Handle the custom EDI Document Version Number

Many EDI customers customizes the Standard EDI document version numbers  for e.g for 850 EDI document Standard Version of  X12 protocol are 5010, 4010 etc but customer wants to have his own version numbers e.g 5010VICS , 4010UCS in the outbound EDI file.
Thus to accomplish it you need to customize the document version from 4010 to the desired 4010UCS in the 850 communication capability of the trading partner.

But  you can get the below error-

AIP-50547: Trading partner agreement not found for the given input values: From party[NAME] "Glbalchips", To party[NAME] "ACME", Business action name "null"; also verify agreement effectiveToDate
at oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.tpa.RepoDataAccessor.getAgreementNameByBaTPName(RepoDataAccessor.java:2345)
at oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.tpa.TPAIdentifier.identifyTPA(TPAIdentifier.java:186)
at oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.tpa.TPAProcessor.processTPA(TPAProcessor.java:589)
at oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.tpa.TPAProcessor.processIncomingTPA(TPAProcessor.java:240)
at oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.engine.Engine.processIncomingMessage(Engine.java:1832)
at oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.engine.Engine.incomingContinueProcess(Engine.java:2573)
at oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.engine.Engine.handleMessageEvent(Engine.java:2443)
at oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.engine.Engine.processEvents(Engine.java:2398) 

Cause:
Business Action can be null when the Document Type or the Document Type Revision is not configured correctly.
For any transaction, inbound or outbound, B2B finds the following parameters in order to determine an agreement.
a. From Party
b. To Party
c. Document Type
d. Document Type Revision.
Oracle B2B extracts the Document Type and Document Revision from the transaction set of incoming EDI Document . i.e UNH Segment.
If there is a mismatch in the Document Type or the Document Revision in the B2B configuration (different from the EDI Incoming File), then B2B cannot determine the Business Action.
If any one of the above values are configured incorrectly or not configured , B2B throws "AIP-50547: Trading partner agreement not found for the given input values".

Solution:
Check if Document Type has some custom name. (B2B does not allow to customize the document type name.)
If Yes
Rename the document type to just 850 ( or any standard type) as follows:
In the present configuration,
Login to B2B ---->Partners --->Protocols ---->EDI X12 over Generic Exchange ----
->Document Protocol Revision --->Details
In the Document Type section , rename 850UCS to 850
Re-create the agreement and re-deploy the configuration. 

Happy learning.

Regards

Ayush

Delimiters other than UTF-8 in B2B

We all know that by default B2B only supports UTF-8 encoding style but some times there is a need to send the dellimters for eg. Segment Delimiter or Element Delimiter in the outbound EDI file which are not in encoding style of UTF-8 set. If such delimiters are used then B2B gives following error
Error in B2B The Interchange Trailer is missing. The segment itself may be missing or the Segment Delimiter may be missing.

The above issue typically erupts due to UTF-8 encoding.
The error can be removed by placing the below property in tip.properties file located in B2B server config folder
"oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.encoding=ISO-8859-1"
Please make sure that you bounce the Server after saving the change.

A small point but a very important one.


Cheers
Ayush

Problem while deploying Agreements in B2B

You may come across a scenario wherein when you start deploying a new agreement in B2B of a trading partner which has already an agreement deployed previously, then sometimes an error comes up on your screen 

Error Message:

Thread-100: B2B - (DEBUG) oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.tpa.RepoDataAccessor:getAgreementDetails() fromTPP = TradingPartnerParticipant_DBCCtoTPP = TradingPartnerParticipant_DBCE
2009.03.18 at 05:17:17:239: Thread-100: Repository - (ERROR) Error -: AIP-11015: Object does not exist 6559DEFBDBD0B026E043C0A86365B026-298-1
at oracle.tip.repos.core.driver.CatalogDriver.getObject(CatalogDriver.java:759)
at oracle.tip.repos.core.driver.InternalObject.getAssociation(InternalObject.java:680)
at oracle.tip.repos.core.persistency.BaseObject.getAssociation(BaseObject.java:388)
at oracle.tip.model.agreement.ParticipantDeliveryChannel.getInternalChannel(ParticipantDeliveryChannel.java:212)
at oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.tpa.RepoDataAccessor.getAgreementDetails(RepoDataAccessor.java:441)
at oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.tpa.TPAProcessor.processTPA(TPAProcessor.java:587)
at oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.tpa.TPAProcessor.processIncomingTPA(TPAProcessor.java:229)
at oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.engine.Engine.processIncomingMessage(Engine.java:1715)
at oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.engine.Engine.incomingContinueProcess(Engine.java:2404)
at oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.engine.Engine.handleMessageEvent(Engine.java:2303)
at oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.engine.Engine.processEvents(Engine.java:2258)
at oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.data.MsgListener.onMessage(MsgListener.java:500)
at oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.data.MsgListener.run(MsgListener.java:348)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:534)

at oracle.tip.adapter.b2b

So to get out of this situation, we must keep all the agreements in a single configuration i.e Only single configuration should be associated for all agreements for a Single TP. 
Even if you don't face this issue please note that this is a good practice to keep all agreements in a single configuration.


Cheers
Ayush

Deleting an agreement in B2B

Its quite often in development phase where you need to reconfigure an agreement which you have already validated and deployed in B2B console. Thus after undeploying the agreement when you try to delete it, B2B throws an error and doesn't allow you to do so.

Error Message on your screen :

2011.05.20 at 05:18:42:744: AJPRequestHandler-ApplicationServerThread-6: UI - (ERROR) oracle.tip.buslogic.ui.agreement.AgreementEventHandler$Delete.handleEvent(): Error -: AIP-16015: Delete of Internal Delivery Channel Usage failed with error: Cannot delete Internal Delivery Channel Usage which is referenced by Participant Delivery Channel
2011.05.20 at 05:18:42:745: AJPRequestHandler-ApplicationServerThread-6: Repository - (ERROR) Error -: AIP-11301: The MetaClass Internal Delivery Channel Usage does not have the role InternalChannel.InternalDeliveryChannelUsage
at oracle.tip.model.metadata.CatalogMetaClass.getAssociationByMember(CatalogMetaClass.java:1024)
at oracle.tip.buslogic.common.AssociationDependencyException.isSubstituteValuesChange(AssociationDependencyException.java:173)
at oracle.tip.buslogic.common.AssociationDependencyException.getMessage(AssociationDependencyException.java:213)
at oracle.tip.tools.integration.event.IPEventHandler.getExceptionMessage(IPEventHandler.java:280)
at oracle.tip.tools.integration.event.IPEventHandler.handleExceptionWithCause(IPEventHandler.java:228)
at oracle.tip.tools.integration.event.IPEventHandler.handleEventIP(IPEventHandler.java:196)
at oracle.tip.tools.integration.event.IPEventHandler.handleEvent(IPEventHandler.java:104)
at oracle.cabo.servlet.event.TableEventHandler.handleEvent(Unknown Source)
at oracle.cabo.servlet.event.TableEventHandler.handleEvent(Unknown Source)
at oracle.cabo.servlet.event.BasePageFlowEngine.handleRequest(Unknown Source)
at oracle.cabo.servlet.AbstractPageBroker.handleRequest(Unknown Source)
at oracle.cabo.servlet.ui.BaseUIPageBroker.handleRequest(Unknown Source)
at oracle.cabo.servlet.PageBrokerHandler.handleRequest(Unknown Source)
at oracle.cabo.servlet.UIXServlet.doGet(Unknown Source)
at oracle.cabo.servlet.UIXServlet.doPost(Unknown Source)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:760)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:853)
at com.evermind.server.http.ServletRequestDispatcher.invoke(ServletRequestDispatcher.java:835)
at com.evermind.server.http.ServletRequestDispatcher.forwardInternal(ServletRequestDispatcher.java:341)
at com.evermind.server.http.HttpRequestHandler.processRequest(HttpRequestHandler.java:816)
at com.evermind.server.http.AJPRequestHandler.run(AJPRequestHandler.java:231)
at com.evermind.server.http.AJPRequestHandler.run(AJPRequestHandler.java:136)
at com.evermind.util.ReleasableResourcePooledExecutor$MyWorker.run(ReleasableResourcePooledExecutor.java:192)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:534)

You need to go to the database level and delete the entry of the agreement and its dependency from the tables as it is not possible from the front end.
First of all make sure that you are not facing this issue because of low memory (please refer metalink note ID 738806.1). If issue is not with memory, then you may try to execute the below SQL's on your B2B database. 

delete from tip_internaldeliverychannelu_t;

delete from tip_participantdeliverychann_t;

delete from tip_participant_t;

delete from tip_agreement_t;

commit;

PS:- Make sure that you are NOT executing these SQL’s on a critical environment (Prod/pre-Prod).

Cheers

Ayush

Duplicate 997 EDI file names.

Scenario- Its quite obvious that for each Inbound EDI transaction received from the Trading Partner, a corresponding Functional Acknowledgement(997) needs to be sent back to the TP. In our case we had Adjustment Transaction Set (895) coming from the TP which was quite large in number(traffic wise) and so the 997s also became quite large in number.

Problem- There were some cases where the outgoing 997 files were being created with the same file name by B2B when they are generated at the same moment of time.Thus the TPs were missing some 997s as B2B was overwriting the file with the same name.The outgoing file name format was ("%FROM_PARTY%_%TIMESTAMP%.dat") .

Cause- There was no direct cause to find the reason as why B2B was behaving in such an abnormal way as the 997 was automatically initiated by B2B as soon as it received the inbound file.
PS: Make sure that MLR #15 or later version patch is already applied on your B2B server. If not then kindly apply the same and then check.

Solution-Definitely problem was with the time resolution. If resolution is not in nano-seconds then such problems may occur under heavy load. Oracle B2B internally uses JAVA API's for creating time-stamp and if OS does not have nano second time resolution then time-stamp may not be unique.
To remove the discrepancy of time format in the filename, i made the name unique by using Message ID ("%MSG_ID%") in the file name and prblem was solved.

You can also use InReply to Message ID ("%INREPLYTO_ID%") in filename format to keep it unique.

Happy learning!!

Cheers

Ayush

Overriding of Document Protocol Parameters in B2B

Once we came across a very interesting scenario, wherein we want to have different 'Segment delimters' for different transactions of same protocol revision of same trading partner, e.g
For partner 'ABC ' transaction '894' segment delimter should be 0x7f and for '880' it should be 0x3e.
We followed the below steps-

• Goto - Remote TP --> Operational Capability --> Respecive Business Action --> Document Protocol Parameters



• Update the segment delimiter for each Business Action.



• Re validate and Redeploy the agreement

NOTE:- B2B doesn't allow to set different Document Protocol Parameters for different transactions of same protocol revision and same trading partner. If you change in one of the transactions it will automatically reflect in the other.

We all know that for every EDI transaction, we generate its corresponding XSD(schema) from B2B Document Editor.

To make it work, we need to make use of Internal-properties defined in the transaction's xsd. When you add this xsd in your B2B adapter, you can pass the desired value in any of the document protocol parameters with help of XSLT and this eventually overrides the value set in B2B console at run time.

Regards

Ayush

B2B Batching of transactions not happening

Scenario:- We had to batch all the EDI outgoing transactions for a particular trading partner 's particular EDI transaction. For eg- Lets say we have 100 invoices(810) coming from EBiz/SOA into B2B for trading partner 'A' in one transaction.Now we have to club all the 100 invoices into one EDI file and send it to 'A'.

Problem:- I won't discuss how batching is done in B2B. You can get the complete details in this below link
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/integration/b2b/pdf/B2B_TN_012_EDI_OutBound_Batching.pdf
We faced an issue where even after applying the logic correctly, the batching was not happening.The transactions remained in the WAIT BATCH state forever in the B2B console.Even if we bounced the B2B server, neither the existing transactions were completed nor the new transactions were batched.
The interesting part was that it was happening only in one of b2b instances because it was working perfectly in another b2b instance which meant that my batching logic was correct.

Cause:- After doing some research in the b2b database, we found that the parameter "job_queue_processes" which specifies the no. of processes allocated to run the "ip_b2b_dbms_job" was significantly low , in fact the value was 0.
This parameter can be seen using sqlplus 'show parameter job_queue_processes'. The sample pl/sql code is as below:
CREATE or REPLACE PROCEDURE ip_b2b_dbms_job AS
x NUMBER;
BEGIN
dbms_job.submit(x, 'B2B_TIMEOUT_PROC;', sysdate, 'sysdate + (1 / 1440)');
commit;
END;

Solution:- We need to increase it's value to 5 or 10 and then bounce the B2B DB and Server.
This worked!!

Regards
Ayush

B2B abruptly fails to communicate to the FTP serverr

Scenario:-There was a scenario in my project where we had Inbound transaction 895s configured for a trading partner and we had to send a Functional Acknowledgement(997) back to the TP for each 895 received.

Problem:- We had hundreds of 895s coming at a time into B2B and while B2B was sending 997 for each 895, some of the 997 edi files failed at the FTP Server. That meant some of the 997 edi files failed to appear at the FTP location while the rest of them were successfully created.
Error in the B2B logs-
oracle.tip.transport.TransportException: Unable to read response from host '$FTP HostServer'
java.net.SocketException: Connection reset

Cause:-As problem was very strange because B2B was abruptly loosing connections to the FTP and the FTP server logs were clean too, we couldn't drill down to the exact cause of the problem, so we concluded that this issue is intermittent and the possible cause could be network or environment issue.

Solution:- Since we were not able to do a root cause analysis (even after seeking help from Oracle support) and at the same time we also needed a workaround to come out of this situation, we used the Retry Count facility available at the Delivery channel layer of the TP. By setting the Retry Count and Retry Interval to some specific value,we were actually cutting down the possibility of the connection failure between B2B server and the FTP.

Result :-The B2B was successfully able to connect to the FTP in the one of the retry attempts if it anyhow failed in the previous attempt.
Its better to configure the retry mechanism for each EDI transaction beforehand.

Cheers
Ayush

Error while migrating a single agreement in B2B

One of the stiff challenges which i faced is migrating a single agreement in B2B between two environments, suppose from Development environment to Production environment in the below scenario.
Scenario:-
You have Trading partner "A" with some EDI X12 transaction for eg. 850 configured and running in both the environments(dev and prod). Now we have a new transaction suppose 875 for the same partner "A" configured in dev environment and needs to be moved to production.

Now if you migrate this 875 agreement in the conventional way, then it will throw an error in B2B production console while validating the agreement

Error:-
Agreement $TP_Name 875 Inbound is invalid.
AIP-16222: The transport parameter of trading partner $TP_Name must have no more than one protocol endpoint

Reason:-
The endpoint details in both the environments are different.

Solution:-
1. In development environment update the transport server parameters for "$TransportServer" to the same values as production, then re-export the agreement and import it again.
OR
2. In the exported agreement (xml file) modify the IP, username and password for "$TransportServer" transport server to the values you have in production environment.
You may get these parameters by connecting to B2B production metadata repository and running this query:
select * from b2b.TIP_transportserver_t t where t.name="$TransportServer";
Import the xml file in the production server and validate the agreement.
No errors this time!!

Cheers
Ayush

Oracle B2B

Hello guys,
Its been a long time since i have updated with some technical stuff on my blog.Last year i was given an opportunity to work on Oracle B2B which was totally new and challenging to me since being a newbie to it.
Initially i struggled, but soon picked up the pace and was able to explore and learn quite a handful of things which i feel like sharing with all of you.
I was involved in with direct integrations of Oracle B2B with Oracle SOA Interfaces in and out.Also responsible in configuring EDI trading Partners and agreements on various EDI X12 transactions like 850,875,810,894 etc..
In my next posts on b2b, i will neither talk about the configuration and definition of b2b nor the way to integrate SOA with B2B because this is already available in the b2b guides at oracle sites. But i will share some of the crucial situations and key points which i came across in my project and it required some efforts to come out of it.
I hope with my b2b posts many of you will be benefited.
So wait for my next posts, Happy Learning!!!

Thanks
Ayush