One of my projects requires Oracle BPM Enterprise 10g Standalone (used to be BEA ALBM, AquaLogic BPM before that, and Fuego BPM originally) integrated with the Portal, Oracle WebCenter Interaction 10g. Being in more of an Application Architect role rather than a Sys Admin, I don't normally get hands-on installing software on servers, unless it is for a proof-of-concept. The team needed a development instance to work against, so I volunteered to configure the server with an Oracle consultant's assistance.
Sometimes installation instructions are really good and other times they really suck. Usually, its one or the other, but the Oracle installation instructions were both at the same time. BPM Enterprise had references to software versions 6.5, 10g, and 10.3.1 – please try to get at least your version numbers in your documentation that you provide to your users consistent! Come to think of it, so did WebCenter Interaction...
The consultant and I spent a week trying to get WebCenter Interaction 10g and BPM Enterprise 10g Standalone to 1) install correctly, and 2)integrate with each other, without success. During the second week, I managed to find some obscure documentation that just happened to be the key to solving our issue, but it was so late at night and I was so tired, I still can't figure out how I found this jewel of information on the Oracle site. All I know is Google is a wonderful search tool.
The 2 Oracle consultants, installing the software in two different parts of the company I work at, were running into the same issues. Somehow, I had stumbled upon the solution even before the Oracle guys heard about it. In the configuration guide in docs65 for Oracle BPM 10.3, there is a section describing how to configure BPM to use the directory service provided by WebCenter Interaction. The guide says:
Principal Specifies the principal or ID used to connect to the ALI LDAP
provider. For example, uuid= ali_admin_user,ou=osers,dc=oracle,dc=com
We tried that and failed. We tried all sorts of Oracle/BEA/AquaLogic passwords and no soap. Each time resulting in an unusable BPM installation, so it's time to uninstall, reboot, reinstall, etc. Oh yeah, we are on Windows 2003 Server platform... other people who use that server are getting annoyed with all the reboots...
After all this going on for a whole week, in the middle of the second week, I VPN from home to try this little piece of information I found on the Oracle website. For the LDAP config, it's not “ou=osers,dc=oracle,dc=com”, but it is “ou=users,dc=bea,dc=com”. And like magic, BPM is able to integrate with the Directory Services provided by WebCenter Interaction. Hmm... I guess it's a BEA product after all.
Two days later, the other consultant lets me know he has found a way to install the products successfully, but tells me that it's not official, because its not documented anywhere. 10 guesses what the magic phrase is (and the first 10 don't count). Yup, exactly what I found 2 nights before. Now somebody tell me why I had to find this information?
Ok enough venting... I feel much better now...
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