OFM 12C from the trenches: Business flow instance name bug and solution

A new feature in OFM 12C is that you can track a Business flowinstance. I won’t go into the details as you can read all about it here. As this is a nice feature I was going to use this to set a good Flow instance name as descripted here in chapter 47.5.4 How to Set the Business Flow Instance Name or Composite Instance Name at Design Time. I created a simple service and added an assign in my mediator component as written in the documentation.

<assign>
   <copy
      target="$out.property.tracking.setFlowInstanceTitle"
      expression="oraext:setFlowInstanceTitle("Test")"
      xmlns:med="http://schemas.oracle.com/mediator/xpath"/>
</assign>

As I added it, I noticed that the namespace declared here for the setFlowInstanceTitle wasn’t declared. I thought I would have have been declared somewhere else so I just tried it. As I compiled and deployed my service and ran the test I got the following error though:

ORAMED-01001:[Error in assign operation]Error occurred while assigning to target "$out.property.tracking.setFlowInstanceTitle" using expression "oraext:setFlowInstanceTitle('Test')".Possible Fix:Check if source message has right values or source expression is valid. Cause:Extension function error: Method not found 'setFlowInstanceTitle' 

After some digging around and a chat with Oracle support it seems that

a) You have to add the namespace. It seems they forgot it in the online documentation. So the assign should look like this:

<copy
target="$out.property.tracking.setFlowInstanceTitle"
expression="oraext:setFlowInstanceTitle('Test')" xmlns:oraext="http://www.oracle.com/XSL/Transform/java/oracle.tip.pc.services.functions.ExtFunc"
xmlns:med="http://schemas.oracle.com/mediator/xpath"/> 

b) You have to apply patch 18310693 to the server. This means downloading it, unzipping and running the patch.

C:\Oracle_patch\18310693>c:\Oracle\Middleware\Oracle_Home\OPatch\opatch apply
Oracle Interim Patch Installer version 13.2.0.0.0
Copyright (c) 2014, Oracle Corporation.  All rights reserved.


Oracle Home       : C:\Oracle\Middleware\Oracle_Home
Central Inventory : C:\Program Files\Oracle\Inventory
   from           : n/a
OPatch version    : 13.2.0.0.0
OUI version       : 13.2.0.0.0
Log file location : C:\Oracle\Middleware\Oracle_Home\cfgtoollogs\opatch\18310693_Jan_18_2015_16_25_03\apply2015-01-18_16-24-53PM_1.log


OPatch detects the Middleware Home as "C:\Oracle\Middleware\Oracle_Home"

Jan 18, 2015 4:25:03 PM oracle.sysman.oii.oiii.OiiiInstallAreaControl initAreaControl
INFO: Install area Control created with access level  0
Applying interim patch '18310693' to OH 'C:\Oracle\Middleware\Oracle_Home'
Verifying environment and performing prerequisite checks...
All checks passed.

Please shutdown Oracle instances running out of this ORACLE_HOME on the local system.
(Oracle Home = 'C:\Oracle\Middleware\Oracle_Home')


Is the local system ready for patching? [y|n]
y
User Responded with: Y
Backing up files...

Patching component oracle.integration.soainfra, 12.1.3.0.0...

Patching component oracle.integration.soainfra, 12.1.3.0.0...

Patching component oracle.soacommon.plugins, 12.1.3.0.0...

Patching component oracle.soacommon.plugins, 12.1.3.0.0...

Verifying the update...
Patch 18310693 successfully applied
Log file location: C:\Oracle\Middleware\Oracle_Home\cfgtoollogs\opatch\18310693_Jan_18_2015_16_25_03\apply2015-01-18_16-24-53PM_1.log

OPatch succeeded.

After this….start your server again and try your composite again. The result should be: