Multi-Environment Deployment Test Case

As always, I've had a number of distractions but I am finally back and ready to continue my multi-environment test.  I would like to configure an actual deployment so that my "Partner Links" point to the correct URL when they are deployed to my various environments.

I have two different BPEL Processes that I would like to use together.

1. First I will take my "HelloWorld" process.  This is a very simple, easy to work with program.
2. I will then take a BPEL process called "GetProfile" and add it to  my "HelloWorld" process.  The "GetProfile" process is a simple flow that requires a profile name as an input and with the use of a database call it collects the value for the requested profile.
3. So when I enter my input name for the "HelloWorld" process, I want to get the output greeting of "Hello Ben!  You are logged into DEV"  with DEV being the result from the "GetProfile" partner link call.
4. When I deploy and run the process, I should get the correct profile value for the environment. Development -> DEV - System Test -> SYS - and Production -> PRD.

I will be able to tell right away if my partner link is still pointing at development or if the URL points to the new environment.  In my next post I will post the steps involved in preparing this type of deployment and any challenges that I experienced.

Deploying to Multiple Environments with Different Configuration Values

If you are using 10.1.3.1 as I am, there is good news on customizing deployment tasks.  If you go to the 19th chapter of the  Oracle BPEL Developers guide, you will find the following paragraph.  The guide also provides a working example of how to implement different configurations.

19.1.3 Deploying to Multiple Environments with Different Configuration Values

When the testing and development phase of a BPEL process has completed, you are ready to deploy the process to a production environment. The configuration properties for the production environment are typically different from those for the development environment. For example, the partner link Web service URL for the production environment is typically different from the one used in the testing environment.

In previous releases, you resolved this conflict by modifying the bpel.xml deployment descriptor file or providing separate bpel.xml files for the development and production environments. This was a big effort if the bpel.xml file required many modifications or if you had multiple versions of bpel.xml that required modifications.

Beginning with this release, a customize ant task is provided that enables you to specify the property value for development and production environments in a single build file location. The customize task captures the changes between different versions of bpel.xml using the build file. This task can be used as a subtask of bpelc or as a standalone ant task. The bpelc subtask can contain multiple customize tasks. The customize task can contain multiple subtasks.

I believe it's time to create an example process to test and get familiar with the customize deployment tasks feature.

Partner Links

Context: 

In our environment, we maintain three different systems:  Our Development (DEV), our System Test (SYS), and our Production (PROD) systems.  When we develop we do our work in the DEV environment.  On completion of that development we deploy all our changes to the SYS environment for testing the code and testing the deployment process.  Once we have tested the functionality and deployment of changes, we then deploy our change to production.

Problem:

With the context of how we develop and deploy, I am trying to figure out how to reference partner links in such a way that when we go to deploy the change into one of our other environments that all these links are pointing to the new deployment environment.

I put this post in the category of deployment thinking that somehow the deployment process can handle re-directing these partner links to the correct services on the environment that I am deploying to.  But I acknowledge that this could be something that is handled as part of developing the BPEL process.

I hope to have an update soon, in which case I will post an update.  If you have some information or links to appropriate information please share.

Welcome

Thank you for visiting this blog.  I hope to link to some very interesting tech news and information here.  Some of the posts may be very technical, others may be more general in nature.  We'll see how things play out.

I've been is software development for about fifteen years.  I started using a pure OO programming language called Smalltalk.  A lot of the Smalltalk applications that I worked on interfaced to Oracle databases.  This is where I slowly migrated into the Oracle arena.  Over the last ten years, my primary focus has been developing custom applications that fit into the Oracle ERP suit or extend the functionality that Oracle provides.  I've used a variety of Oracle development tools like Oracle Forms, Oracle Reports, SQL, and PL/SQL.

Recently, I've been doing more and more development in some of Oracle's more recent offerings:  SOA, BPEL, and OA Framework.  I'm hoping to post some problems, challenges that I faced as I have been learning and using these new technologies.