Oracle BPMN Service Engine Single Instance Characteristics

Configuring High Availability for Oracle Fusion Middleware SOA Suite 5-29

5.4.2.1 Oracle BPMN Service Engine Single Instance Characteristics

Service engines are containers that host the business logic of service components in a BPM project. Each service component, such as Oracle BPMN Service Engine, Oracle BPEL Process Manager, Oracle Human Workflow, Oracle Business Rules, or Oracle Mediator is executed in its own service engine. A service engine plugs into the Oracle SOA Service Infrastructure. Oracle BPMN service engine is the service engine running in SOA Service Infrastructure that allows the execution of BPMN processes. A BPMN process provides the standard for assembling a business process using standardized activities, gateways and events in a well-defined process flow. The BPMN service engine provides functionality for the execution of potentially long-running BPMN process models. It leverages the core-infrastructure features of the Oracle BPEL Process Manager such as dehydration, dispatching, and service orchestration.

5.4.2.1.1 Oracle BPMN Service Engine Single Instance Architecture As shown in

Figure 5–18 , The BPMN service engine is a stateless part of the Oracle SOA Service Infrastructure that builds on top of the Oracle BPEL Process Manager Service Engine. For detailed information about Oracle BPEL Process Manager and high availability see Section 5.3, Oracle BPEL Process Manager and High Availability Concepts. Figure 5–18 Oracle BPMN Service Engine Single-Instance Architecture The BPMN service engine leverages the BPEL PM dispatcher module to dispatch incoming messages from binding components JMS, database, Web Services for processing. The state of process execution is saved in the SOA database through a persistence module based on Java Persistence Architecture JPA. The auditing infrastructure of Oracle WebLogic Server: SOA Infrastructure J2EE App Human Workflow Services Engine BPEL4 People Compatible Task Processor Task Routing Rules Organizational Data BPMN Service Engine Auditing and Measurements BPEL Engine Core Infrastructure In-memory Queue Dispatch Processing Process Persistence Audit Metrics User Directory HTTP Messages DB Messages SOA DB and BPM DB jdbcSOADataSource SOA MDS jdbcmdsMDS_LocalTxDataSource JMS Messages 5-30 Oracle Fusion Middleware High Availability Guide the BPMN service engine continuously audits the work being processed by the engine and stores audit records in the BPM database. Those audit records are used as a source for measurements and integration with Oracle Business Activity Monitoring BAM. The BPMN service engine runs inside the SOA Service Infrastructure Java EE application soa-infra.ear. Since it is built on top of the BPEL Process Manager, it has identical characteristics. See Section 5.3.1.1, BPEL Process Manager Component Characteristics for more information.

5.4.2.1.2 Oracle BPMN Service Engine External Dependencies The BPMN service engine

depends on the following components: ■ SOA Service Infrastructure database for BPMN process state persistence ■ BPM database for persistence of analytics data By default, the BPM database is collocated with the SOA Service Infrastructure database and requires no additional setup. ■ MDS repository for BPMN process metadata store The components in Figure 5–18 must be available for the BPMN service engine to start and run properly. Depending on the BPM project, the BPMN service engine might depend on the following additional components: ■ BAM adapter ■ User directory. For example, Oracle Internet Directory or another LDAP server that is configured to work with BPM.

5.4.2.1.3 Oracle BPMN Service Engine Startup and Shutdown Lifecycle As shown in

Figure 5–19 , when the Oracle SOA Service Infrastructure application starts, it initializes the BPMN service engine and loads the composites from the MDS repository. If the composite contains any BPMN processes, it targets those individual components to the BPMN service engine. Once the process is loaded and its BPM specific metadata persisted in the database, the system is available to receive requests. Figure 5–19 Startup and Shutdown Lifecycle of Oracle BPMN Service Engine The detailed startup and shutdown lifecycle is: 1. Start BPM Server. Configuring High Availability for Oracle Fusion Middleware SOA Suite 5-31 2. Start BPMN service engine. 3. BPM project composites are loaded from the MDS repository by the SOA Service Infrastructure. 4. BPMN components are dispatched to the BPMN service engine to be loaded. 5. The BPM project metadata, such as organization data and auditmeasurement metadata, is persisted in the infrastructure database. 6. Composite binding components are activated. 7. The BPMN engine services requests. 8. The shutdown signal is received by the SOA Service Infrastructure. 9. The SOA Service Infrastructure starts unloading composites. 10. Composite binding components are disabled. 11. BPMN components are dispatched to the BPMN engine to be unloaded. 12. The BPMN service engine shuts down.

5.4.2.1.4 Oracle BPMN Service Engine Log Files BPMN service engine loggers are set to

INFO by default. When trying to track down a message or instance, you may want to set the loggers to TRACE level to enable more output to the WebLogic Server log files. The BPMN service engine logs trace information to the same files as the SOA Service Infrastructure. For the location of the server logs, see Section 5.2.1.6, Oracle SOA Service Infrastructure Log File Locations.

5.4.2.2 Oracle BPMN Service Engine High Availability Considerations