OTN Doc Search for Mozilla

Here's a search I use in Mozilla that enables me to do quick and easy searches of the Oracle Application Server 10.1.3 documentation set.

Create a new file in the $MOZILLA_HOME/searchplugins directory, paste in this text, and restart Mozilla.

You'll then see a new "OTN 10.1.3 Doc Search" box added to your search engines.

Type in a keyword press enter.

Bam!

Go on, search yourself silly.

OTN Doc Search

<search
version="1.0"
name="OTN 10.1.3 Doc Search"
description="OTN 10.1.3 Doc"
searchForm="http://www.oracle.com/pls/as1013/as1013.drilldown"
action="http://www.oracle.com/pls/as1013/as1013.drilldown"
method="GET" >

 <input name="word" user>
 <input name="remark" value="">
 <input name="book" value="">
 <input name="preference" value="">
 <input name="method" value="TEXT">

 <interpret
   resultListStart="<!-- RESULT LIST START -->"
   resultListEnd="<!-- RESULT LIST END -->"
   resultItemStart="<!-- RESULT ITEM START -->"
   resultItemEnd="<!-- RESULT ITEM END -->"
 >
</search>

Accessing Environment Variables from Oracle Application Server

Question of the day:

"We access and use standard environment variables in our Java code. It works with other vendors products, but when we deploy it to OC4J running within Oracle Application Server, the code no longer works. How can we use environment variables?"

Answer:

In the Oracle Application Server architecture, the OC4J process is started by the OPMN process. The model that is employed results in no environment variables that are set when OPMN is launched being passed to the processes that OPMN starts.

If you want to set specific environment variables for OPMN managed processes to use, then you must do it by setting the environment variable name and value in the opmn.xml file. OPMN will then pass the environment variable to the process(es) it starts.

  <ias-instanceid="ias-instance-id" ... ">
     <environment>
        <variableid="id" value="value" append="boolean"/>
     </environment>
     <ias-component id="ias-component-id">>
       ...
     </ias-component id="ias-component-id">>
  </ias-instanceid>

It's worth noting that the <environment> tag can be used in multiple places within the opmn.xml file to allow the correct scope (or additive effect) to be defined.

Once the environment variable has been set, it can be accessed from within an applictation running within an OPMN managed OC4J instance using the standard Java API: System.getenv("envvar");

My Ant Discovery for the Day

I love it when I discover or learn something new. Or discover something I should probably already know.

I wanted to make an Ant build file conditional on the O/S on which is was executing - so a target copies either the .bat or .sh scripts into a runtime directory.

I started out thinking of using the inbuilt property ${os.name} -- which returns the O/S name. But with Windows having more flavours than Ben and Jerry, I was finding it hard just to deal with all the Windows flavours in their own right. In a neat manner anyway.

So Google with various keywords related to what I wanted to do returned this Gem of a task which has been added to Ant in recent times -- <os family="windows" /> -- when combined with a condition, it can be used to set a property if the O/S is any flavour of Windows. And then that can be used with the <target> conditional attributes.

Exactly what I wanted!

<!-- Set IsWindows property IF the OS is from the Windows family -->
<condition property="IsWindows" value="true">
<os family="windows" />
</condition>

And then use this in the O/S specific targets

<target name="copy-windows-scripts"if="IsWindows">
<echo message="Copying Windows scripts"/>
...
</target>

<target name="copy-linux-unix-scripts" unless="IsWindows">
<echo message="Copying Linux/Unix Scripts"/>
...
</target>

And then use these in the main task and they will be conditionally executed.

<!-- Either the .bat or .sh scripts will be copied based on the os family -->
<antcall target="copy-windows-scripts"/>
<antcall target="copy-linux-unix-scripts"/>