Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Tip of the Day: Site Studio Site Migration with FileStore Migration


There are a few things with the default Site Studio backup and restore process that don't work in practice as well as they should. For example, moving the archive due to size issues and network restraints can cause the download to either stall or just get lost, due to the lack of feedback when downloading. When downloading a large site, typically many gb in size, the browser will time out. Also, even if you tweak the settings to avoid the timeout, you don't get any percentage complete or other type of progress feedback. The method described here will provide more feedback during the migration process, since you'll be moving the archive manually.

Another potential issue arises when moving from a custom storage rule to one of the newer ootb storage rules. This is very common when migrating from a 10g, non-filestore provider system to a 11g system. You may want to retain the old, non-dispersion, method of weblayout urls. As of the current versions of WebCenter, there is an ootb filestore rule available for this. It's the "Web Asset" rule. We'll show how to leverage this existing rule by manually modifying the archive’s import value mapping to switch the site content's xStorageRule to ‘webasset’.

Here's the walkthrough:

1.       On source system, create a backup of the site
a.       Administration à Site Studio Administration à Backup and Restore
b.      Select site and click “Create Web Site Backup”
c.       Allow this to finish to 100%

2.       Determine archive file locations for both systems
a.       Administration à Admin Applets (on the source system)
b.      Click on Archiver
c.       In Archiver:
                            i.      Click on Options à Open Archive Collection
                            ii.      Note the ‘Collection Location’ of ‘wcms1_sitestudiobackupcollection’
1.        Note that the name is dependent on the name of the system, but will always have the ‘_sitestudiobackupcollection’ suffix
d.      Repeat for the target system




3.       Using an appropriate client, copy the archive from the source’s filesystem to the target’s filesystem
a.       I suggest using WinSCP

4.       Modify the target’s collection.hda to include the newly added archive
a.       In the target system’s backuparchives directory, edit the collection.hda file
b.      Add a line immediately before the ‘@end’ and include the exact same name as the archive directory
                           i.      e.g., mrc_2013_08_30_20_25_45_222
c.        Add a blank line between the above line and @end
                           i.      This is the archive description, which can be left blank
d.      Save the file and close

5.       Now, you can open the target system’s Archiver to modify the import value mapping
a.       Administration à Admin Applets
b.      Click on Archiver
c.       In Archiver:
                            i.      Click on Options à Open Archive Collection
                            ii.      Select and open the backupcollection
1.       Note that the name is dependent on the name of the system, but will always have the ‘_sitestudiobackupcollection’ suffix
                            iii.      You should now see the Archiver populated with the site studio backup archives
                            iv.      Select the archive you recently added
                            v.      Click on the “Import Maps” tab
                            vi.      Click ‘Edit’ in the Value Maps section
                            vii.      Create a rule:
1.       All – Checked
2.       Field – Storage Rule
3.       Output Value – webasset
                            viii.      Click ‘Add’
1.        Very easy to forget to do this!!
                             
                           ix.      Click ‘OK’
                           x.      You can close the Archiver applet at this time

6.       On target system, restore site
a.       Administration à Site Studio Administration à Backup and Restore
b.      Click on ‘Manage Archives’
c.       Find the archive recently added and click on the ‘I’, info, icon
d.      From the Actions dropdown list, select ‘Restore backup archive contents’
e.      Verify the action, when prompted
f.        Allow to complete to 100%

Complete!

Thanks,

-ryan

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

WebCenter Enterprise Capture - Introduction and Overview

Hey there everyone,

As you may or may not know by now, Oracle has finally invited Oracle Document Capture & Oracle Distributed Document Capture into the 11g family. 

As of PS7, release 11.1.1.8, ODC is now called Oracle Enterprise Capture. For the purposes of this article, ODC 10g and ODDC 10g will be referred to as ODC and ODDC, respectively. the 11g version will use the WEC acronym. 

Since this is a complete change from the 10g product, these articles will be broken into simple parts. The idea for these articles is to provide a comfort level on an administrative and user level within the new 11g application. 


Introduction and Overview


There is no longer any separation between ODC and ODDC. WEC is a single thin-client entity. There is separation between the admin console and the user client. Those are two key terms "console" and "client".





The default port and web root for these two webapps are:

http://<dns>:16400/dc-console
http://<dns>:16400/dc-client

The first is for the console, which is the new admin and manager interface. The second, the client webapp. This is where the actual scanning and indexing will take place. The console will provide access to all of the security, metadata, classification, capture, processing, & commit configurations. We'll go further detail on each of these shortly.

Now that you know the two main webapps, you'll next notice that they are ADF webapps. You surely recognize the look and feel of the WebCenter ADF log in page. If that didn't do it, then you can see the familiar url pattern of a ADF application. 


High-level Application Organization


Batches & documents are still the key logical groupings in WEC. There is one new, higher level construct now: the workspace.




The workspace is the new high-level container for all configurations. You can think of everything created within ODC 10g as within the one and only default workspace. In 11g, you can create mutually exclusive workspaces that have their own commit configurations, metadata, security, users, etc. 

In 11g, you can create multiple workspaces. In fact, you must create one before you can start configuring any of your scan configurations. You do not get a default workspace. You can see from the above screenshot what the console looks like with a workspace selected.

Using multiple workspaces allows managers to to divide different levels of access for users. It also allows for creating separate environments into a single workstation. There are a number of benefits allotted by this configuration. 

You can clone workspaces as well, so setup time can be lowered for similar workspaces. We'll also look into how workspaces are stored so we can see if they can be easily migrated between environments.


Processors


Workspaces in WEC allow for the configuration of 'processors'. These are the new manifestations of the Import, Commit, and Recognition servers. In addition to these, there is a new entity called the "Document Conversion Processor". 

The Import Processor has trimmed a few of the available jobs. ODC 10g offered FTP, Fax, custom, email, and folder providers. WEC 11g now offers email, folder, and 'list file' jobs. 'list file' is similar to the options available in the 10g folder provider, but now it's been separated out to its own top-level option. Look for more information on the Import Processor to show the new configuration options in an upcoming post.




The Document Conversion Processor is the engine that exposes the OutsideIn Technology (OIT) conversion features of WEC. In 10g, the conversion features were sprinkled around the application  but now things have been organized out a bit more. Also, in 10g, it took a registry hack to enable OIT, but it's default in 11g. More about the Document Conversion Processor coming soon.

The Recognition Processor is still similar to the 10g Recognition Server. There are a few differences, but the general purpose and function of this processor is the same. ** Note that my patched installation does not currently show the Recognition Processor Jobs table as expected. The documentation and help pages seem to expect two tables on this page, but I'm only seeing one:




The Commit Processor contains individual profiles that can be compared to the file cabinets used in 10g. These are similar to the options available in 10g, but they have been streamlined. You'll see that the configuration options have less than in 10g due to the re-organization of the metadata, lookups, and relationships being moved up to the workspace. One thing to note is that there are three available output formats: TIFF, PDF Image-Only, or Searchable PDF. ** Note that my current installation (11.1.1.8 MLR01) does not contain the Searchable PDF option. I'm currently looking into why my installation seems to differ from the documentation.  (see update at bottom)






High-Level Flow

Many of the processing configurations have a 'post-processing' configuration available for configuration of the next processor. The available options are 'Document Conversion', 'Recognition Processor'**, 'Commit Processor'. 

** Similar to the Recognition Processor configurations mentioned above, my MLR01 patched instance does not show this option. This is what's shown ootb, I'll be sure to show how to get these configurations enabled in a subsequent article. (see update at bottom)

The typical starting points are either an Import Processor job or a capture-enabled Client Profile. Client Profiles will be covered in the next article.

If enabled, Document Conversion and Recognition processes are triggered after initial ingestion. 

Finally, the commit profiles are processed. 

Customization

The 10g VBA macros appear to be deprecated and not compatible with 11g. I will look further into this in an upcoming article, but I wanted to at least mention this in the overview article.  

The new customization language is JavaScript. The JavaScript engine is the default in your JRE. This used to be the Rhino JavaScript engine, but I'm not sure if this is still the case. You can at least get an idea of the underlying engine here.

The documentation states that there are three locations where JS scripts can be leveraged:

  • Client
  • Import Processor
  • Recognition Processor
We'll show custom examples of each in the upcoming Customization article.


Summary

The purpose of this article is to show the new interfaces, the new configuration options, and to relate some of the concepts back to the well-known 10g application.

Each of the concepts shown here will be explored in full detail in upcoming articles through fully implemented examples. In addition, any issues, glitches, gotchas, or confusion points will be discussed and detailed as well.

The next article will introduce Client Profiles and show how they related to the Classification configurations as well as the Metadata configurations.

Look for the next article later this week!

Thanks all,
-ryan

** Update @ 11:14AM - In regards to the missing Recognition Server and Searchable PDF options, it turns out that these are features only available on Windows Installations. Very important point to keep in mind when spec'ing out your environment!

Monday, September 16, 2013

WebCenter Content 11.1.1.7 - MLR #2 - Required Patch

Hey all, 

Just a heads up to let you know that the WebCenter Content MLR 02 patch (August 2013) was released at the end of last week.

In order to stay friendly with support, they're expecting all customers to apply this patch.

It can be found under patch # 17180477


Thanks,
-ryan

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

WebCenter Content 11.1.1.8 - MLR #1 - Required Patch

Hey all,

Just a quick note that there has already been a required cumulative patchset released for 11.1.1.8.

Patch Number: 17406049
Title: WCC 11.1.1.8.0 Bundle (MLR 01) September 2013


You can find the patch here.

The patch is a standard opatch with no extended post-installation requirements. Here are the published bugs fixed with this release:


7 Bugs Fixed by This Patch
--------------------------

17006115 - FIX FOR BUG 17006115
17050451 - SEARCH RESULT TEMPLATES DOESN'T WORK AFTER BEING EDITED
17153780 - MOVE OF A EL FOLDER TO ANOTHER EL FOLDER, SUBFOLDER CONTENT FAIL TO UPDATE GUID
17160600 - UPDATE_DOCINFO TO MOVE A CONTENT FROM EL TO ANOTHER EL DOES NOT UPDATE GUID
17164502 - UPDATE_DOCINFO TO MOVE CONTENT FROM EL TO ADHOC DOES NOT ERROR
17171818 - UPDATE_DOCINFO SHOULD NOT ALLOW CONTENT TO BE UNFILED
17171834 - UPDATE_DOCINFO SHOULD NOT ALLOW CONTENT TO HAVE XLIBRARYGUID ALTERED
17171852 - FLD_PROPAGATE SHOULD NOT ALLOW CONTENT TO HAVE XLIBRARYGUID ALTERED
17185539 - IDOCSCRIPT OPENING/CLOSING TAGS IN RULES ARE ESCAPED
17312366 - FLD_COPY WITH REVISEDUPICATES DOES NOT CORRECTLY HANDLE XLIBRARYGUID
17314494 - FOLDER MOVE WITH RESOLVE ON A FOLDER RENAMES SUBFOLDERS IN CONFLICT RESOLUTION
17317268 - FLD_MOVE WITH OVERRIDEDUPICATES DOES NOT CORRECTLY HANDLE XLIBRARYGUID
17323595 - COPYING A FOLDER: ALL FILES ARE FLATTENED INTO ONE DIRECTORY
17362858 - FLD_MOVE TO /ENTERPRISE LIBRARIES DOES NOT UPDATE XLIBRARYGUID



Thanks all,
-ryan