building an oracle 11g soa install on centos5

Over the last few days I've built a CentOS 5 VMware machine with Oracle SOA 11.1.1.3 installed. This was essentially mirror of the system I built on Window to see what the issues would be and I had to work round the following:

1. If you use the VMware easy install option when creating the root partition is too small to put Oracle XE on. I used GParted to increase the partition size.
   
   
2. I didn't name the VM to begin with and ended up with localhost.localdomain. When I decided that wasn't a good idea I looked at some forums and documentation such as this one but ended up using the approach from Bob here. As root in the console type setup and then go to “Network Configuration” and edit the DNS config. Also update the /etc/hosts file.
   
   
3. When I transferred the files contained in ofm_soa_generic_11.1.1.2.0_disk1_1of1 and changed to Disk1 directory and ran ./runInstaller -jreLoc JRE_LOCATION I got a permission errors. I then tried using a oraclewls user for the sftp and running the installer, copying to /tmp instead of the oraclesoa home, checking permission on the JDK and extensive internet searching. The documentation says that it cant be run as root so that wasn't an option. The simple answer eluded me which was to chmod -R 777 ofm_soa_generic_11.1.1.2.0_disk1_1of doh!
4. I updated /etc/security/limits.conf to add

• * soft nofile 4096
• * hard nofile 4096

and also had to install some library updates which were:

• compat-db.i386 0:4.2.52-5.1
• sysstat.i386 0:7.0.2-3.el5
• compat-libstdc++-296.i386 0:2.96-138

using yum install . That got me up and running and looking at:

which was great. I then started configuring the weblogic server to support the development work from the hands on tutorial I've been working through.

Pete Raymond

I finally found the answer to my Oracle download woes in the Oracle forums where people worldwide have been unable to download software, but the problem seems to be limited to folks outside the US.

However, as the post by astramare notes by adding an HTTP proxy of 206.224.254.10 port 80 bingo you can download the JDeveloper Composite Editor from here. A quick whois by IP reveals its owned by:

OrgName: Garden Grove Unified School District

OrgID: GGUSD

Address: 10331 Stanford Ave.

City: Garden Grove

StateProv: CA PostalCode: 92640

Country: US

How very odd but thanks anyway. So after a brief hiccup as Pete Tong would say "we continue".

Pete Raymond

No JDeveloper SOA Composite Editor

How frustrating, no matter how hard I search for the JDeveloper SOA Composite Editor I cant find it. I tried updating via JDeveloper updates:

but all I get is:

If I got to the Oracle site:

I still get:

Its been like this for two days now and I'm stumped can anyone put me out of my misery?

Pete Raymond

Problems and resolutions to installing and running Oracle SOA Suite

I had a number of problems when trying to install the software. The first was trying to find a compatible database. I had Oracle 10.2.0.1.0 instance running on Centos 5 available but when using the Repository Creation Utility (RCU) you'll get an error message saying that the version must be 10.2.4. or higher.

Trying Oracle XE on a Windows 2008 server which was a domain controller also ran into difficulties in even getting the DB installed. A look on an Oracle forum indicated it might be that I was using a domain admin account rather than a local admin user. I eventually used Oracle XE on Windows 7 and all was well.

The second issue was creating the domain using the SOA Suite config.cmd in \Oracle\Middleware\home_11gR1\Oracle_SOA1\common\bin. I started by using the 11.1.1.2.0 version but this was incompatible with the data version used by RCU so had to use the 11.1.1.3.0 update to resovle this. I used an Oracle blog to help me realize that executing

SELECT version, status FROM schema_version_registry where owner = 'DEV_SOAINFRA'

gave me the wrong version.

Lastly when running the domains remember to use an administrator account to start the command shell. If you dont you'll get something similar to:

java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: oracle.jrf.wls.JRFStartup

Pete Raymond

Starting Oracle SOA Expert revision

I've decided to knuckle down and work to gain Oracle SOA Expert certification. Some searching shows http://onlineappsdba.com/index.php/2009/08/14/1z0-114-oracle-soa-foundations-adoption-and-implementation-certification-for-soa-architects/ to be a useful start point. I've read the BEA Domain Model for SOA (which reminded me of TOGAF with its building blocks) and now I'm on to the BEA SOA reference architecture. Hopefully the change to Oracle terms isn't too confusing.

So that's the top down preparation and I've combined it with some bottom up hands on work and got Getting Started with Oracle SOA Suite 11g R1 - A Hands-On Tutorial (or the install and configuration section) and downloaded the Oracle SOA software:

• WebLogic 10.3.1
• Repository Creation Utility
• SOA Suite (11.1.1.2.0)
• SOA Suite (11.1.1.3.0) (why both? I'll explain soon)
• Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Universal)
• Oracle JDeveloper 11g (11.1.1.3.0)

You'll need to have a free OTN account to download the software. Installation provided the usual challenges of minor incompatibilities which I'll cover in a future post. Until then...

Pete Raymond