Dealing Transaction time-out(s) in Oracle BPEL & ESB processes

Dealing Transaction time-out(s) in Oracle BPEL & ESB processes
This post would cover the various transaction timeout properties & configurations of Oracle BPEL/ESB projects that can be of great help mitigating timeout issues during runtime arising due to several performance issues.

We had a synchronous BPEL process which would calculate, extract and generate generic XML content for use by other child BPEL processes, which were designated for various operations. The synchronous BPEL process would be called by main BPEL process which will manage the entire workflow. We had no issues in this process until the XML content generated by the synchronous process was fast & within the transaction time-out limits.

For transactions involving complex logic calculations & huge data extractions, the synchronous BPEL process took plenty of time to respond which resulted in transaction time-outs and the BPEL processes never proceeded to completeness.


To overcome this issue, we increased the transaction time-out parameters which can be configured in the Oracle SOA suite. Please note that the following settings are applicable for Oracle SOA suite 10.1.3.3 advanced installation.....

Config 1:

While introducing receive activity in a BPEL process anticipating a response from an Asynchronous BPEL process after an invoke, if the transaction times out; configure the following setting in the BPEL console which will increase the time-out duration.

This is the maximum time the process receiver will wait for a result before returning. Results from asynchronous BPEL processes are retrieved synchronously via a receiver that will wait for a result from the container.

•Login to BPEL Console
•Click on Manage BPEL Domain
•Update the syncMaxWaitTime property to an increased value (Default is 45 sec) depending on the requirement
Config 2:

Modify the transaction-timeout property in the orion-ejb-jar.xml file available under the following location;
$SOA_Home\j2ee\oc4j_soa\application-deployments\orabpel\ejb_ob_engine\orion-ejb-jar.xml

There will be several session beans available in this config file - all of which should be configured with the same value for the transaction-timeout.

Config 3:

Modify the transaction-timeout property in the transaction-manager.xml file available under the following location;
$SOA_Home\j2ee\oc4j_soa\config\transaction-manager.xml

Please note that this timeout value should be greater than the values configured in Config 1 & 2. In essence this value should be larger than syncMaxWaitTime & transaction-timeout configured in orion-ejb-jar.xml file [Config 2].

Config 4:

While using Oracle Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), there can be transcation timeouts while transacting with other BPEL processes or during deployment of ESB projects via Oracle JDeveloper. For the former, Config 3 would suffice & for the latter, configure the xa_timeout parameter in esb_config.ini located in SOA suite at the following location;
$SOA_Home\integration\esb\esb_config.ini

Note that whenever an ESB initiates a transaction, timeout specified in the esb_config.ini will take precedence.

The above specs are gathered from the following resources;
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B31018_01/relnotes.1013/relnotes/esb.htm
http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B31017_01/integrate.1013/b28981/app_trblshoot.htm#sthref3957

http://sathyam-soa.blogspot.com/2008/12/dealing-transaction-time-outs-in-oracle.html