Using Oracle BPEL Process Manager Sensors

Composite sensors within a SOA application provides the ability to define trackable fields on messages and enables you to find a specific composite instance by searching for a field or fields within a message. For example, a sensor could be defined for an order number within a message, thus allowing us to find the instance where the order number in question is found.

Composite sensors can be defined within a SOA application in several components −

• Service component (exposed service)

• Reference component (external reference)

• Mediator or BPEL component that have subscribed to a business event (publishing an event cannot have a sensor)

Different Ways to Define Composite Sensor

There are different ways to define a composite sensor −

• By specifying an existing variable as the sensor.
• By an expression with the help of the expression builder.
• By using properties (e.g. message header properties).

Sensors in Enterprise Manager

Defining a sensor allows for a quick search for data within a composite instance in the EM Console.

In the EM Console dashboard, a user can search for instances by sensor name and value.

In the “Flow Instances” tab, you can select sensors from the dropdowns and can use wildcard-like values for the sensor value.