jDeveloper versions for SOA BPEL extensions

When developing Oracle SOA and BPEL components with Oracle jDeveloper you do want to include the extensions for this  to your jDeveloper environment. When selecting a version of jDeveloper you have to be carefull as not all the versions do support this out of the box. When you are reading the information from the download page of jDeveloper  att he Oracle technology network you will see a warning about this subject at certain 11.1.2.x versions.

Important Note - This version of JDeveloper doesn't include the SOA, WebCenter, and Oracle Cloud development features - to use these components you'll need to download Oracle JDeveloper 11.1.1.6.0.

This indicates you will have to download a 11.1.1 version instead of a 11.1.2 version to be able to run the SOA, WebCenter and Oracle Cloud development features. If you check the release notes of the jDeveloper sherman release (11.1.2) you can find the following statement:

There is no design-time or runtime support for SOA, BPM, and WebCenter components in 11g Release 2.

Oracle has stated that release 2 will be focussing primarily around ADF and where release 1 is focusing around SOA components. This essentially makes it 2 different products both dedicated to there own task. When you like to develop SOA components you will have to select release 1, when developing ADF you have to select release 2. This is if you want to make use of all the best solutions build into jDeveloper.

For people who are developing both ADF and SOA components this is providing a possible issue. According to Oracle this would mean that you will have to install 2 versions of jDeveloper on the same workstation to be able to work with it correctly. Even though this is not a direct issue it is not desirable. According to unconfirmed sources the "issue" should be resolved in the 12C release of Oracle jDeveloper.

There are unofficial ways to get this working within one version however it is not recommended  If you have a release 2 installed on your workstation and are in need to build both ADF and SOA components the best way is to uninstall jDeveloper release 2 and install the latest release 1 which is 11.1.1.6..0

When uninstalling Oracle the best way to remove an already installed version of jDeveloper is by making use of the uninstall utility. A large number of people just delete the installation however jDeveloper comes with a quit OK uninstall option which can be found at $JDEVHOME/utils/uninstall/

oracle.ideimpl.webupdate.task.TaskFailedException

I recently tried to update my Oracle Jdeveloper installation with some updates coming from Oracle. You can update your Jdeveloper installation by clicking "help" - "Check for Updates". I needed to install some updates including the "AIA composite application framework version 2.4" update. When selecting it a process is started and after that you are requested to restart your Jdeveloper installation. This should complete the process and you should be able to use the new version. However due to some reason the new functionality was not installed. When checking for updates again I also found the "AIA composite application framework version 2.4" update still in the list of updates to be installed.

After some time I found that if I started Jdeveloper from the command line I could see a error messages stating the following: "oracle.ideimpl.webupdate.task.TaskFailedException: Unable to read /Users/suntac/.jdeveloper/tmp/update/oracle.aia.caf.jdevextension.2.4.zip". When jdeveloper downloads updates it is storing it under a tmp/update folder as a .zip file. Upon looking into this location I found that the file was empty.

Thanks to William from the Oracle jDeveloper support team I was able to download the file myself by hand. You can check manually all the updates at the "Oracle Extensions for Oracle JDeveloper Update Center" which is located at http://www.oracle.com/ocom/groups/public/@otn/documents/webcontent/131167.xml . Now when you download the file you can again start the "check for updates" option under the help menu however no pick the option to select from a local file.

At this screen you can select the location of the zip file you just downloaded. You will again be asked to restart jdeveloper and now you will notice that the file is installed without any issue.