This One Off addresses a number of bugs and also provides additional functionality.

Key Changes

Context Header Enhancements:

• Organization ID: The context headers for all services has been enhanced considerably. We now support Organization ID as an optional header field. This new header field is required for all services that are Organization sensitive.
• Parameter Name Changes (PL/SQL & Concurrent Programs): The Responsibility, Application & Security Group header parameter names have changed (more on this topic in a future post).
• Parameter Changes (Business Service Objects): The responsibility_name parameter has been modified to accept both the “Responsibility Name” as well as the “Responsibility Key” (more on this topic in a future post).

National Language Support:

The Integrated SOA Gateway has been enhanced to be NLS compliant. E-Business Suite web services exposed via the Integrated SOA Gateway can now consume SOAP messages in any of the languages supported by EBS. The context header contains a field where the language can be specified. Service response and error messages, if any, will be returned in the specified language. The user’s default language is used when no language is specified in the SOAP message.

Support for Security Grant on Overloaded Methods:

With this One Off, SOA Gateway administrators can now assign unique grants for individual overloaded methods to a specific user, user groups or all users. The Integration Repository UI has been enhanced to support this.

SSL-based Web Service Invocation over HTTPS:

Service Invocation Framework now supports SSL-based Web service invocation using Server Authentication method. When a client connects to a Web server securely via HTTPS, the server sends back its server certificate to the client for verification. Once verified, the client sends the data, encrypted, to the server. Server authentication allows the client to identify the server. Before invoking a Web service from a server over HTTPS (HTTP protocol over TLS/SSL), some manual setup tasks need to be performed to read SSL-based WSDLs and invoke SSL service endpoints.

Service Generation Backend Processing Support:

This is a brand new feature that allows SOA Gateway administrators to Generate web services on the EBS instance via a script. A standalone soagenerate.sh shell script is shipped with the One Off and can be used to generate PL/SQL, Concurrent Program & XML Gateway Map services from the command prompt.

Integration Repository UI Changes:

This One Off includes a few Integration repository UI changes. The most important one is to the Generate Service UI which prevents multiple, concurrent requests to generate the same service.

Documentation:

• Metalink Note 815196.1
• Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway User's Guide (E12064-03, August 2009)
• Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway Implementation Guide (E12169-03, August 2009)
• Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway Developer's Guide (E12065-03, August 2009)

Existing Users:

Existing users of the Integrated SOA Gateway will have to Regenerate & Redeploy their web services after applying this One Off patch. This is required for the WSDL changes to the Context Headers (SOAHeader). This can be done from the Integration Repository UI. Please see the release notes for details.

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Related posts:

1. Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 – Integrated SOA Gateway’s Service Invocation Framework Yesterday I wrote about the SOA Monitor, an important feature...
2. Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 – Integrated SOA Gateway Provides Native, Out-Of-The-Box SOAP Based Web Services Oracle Corporation announced the availability of Oracle® E-Business Suite Release...
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From Steven Chan’s Blog, Oracle E-Business Suite Technology:

• Integration Simplified: Native Service-Oriented Architecture in Oracle E-Business Suite (OpenWorld 2008 Recap)

Oracle Open World 2008 Presentation:

• Oracle Open World 2008 Presentation - Integration Simplified: Native Service-Oriented Architecture in Oracle E-Business Suite (PDF, 1.2 MB)

From this blog – A series of HOW-TOs :

• Part 1 - Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 – Integrated SOA Gateway Provides Native, Out-Of-The-Box SOAP Based Web Services  
• Part 2 - Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 – Integrated SOA Gateway’s SOA Monitor
• Part 3 - Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 – Integrated SOA Gateway’s Service Invocation Framework
• Part 4 - Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 – Integrated SOA Gateway’s Service Invocation Framework – Invoking a 3rd Party SOAP Based Web Service from EBS

From other blogs and web sites:

• Invoke Web Service via Business Event - Posted by Anil Passi on the Apps to Fusion blog
• Raising Business Event from PL/SQL or Java Layer - Posted by Anil Passi on the Apps to Fusion blog

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1. Integrated SOA Gateway Presentation in Oracle Open World 2008 Veshaal Singh, Director, Software Development Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Technology...
2. Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 – Integrated SOA Gateway’s Service Invocation Framework Yesterday I wrote about the SOA Monitor, an important feature...
3. Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 – Integrated SOA Gateway’s SOA Monitor Yesterday I wrote about the new Integrated SOA Gateway (ISG)....

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Veshaal is responsible for all Integration areas with the EBS ATG group, including Workflow, the Integrated SOA Gateway, XMLGateway, EDI etc. He also runs the software development team responsible for the E-Business Suite Secure Enterprise Search and the AOL APIs.

Neeraj is the Product Manager who designed and nurtured the Integrated SOA Gateway solution that is now available in the Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1.

And I? Well I am the test jockey who makes sure the code they write actually does what they claim it will. Keep them honest that is.

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Related posts:

1. Integrated SOA Gateway – Links This post is a simple collection of Integrated SOA Gateway...
2. Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 – Integrated SOA Gateway’s Service Invocation Framework Yesterday I wrote about the SOA Monitor, an important feature...
3. Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 – Integrated SOA Gateway’s SOA Monitor Yesterday I wrote about the new Integrated SOA Gateway (ISG)....

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Links to related posts:

• Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 – Integrated SOA Gateway Provides Native, Out-Of-The-Box SOAP Based Web Services
• Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 – Integrated SOA Gateway’s SOA Monitor

The Service Invocation Framework (SIF) is built on top of the Business Event framework. I will not go into the details of Business Events, Workflow etc in this post. I will show you how to create a Business Event & Subscription to invoke a EBS SOAP based web service. In the next post I will cover calling a 3rd party SOAP based web service.

We will use the same PL/SQL based web service, FND_PROFILE, that we generated and used in part 1 of this series. The first step is to create a new Business Event. Log in to your EBS R12.1 instance with a user that has the Workflow Administrator Web Applications Responsibility and select Business Event from the menu to go to the Search Business Events page.

Fig 1. The Business Event search page

Click the Create Event button on the Search Business Event page to create a new Business Event. You will need to provide:

• A Name for you new Business Event
• A Display Name
• The Owner – we will just use “Oracle Workflow”
• The Owner Tag – we will use “FND”

Fig. 2. New Business Event created

Next we need a Subscription for our Business Event. Navigate back to the Business Event search page and search for the newly created Business Event. Note that the Business Event does not have any Subscriptions at this time.

Fig 3. No Subscriptions in Business Event

Lets create a new Subscription. Click the Subscriptions icon.

Fig 4. No Subscriptions in our new Business Event

Click the Create Subscription button.

Fig 5. Creating a new Subscription

We need the following information:

• The Subscriber System
• The Execution Condition – Phase: We want a synchronous web service call. So set it to a value less than 100. We used 50 here.
• The Action Type – Set it to “Invoke Web Service”

Click the Next button.

Fig 6. The Load WSDL page

Now we need the WSDL link to the EBS SOAP based web service we want to invoke. We can copy the link from the Integration Repository page for the FND_PROFILE service and paste it here. The Service Invocation Framework will load and parse the WSDL when we click the Next button.

Fig 7. Select Service

SIF has parsed the WSDL and extracted the necessary details. Select the Service and click the Next button.

Fig 8. Select the Service Port

On the next page select the Service Port and click the Next button.

Figure 9. Select the Operation

In the Select Operation screen SIF will list all the Operations exposed by the WSDL. We want to use the GET operation. Select it and click the Next button.

Fig 10. The Subscription Documentation page

The Subscription Documentation page needs a number of important Parameters:

• WFBES_CALLBACK_EVENT = oracle.apps.fnd.soa.CallBackEvent
• WFBES_CALLBACK_AGENT = WF_WS_JMS_IN
• WFBES_SOAP_USERNAME = <user name to be used for service invocation>
• WFBES_SOAP_PASSWORD_MOD = <Text value used for FND_VAULT lookup of user password>
• WFBES_SOAP_PASSWORD_KEY = <Text value used for FND_VAULT lookup of user password>

The WFBES_CALLBACK_EVENT & WFBES_CALLBACK_AGENT are self explanatory. The WFBES_SOAP_USERNAME parameter value will be used by SIF in the WSSE Header of the SOAP message. We also need a password and instead of leaving it in clear text as a Subscription Parameter, SIF uses the DB Vault to retrieve the password.

To store the password in the DB Vault, use the following command:

@$FND_TOP/sql/afvltput.sql <Password Mod> <Password Key> <password>

e.g.,

@$FND_TOP/sql/afvltput.sql ws_caller_pwd ws_caller_pwd_key sysadmin

Fig 11. Storing password in DB Vault

To verify the stored password, use the following SQL:

select fnd_vault.get ( '<Password Mod>', '<Password Key>' ) from dual;

e.g.,

select fnd_vault.get ( 'ws_caller_pwd', 'ws_caller_pwd_key' ) from dual;

Fig 12. Checking the password stored in DB Vault

Okay. Back to SIF. We specify the Mod & key for password retrieval from the DB Vault as the WFBES_SOAP_PASSWORD_MOD & WFBES_SOAP_PASSWORD_KEY parameters respectively.

Click the Apply button to create the new Subscription.

Fig. 13. Subscription created

Now we are ready to use our Event & Subscription to invoke the FND_PROFILE web service. Search for the Business Event we created earlier and click the Test icon.

Fig 14. Use the Test Business Event feature

Note: The Test functionality is available only for quick testing of Business Events. Typically you will use a Workflow to invoke the Business Event but as I mentioned at the beginning we will not go into all that. Our purpose here is to create a Business Event with SIF technology and invoke a EBS SOAP based web service. So we will click the Test button!

Fig 15. Raise Business Event in Java

While creating our new Subscription, we specified the user name to be used for the invocation. We also stored a password in the DB Vault and passed parameters to our Subscription for retrieval of the password at runtime. Now the user name and password will be used to create the WSSE Header and only help us pass the first hurdle, Authentication.

We also need to tell the Integrated SOA Gateway to Authorize us. That means we need to pass on our Responsibility, Application, Security Group ID, Organization ID and the NLS Language. We do this as an Event Parameter during service invocation. The WFBES_INPUT_HEADER header’s value  is a XML fragment comprising the SOAHeader.

<SOAHeader xmlns:ns0="http://xmlns.oracle.com/apps/fnd/soaprovider/plsql/fnd_profile/">
    <ns0:Responsibility>FND_REP_APP</ns0:Responsibility>
    <ns0:RespApplication>FND</ns0:RespApplication>
    <ns0:SecurityGroup>STANDARD</ns0:SecurityGroup>
    <ns0:NLSLanguage>AMERICAN</ns0:NLSLanguage>
    <ns0:Org_Id>204</ns0:Org_Id>
</SOAHeader>

Now comes the actual payload that will form the body of our SOAP message.

<InputParameters  xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/apps/fnd/soaprovider/plsql/fnd_profile/get/">
    <NAME>FND_ANTIVIRUS_SERVER</NAME>
</InputParameters>

Put the data in the appropriate places in the UI and click the “Raise in Java” button. This causes SIF to invoke the EBS SOAP based web service from the middle tier Java code instead of from the database layer and PL/SQL. In conjunction with the Execution Phase (value of < 99), this determines whether the invocation will be synchronous or asynchronous.

The web service will be invoked and the response (XML) displayed in a new Text Box at the bottom of the page.

Fig 16. Response from EBS SOAP based web service to invocation from SIF

Well, that’s it. The Service Invocation Framework of the Integrated SOA Gateway allows SOAP based web service invocation from an EBS instance. Tomorrow I will show how to use the same infrastructure to invoke a 3rd party, SOAP based web service.

This of course opens up endless possibilities for Integration. Given that you can expose EBS APIs as SOAP based web services to the external world and also invoke such web services from the EBS middle tier as well as the database level via PL/SQL, opens up hereto hidden vistas for Integration of EBS with other software systems.

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1. Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 – Integrated SOA Gateway Provides Native, Out-Of-The-Box SOAP Based Web Services Oracle Corporation announced the availability of Oracle® E-Business Suite Release...
2. Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 – Integrated SOA Gateway’s SOA Monitor Yesterday I wrote about the new Integrated SOA Gateway (ISG)....
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Today I will walk through the new SOA Monitor, which allows system administrators to monitor incoming SOA traffic on an EBS instance.

Yesterday we invoked the FND_PROFILE service’s GET method to read the profile value for the FND_ANTIVIRUS_SERVER Profile Option. A simplistic example I am sure but it does demonstrate the possibilities of the new Integrated SOA Gateway.

Today we will see how that web service call shows up in the SOA Monitor. The monitor is a useful tool. At least we find it useful and hope that you, the customer, will too.

Yesterday we saw that EBS R12.1 returns a SOAP response to a SOAP based web service call:

Fig 1. SOAP response to our web service call into EBS

Okay, so far so good. From the outside world we know that we made a SOAP based web service call to our EBS instance, calling a EBS PL/SQL API exposed by the new Integrated SOA Gateway.  We also saw that we got a good bang for our buck:

Fig 2. Value returned by web service call matches the the value in EBS instance

Well and good. But what about our paranoid (well, I am one, if only from the QA perspective!) system admins whose worst worry is somebody compromising the security of their system? What if somebody can make a web service call into their EBS instance and pull out the details of all their invoices? Worrying? I bet!

First of all, it is just not possible. We saw in yesterday’s post that the web service client must provide credentials to be able to invoke an EBS web service. There are two levels here:

• User Authentication: The caller is authenticated against the EBS instance based on the credentials they present as part of the WSSE Headers.
• User Authorization: So we have been authenticated. So far so good. But what are we authorized to see / update? This is where the SOAHeader I spoke about yesterday comes in play. Are you authorized to invoke this web service? Responsibility, Application, Security Group, Organization ID etc have to be provided before the Integrated SOA Gateway will allow the SOAP based web service call to go through.

So the web service client *must* authenticate and authorize itself before the actual EBS web service call is allowed. So we are safe. But what if we want an audit trail?

The EBS Applications Technology Group has provided a system to allow system administrators to “monitor” incoming SOAP web service calls via the SOA Monitor:

• Who made the request?
• What was the request? Full XML is available for review.
• What was the response from the Integrated SOA Gateway? If any.

The SOA Monitor is designed to answer these questions. The system administrator can search for incoming SOAP based web service calls by date and other parameters.

Fig 3. SOA Monitor search results screen

The system administrator can turn off the SOA Monitor by clicking the “Turn Off Web Service Monitoring” button on the SOA Monitor page.

A closer look at the search results table will show 3 columns:

• Status
• Request
• Response

Self explanatory column headings.

Clicking the Request icon for a web service invocation record will display the details of the request:

Fig 4. SOA Monitor – SOAP based web service request details

Note the SOAP Request column label and the link next to it. Clicking the link will give you the actual SOAP envelope that was sent as a part of the web service call.

Fig 5. The web service request as captured by the SOA Monitor

Okay. So far so good. The SOA Monitor captures all incoming SOAP web service calls.

What of the responses sent by EBS, if any?

The SOA Monitor captures the responses too!

Fig 6. SOA Monitor – Web Service Response

As you can see from the screen shot above, there is a link to the response. Clicking it shows the actual response XML sent back to the caller.

 
Fig 7. SOAP Response as seen from the SOA Monitor

So the EBS system administrator can monitor incoming SOAP based web service invocation traffic in to the EBS instance.

Note: Next in this series – Service Invocation Framework (SIF)

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1. Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 – Integrated SOA Gateway Provides Native, Out-Of-The-Box SOAP Based Web Services Oracle Corporation announced the availability of Oracle® E-Business Suite Release...
2. Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 – Integrated SOA Gateway’s Service Invocation Framework Yesterday I wrote about the SOA Monitor, an important feature...
3. Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway 12.1.1 Consolidated One-Off Released A consolidated One Off has been released for the Oracle...

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Note: This release is actually R12.1.1. Release 12.1 was a controlled release. You will see both versions used across web sites & documents. They all refer to the release that was announced on May 4, 2009.

First a few links:

• Announcement of the availability of Oracle® E-Business Suite Release 12.1
• Details of Oracle® E-Business Suite Release 12.1
• Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1: Release Content Documents – A good list of “What’s New” in this release.
• Oracle Applications Documentation Resources, Release 12.1 - Related links covering a lot of topics and products, and a good place to start reading

With that out of the way, on to the shinny new Integrated SOA Gateway!

What exactly is it? Well, the RCD describes it as:

… a comprehensive SOA-based integration infrastructure in the form of a new product called Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway that helps organizations to provide, consume and monitor web services for integrations in a heterogeneous ecosystem …

What that lot means is actually simple to understand – the ability to expose EBS functionality as SOAP based web services. And that includes XML Gateway, Business Service Objects, Concurrent Programs, PL/SQL APIs etc. Yes! That means you can invoke a PL/SQL procedure on an EBS instance via standard, SOAP based web service calls!

Note: I am not responsible for what they put in these documents. And that’s the last one I translate for free!

In addition to the SOA Provider, R12.1 also includes a Service Invocation Framework (SIF) and a SOA Monitor. SIF allows SOAP based web service calls to be made from within EBS and the SOA Monitor allows logging of incoming SOAP traffic. I will talk about both in a future post.

And of course the Integration Repository has a brand new face. In addition to the existing functionality it now provides UIs to manage the availability of EBS services and access control for exposed services.

Fig 1. The new Integration Repository

Note: Click on images to see a full size version.

Lets look at how this works. I have selected a PL/SQL API called FND_PROFILE. This API allows the user to manipulate profile values stored in the user profile caches. A simple PL/SQL API. Nothing fancy. Just right to demonstrate what the Integrated SOA Gateway has to offer.

When we search the Integration Repository (or browse) for this API and drill to the API’s detail page, this what we get:

Fig 2. The FND_PROFILE page in the Integration Repository

Note that we have a “Generate WSDL” button in addition to a host of information about the API. At this time the FND_PROFILE PL/SQL API is not exposed as a SOAP based web service. In order to expose it, we must first generate a WSDL for the service by clicking the “Generate WSDL” button. This is what we get:

Fig 3. FND_PROFILE Service “Generated”

The page now shows a WSDL link of the form

http:// <server> : <port> /webservices / SOAProvider / plsql / <API NAME> / ?wsdl

Clicking this will open the generated WSDL in a new browser window. But before we go do that let’s look at what else is in here. You will notice a new button named “Deploy” has appeared under the WSDL link. We have successfully generated a WSDL for our PL/SQL API but it is still not ready for prime time. We must deploy the new web service to the SOA Provider. Clicking the “Deploy” button gives us this:

Fig 4. PL/SQL Service Deployed to SOA Provider

Now lets click the WSDL link and see what it contains:

Fig 5. Part of the generated WSDL for the EBS PL/SQL API web service

The full WSDL is available here.

Now we can invoke our new service?

Apparently not. We still have to specify who can invoke this web service. For this we use the regular EBS authorization mechanism and “Create a Grant” for the service. We do this from the same Integration Repository page. Select the procedures / functions you want to be able to call and click the “Create Grant” button.

Fig 6. Selecting procedures / functions to create a new grant

In the resultant screen we see that we can have 3 different “Grantee Types”:

• All Users
• Group of Users
• Specific User

In this case we will select “Specific User” and create a grant for all the procedures exposed by the FND_PROFILE PL/SQL API and now SOAP based web service.

Fig 7. New grant created for the PL/SQL API exposed as a web service

Now we are ready to invoke our new service!

To do that we need a web service client. For the purpose of this article I have selected the excellent Open Source “SOAP UI” software. If you haven’t used it yet, do. We could use a host of different tools and technologies to invoke our new web service, including, Oracle’s Fusion Middleware and BPEL, standard Java based clients programmed in Apache Axis or similar, J2EE servers like Oracle OC4J & Weblogic, IBM Websphere and even from a Microsoft .NET (Yuk!) based client. The WSDLs generated by the Integrated SOA Gateway are standards compliant and fully interoperable. If you can do SOAP over HTTP, you can call the service!

Okay, to proceed! SOAP UI needs the WSDL to be able to invoke the service. So we copy the WSDL link from the Integration Repository page and create a new project in SOAP UI:

Fig 8. Creating a new project in SOAP UI

We paste our WSDL link from the EBS instance and select some options in the SOAP UI new project dialog:

Fig 9. New project dialog in SOAP UI

SOAP UI now does it’s magic. It reads the WSDL and all linked artifacts like the XSDs. With this it is now able to give us a nice little XML request document with some junk values filled in for the various parameters:

Fig 10. SOAP UI’s SOAP request XML

We edit this xml document to put in some meaningful data. Note the SOAHeader in the header section of the request XML. This is a custom SOAP Header required for all Integrated SOA Gateway web services. This is where we provide our EBS credentials like:

• Responsibility
• Responsibility Application
• Security Group
• Organization ID
• NLS Language

Note: We provide our authentication information (user name & password) as standard WSSE Headers.

We also need the correct payload. The FND_PROFILE API exposes three methods:

• GET
• PUT
• VALUE

I have used the GET method here. This method needs a Profile Option name and I have selected the “FND_ANTIVIRUS_SERVER” Profile Option to use here.

Fig 11. Filled in request XML

Hitting the “Run” toolbar button in SOAP UI invokes our web service!

Fig 12. Web Service Response from EBS Instance

Lets look at the EBS instance to make sure we got what we paid for:

Fig 13. The Profile Option value on the EBS instance

Viola! We synchronously invoked a PL/SQL API on an R12.1 EBS instance using SOAP over HTTP and open source tools!

The new Integrated SOA Gateway is a wonderful technology and one we hope will help EBS customers integrate their other software systems with their E-Business Suite instances more easily and in a standard manner.

Note: Over the next few weeks I will write more about the new functionality available in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1. Say tuned.

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Related posts:

1. Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway 12.1.1 Consolidated One-Off Released A consolidated One Off has been released for the Oracle...
2. Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 – Integrated SOA Gateway’s SOA Monitor Yesterday I wrote about the new Integrated SOA Gateway (ISG)....
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