list.

1. Ability to see Conversations in Tracking

Note: the second icon on the right, under the docs icon.

2. Quickstart Master new functionality

For those of you who have yet to meet a Quickstart Master - here's a quick intro.

I take an existing process and convert it to a Quickstart Master. Read the complete article here.

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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Dear Integration Experts

As an Oracle Partner Network Gold member or higher we would like to offer you:

• free ICS trail services
• free ICS certification

once you become a member (free of charge) in the SOA Partner Community.

As a community member you receive also our monthly updates with the latest PaaS information including sales &  marketing kits, product updates and trainings. Please first login at Oracle Partner Network and then visit SOA Partner Community. If you have any questions please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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Technorati Tags: SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,OPN,Jürgen Kress

Stay up to date with the Oracle Certification Program, view exams released into production, get information on current promotions and learn about new program announcements below.

Now Available in Beta:

1Z1-070 | Oracle Exadata X5 Administration (Ends Jan 31, 2017)

Oracle Exadata X5 Administration covers Exadata Database Machine features and configurations, Exadata Storage Server, migrating to the Database Machine, and maintaining, monitoring and optimizing the Database Machine after initial configuration. A candidate passing the exam proves fluency and solid understanding of the skills required to configure, install and administer an Exadata Database Machine. The beta exam has 130 questions with allocated time of 2.5-3 hours.

Exam Updates:

1Z0-075 | Oracle Database 12c Administrator Certified Associate

The Oracle Database 12c Administration certification is for those working in a cloud environment. This is a precursor to the more cloud-focused 12c R2 exams in development which will not test on Installing, Upgrading and Patching the Oracle Database. This is a new option to reach Oracle Certified Associate.

1Z0-148 | Oracle Database 12c: Advanced PL/SQL

Are you certified as an Oracle Database SQL Associate or Expert? Passing this exam will give you the credentials that demonstrate your ability to provide strategic guidance to fully exploit the most advanced features of PL/SQL, especially those added in Oracle Database 12c. Gain more responsibilities in your role using these advanced application code architecture skills.

1Z0-821 | Oracle Solaris 11 System Administration

Oracle Certifications differentiate candidates in the marketplace by providing a competitive edge through proven expertise. Earning an associate level certification demonstrates your skill and fundamental understanding of the commands, and utilities used in Oracle Solaris 11 to deliver security, speed, and simplicity for enterprise cloud environments and DevOps.

1Z0-822 | Oracle Solaris 11 Advanced System Administration

Expand your mastery of the administration of the Oracle Solaris 11 Operating System. A professional level certification covers system administration skills such as configuring network interfaces, managing swap configurations, crash dumps, and core files.

View all certifications.

Be Prepared to Take Your Next Oracle Certification Exam

Feel confident taking your next exam by preparing with Exam Preparation tools. Each recording is delivered by Oracle’s top instructors and leads you through exam objectives helping identify knowledge gaps before taking an exam. Delivered in a streaming format, these videos are available 24/7 enabling you to watch as needed during the six month subscription term.

The Exam Prep Seminar Packages include: instructor recording, ePractice test, and exam voucher with a free exam retake.

The Exam Prep Seminar is available as a standalone purchase which includes only the recorded instructor video.

View all Exam Prep Seminars.

Share Your Certification Success Story

On the Oracle Certification Community, your peers are sharing their certification journey and success stories. Let these stories inspire you to share yours. These questions may help get you started.

• Tell us about the company you work for - what kind of services does your company provide?
• What are your responsibilities?
• Why did you decide to become Oracle certified?
• Could you tell us more about who saw your Oracle digital badge, where they saw it, and what they said?
• How does your Oracle digital badge help you stand out from others in your field?
• Do you have any plans to earn additional certifications?
• If a colleague asked you about your Oracle digital badge, what would tell him or her? 

Java Certification Recognition T-shirts

Thank you for sharing your photos of you in your #javatshirt! All eligible candidates who earn a Java Certification during June 1 - March 31, 2017 receive a Java Certified T-shirt for their achievement. Learn more.

NEW! Oracle PartnerNetwork Certification Exam Announcements

The new OPN Certification Exam Announcements site provides the latest updates regarding beta, production, retired or upcoming partner certification exams. Bookmark this page to receive updates on new exams, key exam dates, and the most relevant certification related campaigns. Learn more.

Upcoming Retirements:

March 31, 2017

1Z0-410 | Oracle Retail Integration Bus 13.2 Implementation Technical Essentials

1Z0-453 | Oracle Retail Merchandising System 13.2 Foundation Functional Implementer Essentials

1Z0-454 | Oracle Retail Price Management 13.2 Functional Implementer Essentials

1Z0-455 | Oracle Retail Store Inventory Management 13.2 Functional Implementer Essentials

1Z0-463 | Oracle Retail Demand Forecasting 13.3 Functional Implementer Essentials

1Z0-496 | Oracle Retail Merchandise Planning and Optimization 13.3 Implementation Functional Essentials

1Z0-576 | Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server 13 Configuration Essentials

Explore more Oracle Certification today!

Problem

Maven is not compiling the composite when a BPEL process contains java embedding. Just incorporating java embedding makes the maven compilation to fail. If the java embedding is removed then the composite compilation is successful in Maven. This issue can be reproduced  with JDeveloper 12.1.3.x

Research

First I tried to solve this issue by adding dependency declarations for orabpel.jar in the soa maven plugin section and the pom.xml itself. However this approach doesn’t solve my issue. After another research in the Oracle Support system I found two interesting notes:

• Unable to compile a composite that contains a Java embedded activity with Maven (2050971.1)
• Failure when compiling a BPEL process in SOA 12c, ‚package com.collaxa.cube does not exist’ (2112178.1)

Both notes describe exactly the issue I currently have. The note 2050971.1 contains a reference to the bug no. 20229616 wherefore no patch is available until now. But it contains a description for a workaround. The workarounds means to put every needed Java library in the folder SOA/SCA-INF/lib. From my perspective that isn’t an appropriate solution, because the missing classes mention by the compiler are in orabpel.jar. This jar file is part of SOA Suite and already available on the infrastructure side. Moreover everything in /SCA-INF/lib is part of the composite and uploaded to MDS. The second support note 2112178.1 references a patch, but it doesn’t also solve the issue. Due to this I build a solution that automates the workaround with SOA/SCA-INF/lib by using Maven plugins.

Solution

The solutions contains 3 steps:

1. Using the Maven Dependency Plugin to copy the orabpel.jar to SOA/SCA-INF/lib folder. The copied orabpel.jar will be renamed to only4compile.jar. Further it is important to bind the execution of the plugin to a phase before running the Maven SOA Plugin. Read the complete article here.

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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How many times have you had to repeat the same sequence in the BPM workspace to map a Human Task payload attribute to a public Flex Field? Let's do a bit of re-cap:

1. login to the Workspace with administration permissions
2. go do Administration
3. go to Public Flex Fields
4. create all Labels

And then, for each human task:

1. search for the task
2. choose the payload attribute
3. search for the label to use (you can create them here as well)
4. repeat until you've mapped all the labels you need
5. save and move to the next

It seems like a lot of work to do and it is fair to say that our platform team was not very happy to do these tasks manually. Even when developing these mappings need to be re-created from time to time (more often than we wished). The whole process is furthermore error-prone, specially when moving from development to QA and to Production environments.

Automating the creation and mapping of labels and payload atributes

Oracle BPM/SOA 11g and 12c expose an API for managing labels and mapping them as required. The oracle.bpel.services.workflow.runtimeconfig.IRuntimeConfigService interface provides a series of methods for creating and deleting labels, as well as creating oracle.bpel.services.workflow.runtimeconfig.model.PayloadMapping instances to map a label to a payload attribute. Read the complete article here.

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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Oracle recently launched a new strategic initiative to engage developers and to provide them with the tools, technologies, and resources that they will need in all of their development projects.  This Global Strategic Developer Initiative (SDI) touches on every type of development technology, from Java and JavaScript to DevOps, and from Big Data to Mobile. In addition to providing developers with helpful tutorials and documentation, as well as with Oracle Cloud product downloads and trials, the Global SDI has organized a series of developer conferences across 20 cities in 2017, which will encourage attendees to build modern mobile, web, enterprise and cloud-native applications.  Together, these conferences are called Oracle Code.

At Oracle Code, developers can learn from technical experts, industry leaders, and other developers through keynotes, technical sessions and hands-on-labs. There will also be an exhibition hall at each event where attendees can augment their knowledge of cloud development technology through workshops, demos, and other live interactive experiences.

Oracle Code will focus on the latest technologies, architectures and practices, including, but not limited to:

• Containers
• Microservices and other API-First applications
• Chatbots
• AI and Machine Learning
• DevOps Tools & Practices, and Low Code Platforms
  

The conferences will also include sessions for developing software in Java, Node.js, and other languages using Oracle Database, MySQL, and NoSQL databases, as well as with other Open Source technologies.  In addition, the call for papers for Oracle employees is open and organizers are taking submissions for locations across the globe.  Guidelines on topics and the submission process can be found here.

Check out the Oracle Code website today for locations, agendas, featured speakers, sponsor information, and instructions on how to register for these engaging and informative developer events!

Take this opportunity and register now for the Oracle PaaS Partner Community Forum that will be held in Split, Croatia on March 27^th& 28^th& 29^th 2017 with hands-on training on March 30^th& 31^st 2017. Registration is free of charge, during the conference you will get the latest updates on the Oracle PaaS Services & Middleware Solutions:

• Process Cloud Service & BPM Suite & BPM Suite 12c
• SOA Cloud Service & Integration Cloud Service & SOA Suite 12c
• Mobile Cloud Service & Application Builder Cloud Service & Mobile & Development tools
• Java Cloud & Application Container Service & Developer Cloud Service & WebLogic 12c
• Content Cloud Service & User Experience and Enrich SaaS with PaaS
• Internet of Things Cloud Service

The conference will update you on the last Middleware solutions & cloud services especially for:

• Architects & Practice Managers: product overview
• Consultants & Developers: product details including live demos and hands-on training
• Sales Experts & Partner Managers positioning & sales kits including cheat sheets
• Marketing Executives: campaign kits including event material and ppts and demos

For details please visit the registration page.

For more information watch the short video:

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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We've previously provided advice on the general priorities for applying EBS updates and creating a comprehensive maintenance strategy.   

Here are our latest upgrade recommendations for E-Business Suite updates and technology stack components.  These quarterly recommendations are based upon the latest updates to Oracle's product strategies, latest support timelines, and newly-certified releases. 

You can research these yourself using this Note:

• How to Find E-Business Suite Patches & E-Business Suite Technology Stack Patches (Note 1633974.2)
  

Upgrade Recommendations for January 2017

Take this opportunity and register now for the Oracle PaaS Partner Community Forum that will be held in Split, Croatia on March 27^th& 28^th& 29^th 2017 with hands-on training on March 30^th& 31^st 2017. Registration is free of charge, during the conference you will get the latest updates on the Oracle PaaS Services & Middleware Solutions:

• Process Cloud Service & BPM Suite & BPM Suite 12c
• SOA Cloud Service & Integration Cloud Service & SOA Suite 12c
• Mobile Cloud Service & Application Builder Cloud Service & Mobile & Development tools
• Java Cloud & Application Container Service & Developer Cloud Service & WebLogic 12c
• Content Cloud Service & User Experience and Enrich SaaS with PaaS
• Internet of Things Cloud Service

The conference will update you on the last Middleware solutions & cloud services especially for:

• Architects & Practice Managers: product overview
• Consultants & Developers: product details including live demos and hands-on training
• Sales Experts & Partner Managers positioning & sales kits including cheat sheets
• Marketing Executives: campaign kits including event material and ppts and demos

For details please visit the registration page.

For more information watch the short video:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPaOIbQkvZA&w=560&h=315]

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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Over the following series of articles I'll be describing the JET Composite Component Architecture, showing how you can create your own components to boost re-use and generally streamline your code-base. However, before we dive into the technicalities I think that it would be a good idea to set the scene a little and provide you with some background.

What's The Point Of A Component Model?

Before we even start, it's worth asking this question, after all, we're already dealing with a nicely structured and standardized language in the form of HTML markup. Isn't adding our own components kinda going against the whole idea and a retrograde (and therefore bad) step?
Simply put no. The need for a custom component model within HTML is well established and as such is the subject of a W3C initiative under the umbrella of Web Components. However, as is often the way of these things, the specifications are as yet (at the time of writing), not fully complete and ratified and we're in a situation where browser support is incomplete as a result (see here).

If you want to learn about Web Components in a slightly more accessible way than W3C Specifications then there are plenty of good sites out there. A good place to start, however, is webcomponents.org.

OK But I Still Don't Get Why I Might Find It Useful...

Fair enough, why is it useful? Well it's all to do, with the original intended use for HTML verses what we actually use it for. HTML was designed to markup text documents that deliver content and images for consumption and provides all of the useful semantic tags to do document-y stuff like defining headings at various levels, paragraphs, footers navigation to other documents and so on. However we're mostly not using it for that, at least, not in the context of a typical JET application, we're generally building interactive Applications not just authoring content to read. We'll still use many of those tags but the core of our code is going to be a whole set of nested <div> elements with various classes applied to lay things out and apply a certain UX over the top. An example of what I mean here can be seen in the JET Cookbook. If you take the simple case of the input field and it's associated label from the particular cookbook demo that I've pointed at, you can see that this is defined as follows:

<div class="oj-flex">
          <div class="oj-flex-item">
            <label for="control1">row 1</label>
          </div>
          <div class="oj-flex-item">
            <input id="control1"
                   data-bind="ojComponent: {component: 'ojInputText',
                                            value:'text', required: true}">
          </div>
        </div>
        

In this example, although we're using the standard HTML elements for providing a label and an input field we've got no less that three <div> elements cluttering up the markup just to perform the layout housekeeping. Now this of course is a very simple example and in reality, the number of housekeeping / control divs in your view can easily creep up into the hundreds. Frankly it's just hard for us to read and mentally parse.

Imagine instead the same content in our view was represented as something like the following:

<my-input input-value="{{value}}" input-label="row 1" is-required="true"/>
        

Of course componentization is not just about making the elements in your views easier to read. It provides the mechanisms for enforcing standardization of UI and behavior, reducing the complexity of your day to day development efforts (build and test once, use many times) and of course you have the ability to change the component in one place and have that change automatically reflected by all the consuming pages.

A final key point about the importance of Composite Components in particular is that they are positioned as the standard mechanism for plugging into the Oracle ecosystem. Once you have created a Composite Component, not only will you be able to use it directly in your JET applications, but it is intended that you will also be able to plug it into our low-code development tools (e.g. Application Builder Cloud Service) and use them to extend our SaaS applications. (usual caveats apply with respect to the truthfullness and timing of this statement). As such, mastery of Composite Components will be a key skill-set for Oracle UI developers and partners going forward.

What Next?

So now that we've established that there is some value in introducing some sort of componentization into our developments we can proceed, in subsequent articles, with learning how to do this using JET Composite Components.
To get you started, go and have a look at the demos in the cookbook for this feature area. These, along with the JS doc provide some great examples of composite components in action, starting with basic demo.

If that all looks a little scary and confusing though, don't worry, in the following series of articles I'll be taking you through Composite Components step by step, from the very basic, almost code-less components to advanced usages, exploration of the nuances of lifecycle and more.

A Summary of What Composite Components Give You

As you progress through this series you will pick all this up, but to summarize for you now, JET Custom Components give you:

• A way to define custom HTML elements for use in your application, providing:
  • Custom attributes for the element
  • Custom methods on the element
  • Custom events emitted from the element
  • Function callbacks
• An encapsulation of all the resources needed to create this tag / element:
  • Template HTML markup
  • JavaScript to drive the component
  • Styles to configure the UX
• Support for nesting of Composite Components
• Support for injection of application markup into the composite (a feature called slotting which I'll discuss in detail in a later article)
• Lifecycle methods to control the component

But Before You Start...

Throughout this series of articles I'll be assuming a certain baseline skillset, mainly, but not restricted to, RequireJS, Knockout and JavaScript promises. So if you've not mastered those concepts yet, you would be best to hold off diving into creating Composites until you are comfortable with those pieces. I'll also assume that you're familiar with using JET itself of course. With that, if you are ready then proceed to Part II to look at some of the basics.

More from the A-Team... Thank you Benjamin!

Are you curious about using Loading Knowledge Modules for both on-premise and cloud computing in Oracle Data Integrator (ODI)?  Benjamin has put together some best practices for selecting and using the Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) Loading Knowledge Modules (LKMs) for both on-premise and on cloud computing. 

The Loading Knowledge Modules (LKMs) are one of seven categories of Knowledge Modules (KMs) found in ODI.  Other categories of KMs include: Reverse-Engineering, Check, Integration, Extract, Journalizing, and Service.  This particular article focuses on the selection and use of LKMs.  You can learn more about other categories of KMs, by going to Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) Knowledge Modules (KMs).

LKMs are code templates in ODI that can perform data upload operations from on-premise data servers to cloud services, between cloud services, or between on-premise data servers.  ODI supports a variety of technologies such as SQL databases, Big Data, Files, Java Messaging Systems (JMSs), and many other technologies.  Most of these technologies are now available on both on-premise and on data cloud services.  For each of these technologies, a variety of LKMs are available.  For instance, ODI offers LKMs for SQL databases such as Oracle, Teradata, MySQL, MS SQL Server, among others.  For Big Data, ODI offers LKMs for Spark, Hive, Sqoop, Kafka, and Pig, among others.

Read Benjamin's post:  Oracle Data Integrator Best Practices: Using Loading Knowledge Modules on both On-Premises and Cloud Computing.

Learn more about using Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) to load Business Intelligence Cloud Service (BICS) from Richard Williams of the A-Team...

It is not new to hear that ODI can load data into the Business Intelligence Cloud Service (BICS) environments.  (These use Database as a Service (DBaaS) as the underlying database.)

The recent 12.2.1.2.6 release of ODI (back in December 2016) however, added the ability to load data into BICS environments based on a Schema Service Database. ODI does this by using the BICS REST API.

The article written by Richard walks through the following steps to set up ODI to load data into the BICS schema service database:

• Downloading latest version of ODI
• Configuring the physical and logical connection to BICS in ODI
• Loading BICS knowledge modules
• Reverse engineering BICS model
• Creating a simple mapping
• Importing the BICS certificate into the trust store for the standalone agent

READ the article:  Using Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) to Load BI Cloud Service (BICS).

Additionally, for other A-Team articles about BICS - read here.

Thanks Richard!

Within Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.6, Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2 employs Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) data sources to maintain a pool of connections for database connectivity. These JDBC data sources are associated with the managed servers (such as oacore and forms) in which Oracle E-Business Suite applications are deployed.

Connections are checked out and then returned to the data source when the request is complete. A connection is said to be leaked if it is not returned, no longer associated with the connection pool, or otherwise recoverable.

If you're seeing an unusual number of database connections or are having database performance issues, you might be experiencing a connection leak.  We've published a white paper that provides a framework for troubleshooting JDBC Data Source connection pool issues:

• Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 Data Source Connection Pool Diagnostics (Note 1940996.1)

This white paper covers:

• Using WebLogic Console in WebLogic Server (WLS) to monitor JDBC connections
• Interpreting output from Level 1 and 2 diagnostics to identify connection leaks
• Using GV$SESSION to list current JDBC connections and status

Getting support

If you continue to experience database performance issues or a disproportionate number of JDBC connections after going through that Note, you should log a Service Request with Oracle Support for assistance.

Related Articles

• Understanding JDBC Connections From the eBusiness Middle Tier
  
• Achieving Optimal Performance with Oracle E-Business Suite