oracle_soa

Docker stack for Oracle SOA

Downloading the Docker images

Before you can run this Docker stack, you must download the official Oracle Database and WebLogic images from Oracle. In order to be able to do this, you first need to sign up for an Oracle account.

Once you have done this:

1. Type docker login container-registry.oracle.com and enter your Oracle account credentials
2. Ensure the Oracle Standard Terms and Restrictions are accepted at https://container-registry.oracle.com.
3. Pull the images you need. For example:

docker pull container-registry.oracle.com/middleware/soasuite:12.2.1.3-200418
docker pull container-registry.oracle.com/database/enterprise:12.2.0.1

Anatomy of the Docker Compose stack

The docker-compose.yml consists of an Oracle database and a WebLogic domain running on two separate containers. The Oracle database is installed and configured on first boot so could take some time to start up for the first time. This is also the case for the WebLogic domain. Once the database is up and available, it will run the WebLogic domain configuration steps to create a domain and seed database users required. For subsequent starts, it will see that the database users and domain exist (as per the persistent data in the volumes) and continue to the start steps without doing any unneeded configuration on-boot.

The configuration parameters are provided as environment variables.

Variable	Container	Description
DB_SID	db	The database sid to be used / created on first boot
DB_PDB	db	The pluggable database to be used / created on first boot
DB_BUNDLE	db	This can be left as basic for most use-cases
DB_DOMAIN	db	The database domain which will be used for connectivity from the WebLogic instance
CONNECTION_STRING	domain	The connect string for the database. i.e. `db:1521/<DB_PDB>.<DB_DOMAIN>``
RCUPREFIX	domain	The prefix to be used for all of the schemas when the repository creation utility (RCU) is run on the first boot
DB_PASSWORD	domain	The system database password. The default is Oradoc_db1
DB_SCHEMA_PASSWORD	domain	The password to be used for the schemas
ADMIN_PASSWORD	domain	The name of the domain to be used / created on first boot
DOMAIN_NAME	domain	The name of the domain to be used / created on first boot
DOMAIN_TYPE	domain	The type of domain to create - soa or osb

WARNING: Some instructions indicate that the ADMIN_HOST should be set but this is not recommended due to the way WebLogic stores the real IP addresses rather than the hostname. If you decide to set ADMIN_HOST (e.g. ADMIN_HOST=localhost) then it is not advisable to destroy containers or make changes that would result in a change to the container IP. In this case, you may not be able to start your container anymore and the only way to fix this is to delete the state directory so that it recreates the domain again to honour the new IP address. The setting on the ADMIN_HOST is generally only relevant for non-containerised workloads.

The following persistent files/folders will be created on the first boot in the data volume.

Host path	Container guest path	Description
state/domains/<DOMAIN_NAME>	/u01/oracle/user_projects/domains/<DOMAIN_NAME>	The WebLogic domain home where configuration and logs resides
state/container/<DOMAIN_NAME>	/u01/oracle/user_projects/container/<DOMAIN_NAME>	State directory for indicating if RCU and the domain configuration have completed (to prevent it running again when it is unneeded)

Starting the stack

docker-compose up -d

Adding more domains

If you want to add another unique domain reusing the same database (for resource efficiency), follow the steps below:

1. Copy and paste the whole domain section of the docker-compose.yml
2. Update the name from domain to something unique like <env>_domain
3. Change the port mappings so they don't conflict with the other domain (e.g. use 8001 and 8002 instead)
4. Update the RCUPREFIX value to be different to the one used by the other domain.
5. Change the DOMAIN_NAME to be unique for the stack (or alternatively, make sure the /u01/oracle/user_projects path is not shared to prevent a domain name clash)

Every other variable can remain the same.

Below is an example of a second domain, if you're feeling lazy just copy and paste that as it already has the changes as described in the previous 5 steps

test_domain:
  image: container-registry.oracle.com/middleware/soasuite:12.2.1.3-200418
  ports:
    - 8001:7001
    - 8002:7002
  environment:
    - CONNECTION_STRING=db:1521/soapdb.us.oracle.com
    - RCUPREFIX=SOA2
    - DB_PASSWORD=Oradoc_db1
    - DB_SCHEMA_PASSWORD=Welcome1
    - ADMIN_PASSWORD=Welcome1
    - DOMAIN_NAME=test_soainfra
    - DOMAIN_TYPE=soa
  healthcheck:
    test: "curl --silent --fail localhost:7001/console || exit 1"
  depends_on:
    db:
      condition: service_healthy
  volumes:
    - ./state:/u01/oracle/user_projects

Troubleshooting

Unable to download the images

If the image pull is failing with Error: image not found. this could be because you haven't done docker login container-registry.oracle.com and accepted the terms and restrictions. This has to be done manually after logging into https://container-registry.oracle.com with an Oracle Account.

Database is failing to start

Make sure you have enough memory assigned to your docker engine. By default Docker doesn't typically use all of the system's memory and the Oracle database can be a bit of a memory hog. You can also check the health of the database by running the following:

docker inspect --format "{{json .State.Health }}"  oracle_soa_db_1

WebLogic domain is failing to boot

If you suspect this is due to a database access issue, try starting the database before the domain

docker-compose up -d db
docker-compose up -d domain

To see the health of the WebLogic admin server run this:

docker inspect --format "{{json .State.Health }}"  oracle_soa_domain_1