Why Mock Services?

MockMotor, a Mock Server For the last few years, I’ve been working on a mock server application, MockMotor. Why? Testing with mocks is essential in any SOA environment, including the ones based on OSB. As the number of services in the system grows, it becomes harder and harder to line up all required backends for a round of testing. Seeding those backends becomes a tedious and error-prone work. Troubleshooting those backends and their inter-dependencies becomes an increasingly long process.

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Optimize Namespaces to Reduce XML Size

Make your XMLs smaller by eliminating duplicate namespaces. Why XML Size Matters Size of payload XML can make a service slow in few ways: Service parses the XML slower Service transforms the XML slower Service serializes the XML slower before sending them over the wire The XML travels over the wire slower If the XML is stored (in cache or on disk), its serialized version takes longer to save or read Generally, we want our XMLs to be smaller if we need our services be faster.

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Easy Way To Test Your OSB Code

Reproducible testing of web services requires mock services. Meet MockMotor. How Do You Test Your OSB Code? A composite and often even pass-through service in OSB requires a testing to prove it works. You may need to test multiple scenarios, including but not limiting to: Account-specific logic Incorrect inputs Backend error conditions Partial failures and recovery Retries Performance under load How do you do it? Web Services Testing is a Common Problem Every time we create web services (OSB or standalone, SOAP or REST, no difference), we have to test them.

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Step by Step 1 Hour Guide

It only takes 1 hour and a few simple steps to install and start using GenericParallel. Do it now! Please note: this guide project is available for your reference as an OSB project within the distribution ZIP under name QuickStart.jar. STEP 1. Download GenericParallel Extracted GenericParallel distribution Download the distribution ZIP and extract it into a temporal working directory. STEP 2. Import Into OEPE (Eclipse) OSB project before importing GenericParallel

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Primer: Calling Multiple Services

This is the shortest guide for making an OSB parallel call with GenericParallel. I assume the GenericParallel service is already deployed on your domain. (If not, here’s the guide.) All you need to do then is to call the GenericParallel entry proxy located at GenericParallel/GenericParallel path. The entry proxy takes a list of requests to execute. For example, collecting the monthly bill for electricity and heating may look like this:

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Primer: Passing the User Headers

How to pass OSB user headers to and from the backend service in a parallel call. A split-join service drops all user headers. End of story. This is because split-join is not really an OSB service, but an implementation of a BPEL engine. It has no idea of OSB-specific concepts such as user headers. As usual, GenericParallel has a built-in workaround for this limitation. Passing User Headers to the Backend To pass user headers with requests via GenericParallel, the caller just needs to include them as attributes of the element.

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Primer: Passing the SOAP Headers

How to pass SOAP headers to and from backend service in parallel calls. In an ideal world, a split-join service would pass any SOAP headers to the backend service and back without any effort. In the real world, the headers inevitably get lost along the way. There is apparently a predefined set of conditions that both the WSDL and the request must comply with for the headers to travel through safely; however, most services I see in the real world simply do not comply.

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Primer: Limiting the Concurrency

Putting a cap on the maximum number of parallel request in GenericParallel. Parallel calls are an extremely powerful tool and, like any powerful tool, can be dangerous. Hitting a backend service with 5 parallel requests will reduce the response time. Hitting the same service with 50 parallel requests may bring that service down, causing a prolonged downtime. Overload Protection To prevent accidental overloading, GenericParallel uses the concept of maximum concurrency.

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Using JSONPath to Query JSON in OSB

Extracting values from JSON is much easier with JSONPath. Download the full example. Recently we have used Javascript to query and update JSON payloads. There is a way to extract necessary values from JSON in a much simpler way. Meet JSONPath. See other posts about OSB & JSON: Using Javascript to Inspect & Modify JSON Payload JSON Proxies: Inspecting & Modifying the Payload (using conversion to XML) Why JSON Does Help Direct Proxy Performance How To Build a JSON Pass-Through Proxy in OSB OSB and JSON Proxies: Gathering Statistics

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Graceful Degradation for OSB

You should realize that not all services are equally useful. Some, like submitting orders, are directly generating revenue to your company. Some others, like getting orders history, while important, can be sacrificed to let orders get submitted. When the system is under a higher then usual load, how can we dynamically shutdown non-essential services to release more resources to the essential ones? Our Playground: the Orders Service For our experiments, I’m going to use a mock service that has two operations:

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Using Javascript to Inspect & Modify JSON Payload

How to read and update JSON in OSB with JRE’s Javascript Engine. Download the full example. In the previous article we updated a JSON payload by converting it to XML (and back). However, the code that does the transformation is not very readable. Can we, inside of OSB, use a scripting language which is more native to JSON? Say, … Javascript? See other posts about OSB & JSON: JSON Proxies: Inspecting & Modifying the Payload (using conversion to XML) Why JSON Does Help Direct Proxy Performance How To Build a JSON Pass-Through Proxy in OSB OSB and JSON Proxies: Gathering Statistics

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Dehydration for OSB: How to Run Long Transactions and Not Run Out-of-Memory

Offload the currently unused in-memory XMLs to a persistent storage, like BPEL does. Download examples. Slow backends can kill the JVM if they are used in a composite service. The data are accumulated in the service while the backend service is taking its time to respond. Make the service slow enough and the data big enough, and the heap will be all consumed up. Can we do something about it?

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How to Create a Diagram of an OSB Domain

A 10000-ft view of an OSB domain, in 5 minutes, with TransitMap. Is it possible to understand the inter-connectivity of a complex OSB domain? Is walking through the code step by step and making notes, both on paper and mentally, the only way? Can we generate a diagram of the domain? I have created a utility that visualizes an OSB domain or a selected subset of projects in one, to help me in figuring out some of the most complex projects I have to work with.

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How to Use Unit of Order with OSB

Using Unit-of-Order with OSB. Download the test project. Unit-of-Order (UOO) is an Oracle (BEA) extension to standard JMS. It enforces the order of messages with the same key so that the messages are consumed in the order they were added to the queue. This functionality works in a cluster, too, by assigning each UOO key to one and only one managed server. When Ordered Updates Are Needed Suppose I update my phone number on a site.

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Dynamic Routing to Foreign Pipelines and Flows

Dynamic routing to other projects’ pipelines and flows using thunks. OSB 12 is out. The dynamic routing functionality in OSB 12 has been extended with the ability to call pipelines and flows (a.k.a. split-joins) directly. A direct call to a pipeline is better for performance. A direct call to a flow is just more convenient than a call via a Biz with Flow transport: you do not need that Biz now, at all.

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How To Hide Dependency Libraries in an OSB Callout JAR

How to place dependency libraries into a JAR and hide them from the callout dialog. Sometimes we have to use OSB’s Java callouts. On many occasions the callout Java code requires the use of external libraries (dependency JARs). Here comes the problem: how to deploy these dependency JARs? Should we deploy the dependencies as JAR resources right into the OSB project? Or should we package them into the callout JAR itself?

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JSON Proxies: Inspecting & Modifying the Payload

How to read and update JSON in OSB. Download the full example. UPDATE from future! DO NOT CONVERT JSON to XML! It is a pain if you need to convert it back! Use Javascript! Using Javascript to Inspect & Modify JSON Payload See other posts about OSB & JSON: Why JSON Does Help Direct Proxy Performance How To Build a JSON Pass-Through Proxy in OSB OSB and JSON Proxies: Gathering Statistics We can make a pass-through JSON proxy in OSB pretty easily.

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OSB and JSON Proxies: Gathering Statistics

How to collect OSB per-operation statistics for a JSON proxy. Download the full example. See other posts about OSB & JSON: Why JSON Does Help Direct Proxy Performance How To Build a JSON Pass-Through Proxy in OSB JSON Proxies: Inspecting & Modifying The Payload (Special thanks to Saeed Awan for the reference implementation.) In one of my previous posts, I demonstrated how to implement a simple pass-through JSON proxy.

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Split-Join: Getting Fault Details in CatchAll

To get fault details in split-join’s CatchAll, call an intermediary proxy. When split-join invokes an OSB business service and that call fails, CatchAll does not help. Instead of detailed information of what went wrong, the fault variable contains only a single element from the BPEL extensions namespace. Utterly useless. At the same time, if the error is re-raised with the Re-Raise Error block, the code calling the split-join gets the correct description of the fault.

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How To Build a JSON Pass-Through Proxy in OSB

This is a step-by-step guide on how to implement a pass-through JSON proxy in OSB. Download the full example. See other posts about OSB & JSON: Why JSON Does Help Direct Proxy Performance OSB and JSON Proxies: Gathering Statistics JSON Proxies: Inspecting & Modifying The Payload JSON is cool, but OSB doesn’t recognize it as a first-class data format. OSB cannot validate it, cannot transform it, and cannot even add the smallest security token to the JSON payload.

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Throttling, Unbalanced & Over-Allocated

A service’s domain-wide throttling value may be different from what you have configured for it. I have mentioned already that the throttling value assigned to a service on a specific managed server is calculated as the throttling value from the configuration divided by the number of managed servers, and rounded up if not whole. There are curious extensions from this statement. Servers May Have Unequal Throttling (e.g. 6, 6, 4) Huh?

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Work Manager Is Not A Thread Pool Max Threads Constraint Iss

Sharing Max Threads Constraint between multiple Work Managers causes them to share the same thread pool. It is natural to think of a Work Manager as a thread pool, and of Max Threads Constraint as a property of that pool. Therefore it is natural to create, say, 3 Work Managers and assign each of them a Max Thread Constraint of 30 – the same named constraint (e.g. “MaxThreads30”). The problem is that it’s wrong.

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OSB Throttling Value Is Per Domain

Throttling value, unlike the max threads constraint, is divided equally between all managed servers in the domain. Throttling allows you to limit the number of concurrent requests to a backend server. What is confusing is that the value is not per managed server, but for the whole domain. This makes sense, if you think of this use-case: You have a backend service that can only serve 20 connections at a time.

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Passing SOAP:Header via Split-Join

Most services are having all of their payload’s information in the soap:Body. Some though include meta-information located in the soap:Header. Surprisingly, Split-Join simply drops the soap:Header values. The documentation says it should support them, but I failed to make it work. What to do if you got to pass soap:Header values through Split-Join? How To Pass SOAP:Header In Plain Split-Join: A Hack If you have to use the naked Split-Join facility, I pity you.

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About Throttling

Use throttling in business services to protect the OSB from stuck threads. Throttling allows us to limit the number of outgoing requests currently in progress. At first, I thought it would only be useful to protect shaky downstream services, which crash if hit with too many concurrent requests at once. And throttling is useful for that. But not only for that. It is also useful to protect the OSB itself from too many stuck threads.

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Toggling Extra Validation in DIT/SIT But Not In PROD

Use a marker group to toggle extended request validation in SIT/DIT but not in PROD. In DIT and SIT, it makes sense to validate every detail about the incoming request and the outbound response. Developers are making mistakes populating the data, outdated WSDLs are used, all kinds of things go wrong. The earlier the defects are found, the less expensive it’s to fix them. Validation is a must.

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Out Of Memory Errors During The OSB Build

OEPE builds take a long time and sometimes, for large domains, fail with OutOfMemory errors. Turns out this is not a heap OOM, but a PermGen space one. [java] Exporting to /srvrs/esb_tp/build/output/paypal2/paypal2-sbconfig-140122-212239.jar... [java] Exception in thread "Worker-4" [java] Exception: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError thrown from the UncaughtExceptionHandler in thread "Worker-4" [java] Exception in thread "Worker-1" [java] Exception: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError thrown from the UncaughtExceptionHandler in thread "Worker-1" The setup is complicated by the fact that the launcher started from build.

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SOLVED! "Application ConfigExport could not be found in the registry"

‘Application “com.bea.alsb.core.ConfigExport” could not be found in the registry’ is due to some artifacts left in the build directories from the previous build. Clean them up and the error will be gone. Did you have your OSB build failed for no reason with this puzzling message: Application “com.bea.alsb.core.ConfigExport” could not be found in the registry. (No? You’re lucky, you can enjoy life; the rest - please read on) !ENTRY org.

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Why OSB Read Just Doesn't Time Out

Business Service call may take much longer than the timeout specified for that service. OSB business services have connect and read timeouts to prevent indefinite waiting for the backend service. Just set it to, for instance, 15 seconds and the call will never last longer than that! … Right? Nope. It can take forever. First, let’s realize what “read timeout” really means. Read timeout is not triggered when the request is not completed 15 seconds after successful connect.

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And Why JSON Does Help Direct Proxy Performance

For direct OSB proxies, passing JSON content instead of XML will improve the overall end-to-end performance due to much smaller serialization and deserialization overhead. See other posts about OSB & JSON: How To Build a JSON Pass-Through Proxy in OSB OSB and JSON Proxies: Gathering Statistics JSON Proxies: Inspecting & Modifying The Payload In my previous post I attempted (and failed) to improve the performance of a service with a large response by gzipping its payload.

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Why GZip Doesn't Help Direct Proxy's Performance

For direct OSB proxies, passing XML content as GZip will not improve the end-to-end performance due to extra time required for gzipping and un-gzipping. There is a service I have to deal with which is a constant headache. The service returns a huge, 1Mbyte or more, XML with all kinds of information. The web application that calls the service experiences a very noticeable delay, which affects the user experience.

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