Oracle BPM Suite 11g: New Book

Packt has asked me to review this book, I have just downloaded it and I will start reading it tomorrow. However one of friends told me that the book is good and it covers SOA too.

It worth to mention that BPM is an important part of Middleware which facilitates building of business processes by business users, and those processes are SOA based. I didn't use it yet, after reviewing the book I will come with an example of how to use BPM and UCM together.

I wish Packt will change their books' titles to "Hands On" :D which became very helpful to start with Oracle Middleware solutions in short time.

Missing Configuration for Integration between OIM and ORM with JBOSS

I was facing an error after doing the integration between Oracle Identity Manager and Oracle Role Manager where OIM installed on Linux server and ORM in Windows server, here is a snapshot from the log

03:39:40,216 WARN  [IntegrationUtilities] No plugin configuration files found in /oracle/idm-home/jboss-4.2.3/bin/c:\ORMINT_HOME\/config
03:39:40,217 ERROR [TASK] Class/Method: SchedulerBaseTask/run encounter some problems: {1}
java.lang.NullPointerException
    at oracle.iam.rm.imframework.scheduledTasks.ScheduledIntegrationTask.init(ScheduledIntegrationTask.java:135)
    at com.thortech.xl.scheduler.tasks.SchedulerBaseTask.run(Unknown Source)
    at com.thortech.xl.scheduler.core.quartz.QuartzWrapper$TaskExecutionAction.run(Unknown Source)
    at Thor.API.Security.LoginHandler.jbossLoginSession.runAs(Unknown Source)
    at com.thortech.xl.scheduler.core.quartz.QuartzWrapper.execute(Unknown Source)
    at org.quartz.core.JobRunShell.run(JobRunShell.java:203)
    at org.quartz.simpl.SimpleThreadPool$WorkerThread.run(SimpleThreadPool.java:520)

I faced this error before when I installed OIM on windows, but for a quick way to solve the problem I moved ORMINT_HOME (ORM Integration Library location on OIM server) to the default location C:\ORMINT_HOME but after we changed OIM server to be Linux server, I had to face that issue again.

I tried to find if someone faced that issue before or not I didn't find help, even I opened Service Request on Metalink but without any help. That's because ORM is a new product and there are only few implementations for it (by the way I am not a fan for that system).

The solution for this error is very simple but not mentioned in documentation, there is a system property that needs to be added to JBoss and it will be used by OIM for integration purposes with ORM. That property is ORMINT_ROOT_DIR and it will be added with a value to properties-service.xml file (you can find it under /server/default/deploy )

<attribute name="Properties">
      ORMINT_ROOT_DIR=/oracle/idm-home/ORMINT_HOME
<\attribute>

AD integration in OpenText Hummingbird vs Oracle UCM

I am working in Oracle IDM project currently, and I have to provision users to Hummingbird and Hummingbird in this case integrated with Active Directory. So I were in my mind making a comparison between Oracle UCM and OpentText Hummingbird and I want to share it here.

In Oracle UCM, it is a full integration why because user roles and accounts will be represented in AD as security groups, so I want to give an AD user the contributor role, just assign to him contributor security group form inside AD. Also you can make a custom user attributes from inside UCM to AD user attributes like user manager or any other attribute.

In OpenText Hummingbird especially with Document Management module and Records Management modules, the admin have to import users from AD manually and assign security groups and permissions from inside the system, which means it is not full integration, Hummingbird is just using AD as a repository of users info not a repository for security.

Another thing Oracle UCM is like an open source application it is open, you can change any functionality you want, its database schema is not sealed and the schema is very easy to be used and modified. But Hummingbird's database is not allowing that, if you tried to add new records or delete records, the system will throw exceptions and errors.

In my opinion, Oracle UCM is one of the best applications you can integrate with. So If I am a decision maker I will always choose UCM because of integrations easiness.

Integrating Universal Content Management with Active Directory

Here I will list steps for integrating Active Directory with Universal Content Management, then I will list troubleshooting tips for this integration. I wish it will be helpful for someone.

Integration Steps

1. Create organization unit in Active Directory named Stellent

2. Create a sub organization unit under Stellent named Roles

3. Under Roles create AD Security Groups with the same name as UCM Roles (like contributor, and admin)

4. In Content Server Home Page, open Admin Server page

5. Open Content Server instance that we will integrate on

6. Open Internet Configuration page

7. From Use Microsoft Security options choose Active Directory Security option

8. Restart Content Server for the current instance

9. In Content Server Home Page, under Administration tab open Filter Administration page

10. In front of Active Directory Security, click on Configure link

11. Under Role Prefix, add the following “OU=Roles,OU=Stellent[1]”

12. Click Update, at end of the Filter Administration page

13. Restart Content Server, and IIS (restart IIS from Servcies)

Troubleshooting Steps

If you faced any problem after the above steps, check the following

1. In IIS, open Direct Security, for Content Server website, then edit Authentication and access control, then ensure that Anonymous access and Integrated Windows authentication are enabled. After modification restart IIS

2. In Active Directory and Active Directory Configuration page (in Content Server Home Page) ensure that you didn’t misspell organization units names and AD security groups

3. In Active Directory Configuration page (in Content Server Home Page) ensure that you didn’t but spaces between words under Role Prefix

4. If you still face a problem restart IIS (from Services, not from Administration), and Content Server.

5. At last, if you still face a problem ensure you did the above steps well, and Restart Windows