One of the most common scenarios in SOA Integration is the loading of a file into the product from an external source. In Oracle SOA Suite there is a File Adapter that can process many file types into your BPEL process.

For this example I will use the File Adapter to load a file of user and emails to update the user object within the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. Remember you can repeat this process with other objects and other file types. Again I am illustrating the ease of integration.

The first thing is to create an empty BPEL process that will hold our flow. In Oracle JDeveloper this can be achieved by specifying the Define Service Later template (as other templates have predefined inputs and outputs and in this case we want to specify those). So I will create simpleFileLoad process to house our process.

You will start with an empty canvas so you need to first specify the load part of the process using the File Adapter. Select the File Adapter from the Component Palette under BPEL Services and drag and drop it to the left side Partner Links (left is input).

You name the Service. In this case I chose LoadFile. Press Next.

We will define the interface as part of the wizard so select Define from operation and schema (specified later). Press Next.

We are going to choose Read File to denote that we will read the file and specify the default Operation Name as Read. Press Next.

The next step is to tell the Adapter the location of the files, how to process them and what to do with them after they have been processed. I am using hardcoded locations in this example but you can have logical locations as well. Press Next.

I am now going to tell the adapter how to recognize the files I want to load. In my case I am using CSV files and more importantly I am tell the adapter to run the process for each record in the file it encounters. Press Next.

Now, I tell the adapter how often I want to poll for the files. I have taken the defaults. Press Next.

At this stage I have no explanation of the format of the input. So I am going to invoke the Native Format Wizard which will guide me through the process of creating the file input format. Clicking the purple cog icon will start the wizard.

After an introduction screen (not shown), you specify the format of the input file. The File Adapter supports multiple format types. For this example, I will use Delimited as I am going to load a CSV file. Press Next.

The best way for the wizard to work is with a sample. I have a sample file and the wizard will ask how much of the file to use as a template. I will use the defaults. Note: If you are using a language that has other languages other than US-ASCII, it is at this point you specify the character set to use.  Press Next.

The sample contains multiple instances of a single record type. The wizard supports complex types as well. We will use the appropriate setting for our file. Press Next.

You have to specify the file element and the record element. This will be used by the input wizard to translate the CSV data into an XML structure (this will make sense later). I am using LoadUsers as my file delimiter (root element) and User Record as my record root element. Press Next.

As the file is CSV the delimiter is "," so I will also specify that the End Of Line (EOL) indicator indicates the end of a record. Press Next.

Up until this point your have not given the columns their names. In my case my sample includes the column names in the first record. This is not always the case but you can specify the names and formats of columns in this dialog (not shown). Press Next.

The wizard now generates the schema for the input file. You can specify a name for the schema. I have used userupdate.xsd. We want to verify the schema so press Test.

You can test the schema by specifying an input sample. and pressing the green play button. You will see the delimiters you specified earlier for the file and the records. Press Ok to continue.

A confirmation screen will be displayed showing you the location of the schema in your project. Press Finish to return to the File Adapter configuration.

You will now see the schema and elements prepopulated from the wizard. Press Next.

The File Adapter configuration is now complete. Press Finish.

Now you need to receive the input from the LoadFile component so we need to place a Receive node in the BPEL process by drag and dropping the Receive component from the Component Palette under BPEL Constructs onto the BPEL process.

We link the receive process with the LoadFile component by dragging the left most connect node of the Receive node to the LoadFile component.

Once the link is established you need to name the Receive node appropriately and as in the post of the last part of this series you need to generate input variables for the BPEL process to hold the input records in.

You need to now add the product Web Service. The process is the same as described in the post of the last part of this series. You drop the Web Service BPEL Service onto the right side of the process and fill in the details of the WSDL URL . You also have to add an Invoke node to call the service and generate the input and outputs variables for the call in the Invoke node.

Now, to get the inputs from File to the service. You have to use a Transform (you can use an Assign action but a Transform action is more flexible). You drag and drop the Transform component from the Component Palette under Oracle Extensions and place it between the Receive and Invoke nodes.

We name the Transform Node, Mapper File and associate the source of the mapping the schema from the Receive node and the output will be the input variable from the Invoke node.

We now build the transform. We first map the user and email attributes by drag and drop the elements from the left to the right.

The reason we needed to use the transform is that we will be telling the AS-User service that we want to issue an update action. Remember when we registered the service we actually used Read as the default. If we do not otherwise inform the service to use the Update action it will use the Read action instead (which is not desired). To specify the update action you need to click on the transactionType node on the right and select Set Text to set the action. You need to specify the transactionType of UPD (for update).

The mapping is now complete.

The final BPEL process is ready for deployment.

You then deploy the BPEL process to the server and to test the service by simply dropping a file, in the same pattern/name as you specified, in the directory you specified in the File Adapter. You will see each record as a separate instance entry in the Fusion Middleware Control console.

You can now load files into the product. You can repeat this process for each type of file to process. While this was a simple example it illustrates the method of loading data can be achieved using SOA Suite in conjunction with our products.