Introduction

Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud provides a comprehensive set of tools, templates, and pre-packaged integration to cover various scenarios using modern and efficient technologies. One of the patterns is the batch integration to load and extract data to and from the HCM cloud. HCM provides the following bulk integration interfaces and tools:

HCM Data Loader (HDL)

HDL is a powerful tool for bulk-loading data from any source to Oracle Fusion HCM. It supports important business objects belonging to key Oracle Fusion HCM products, including Oracle Fusion Global Human Resources, Compensation, Absence Management, Performance Management, Profile Management, Global Payroll, Talent and Workforce Management. For detailed information on HDL, please refer to this.

HCM Extracts

HCM Extract is an outbound integration tool that lets you select HCM data elements, extracting them from the HCM database and archiving these data elements as XML. This archived raw XML data can be converted into a desired format and delivered to supported channels recipients.

Oracle Fusion HCM provides the above tools with comprehensive user interfaces for initiating data uploads, monitoring upload progress, and reviewing errors, with real-time information provided for both the import and load stages of upload processing. Fusion HCM provides tools, but it requires additional orchestration such as generating FBL or HDL file, uploading these files to WebCenter Content and initiating FBL or HDL web services. This post describes how to design and automate these steps leveraging Oracle Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Cloud Service deployed on Oracle’s cloud Platform As a Service (PaaS) infrastructure.  For more information on SOA Cloud Service, please refer to this.

Oracle SOA is the industry’s most complete and unified application integration and SOA solution. It transforms complex application integration into agile and re-usable service-based components to speed time to market, respond faster to business requirements, and lower costs.. SOA facilitates the development of enterprise applications as modular business web services that can be easily integrated and reused, creating a truly flexible, adaptable IT infrastructure. For more information on getting started with Oracle SOA, please refer this. For developing SOA applications using SOA Suite, please refer to this.

These bulk integration interfaces and patterns are not applicable to Oracle Taleo.

Main Article

HCM Inbound Flow (HDL)

Oracle WebCenter Content (WCC) acts as the staging repository for files to be loaded and processed by HDL. WCC is part of the Fusion HCM infrastructure.

The loading process for FBL and HDL consists of the following steps:

• Upload the data file to WCC/UCM using WCC GenericSoapPort web service
• Invoke the “LoaderIntegrationService” or the “HCMDataLoader” to initiate the loading process.

However, the above steps assume the existence of an HDL file and do not provide a mechanism to generate an HDL file of the respective objects. In this post we will use the sample use case where we get the data file from customer, using it to transform the data and generate an HDL file, and then initiate the loading process.

The following diagram illustrates the typical orchestration of the end-to-end HDL process using SOA cloud service:

HCM Outbound Flow (Extract)

The “Extract” process for HCM has the following steps:

• An Extract report is generated in HCM either by user or through Enterprise Scheduler Service (ESS)
• Report is stored in WCC under the hcm/dataloader/export account.

However, the report must then be delivered to its destination depending on the use cases. The following diagram illustrates the typical end-to-end orchestration after the Extract report is generated:

For HCM bulk integration introduction including security, roles and privileges, please refer to my blog Fusion HCM Cloud – Bulk Integration Automation using Managed File Trasnfer (MFT) and Node.js. For introduction to WebCenter Content Integration services using SOA, please refer to my blog Fusion HCM Cloud Bulk Automation.

Sample Use Case

Assume that a customer receives benefits data from their partner in a file with CSV (comma separated value) format periodically. This data must be converted into HDL format for the “ElementEntry” object and initiate the loading process in Fusion HCM cloud.

This is a sample source data:

E138_ASG,2015/01/01,2015/12/31,4,UK LDG,CRP_UK_MNTH,E,H,Amount,23,Reason,Corrected all entry value,Date,2013-01-10
E139_ASG,2015/01/01,2015/12/31,4,UK LDG,CRP_UK_MNTH,E,H,Amount,33,Reason,Corrected one entry value,Date,2013-01-11

This is the HDL format of ElementryEntry object that needs to be generated based on above sample file:

METADATA|ElementEntry|EffectiveStartDate|EffectiveEndDate|AssignmentNumber|MultipleEntryCount|LegislativeDataGroupName|ElementName|EntryType|CreatorType
MERGE|ElementEntry|2015/01/01|2015/12/31|E138_ASG|4|UK LDG|CRP_UK_MNTH|E|H
MERGE|ElementEntry|2015/01/01|2015/12/31|E139_ASG|4|UK LDG|CRP_UK_MNTH|E|H
METADATA|ElementEntryValue|EffectiveStartDate|EffectiveEndDate|AssignmentNumber|MultipleEntryCount|LegislativeDataGroupName|ElementName|InputValueName|ScreenEntryValue
MERGE|ElementEntryValue|2015/01/01|2015/12/31|E138_ASG|4|UK LDG|CRP_UK_MNTH|Amount|23
MERGE|ElementEntryValue|2015/01/01|2015/12/31|E138_ASG|4|UK LDG|CRP_UK_MNTH|Reason|Corrected all entry value
MERGE|ElementEntryValue|2015/01/01|2015/12/31|E138_ASG|4|UK LDG|CRP_UK_MNTH|Date|2013-01-10
MERGE|ElementEntryValue|2015/01/01|2015/12/31|E139_ASG|4|UK LDG|CRP_UK_MNTH|Amount|33
MERGE|ElementEntryValue|2015/01/01|2015/12/31|E139_ASG|4|UK LDG|CRP_UK_MNTH|Reason|Corrected one entry value
MERGE|ElementEntryValue|2015/01/01|2015/12/31|E139_ASG|4|UK LDG|CRP_UK_MNTH|Date|2013-01-11

SOA Cloud Service Design and Implementation

A canonical schema pattern has been implemented to design end-to-end inbound bulk integration process – from the source data file to generating HDL file and initiating the loading process in HCM cloud. The XML schema of HDL object “ElementEntry” is created. The source data is mapped to this HDL schema and SOA activities will generate the HDL file.

Having a canonical pattern automates the generation of HDL file and it becomes a reusable asset for various interfaces. The developer or business user only needs to focus on mapping the source data to this canonical schema. All other activities such as generating the HDL file, compressing and encrypting the file, uploading the file to WebCenter Content and invoking web services needs to be developed once and then once these activities are developed they also become reusable assets.

Please refer to Wikipedia for the definition of Canonical Schema Pattern

These are the following design considerations:

1. Convert source data file from delimited format to XML

2. Generate Canonical Schema of ElementEntry HDL Object

3. Transform source XML data to HDL canonical schema

4. Generate and compress HDL file

5. Upload a file to WebCenter Content and invoke HDL web service

Please refer to SOA Cloud Service Develop and Deploy for introduction and creating SOA applications.

SOA Composite Design

This is a composite based on above implementation principles:

Convert Source Data to XML

“GetEntryData” in the above composite is a File Adapter service. It is configured to use native format builder to convert CSV data to XML format. For more information on File Adapter, refer to this. For more information on Native Format Builder, refer to this.

The following provides detailed steps on how to use Native Format Builder in JDeveloper:

In native format builder, select delimited format type and use source data as a sample to generate a XML schema. Please see the following diagrams:

Generate XML Schema of ElementEntry HDL Object

A similar approach is used to generate ElementEntry schema. It has two main objects: ElementEntry and ElementEntryValue.

ElementEntry Schema generated using Native Format Builder

<?xml version = ‘1.0’ encoding = ‘UTF-8’?>
<xsd:schema xmlns:xsd=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema” xmlns:nxsd=”http://xmlns.oracle.com/pcbpel/nxsd” xmlns:tns=”http://TargetNamespace.com/GetEntryHdlData” targetNamespace=”http://TargetNamespace.com/GetEntryHdlData” elementFormDefault=”qualified” attributeFormDefault=”unqualified” nxsd:version=”NXSD” nxsd:stream=”chars” nxsd:encoding=”UTF-8″>
<xsd:element name=”Root-Element”>
<xsd:complexType>
<xsd:sequence>
<xsd:element name=”Entry” minOccurs=”1″ maxOccurs=”unbounded”>
<xsd:complexType>
<xsd:sequence>
<xsd:element name=”METADATA” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”|” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
<xsd:element name=”ElementEntry” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”|” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
<xsd:element name=”EffectiveStartDate” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”|” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
<xsd:element name=”EffectiveEndDate” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”|” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
<xsd:element name=”AssignmentNumber” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”|” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
<xsd:element name=”MultipleEntryCount” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”|” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
<xsd:element name=”LegislativeDataGroupName” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”|” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
<xsd:element name=”ElementName” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”|” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
<xsd:element name=”EntryType” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”|” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
<xsd:element name=”CreatorType” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”${eol}” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
</xsd:sequence>
</xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>
</xsd:sequence>
</xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>
<xsd:annotation>
<xsd:appinfo>NXSDSAMPLE=/ElementEntryAllSrc.dat</xsd:appinfo>
<xsd:appinfo>USEHEADER=false</xsd:appinfo>
</xsd:annotation>
</xsd:schema>

ElementEntryValue Schema generated using Native Format Builder

<?xml version = ‘1.0’ encoding = ‘UTF-8’?>
<xsd:schema xmlns:xsd=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema” xmlns:nxsd=”http://xmlns.oracle.com/pcbpel/nxsd” xmlns:tns=”http://TargetNamespace.com/GetEntryValueHdlData” targetNamespace=”http://TargetNamespace.com/GetEntryValueHdlData” elementFormDefault=”qualified” attributeFormDefault=”unqualified” nxsd:version=”NXSD” nxsd:stream=”chars” nxsd:encoding=”UTF-8″>
<xsd:element name=”Root-Element”>
<xsd:complexType>
<xsd:sequence>
<xsd:element name=”EntryValue” minOccurs=”1″ maxOccurs=”unbounded”>
<xsd:complexType>
<xsd:sequence>
<xsd:element name=”METADATA” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”|” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
<xsd:element name=”ElementEntryValue” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”|” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
<xsd:element name=”EffectiveStartDate” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”|” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
<xsd:element name=”EffectiveEndDate” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”|” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
<xsd:element name=”AssignmentNumber” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”|” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
<xsd:element name=”MultipleEntryCount” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”|” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
<xsd:element name=”LegislativeDataGroupName” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”|” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
<xsd:element name=”ElementName” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”|” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
<xsd:element name=”InputValueName” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”|” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
<xsd:element name=”ScreenEntryValue” type=”xsd:string” nxsd:style=”terminated” nxsd:terminatedBy=”${eol}” nxsd:quotedBy=”&quot;”/>
</xsd:sequence>
</xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>
</xsd:sequence>
</xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>
<xsd:annotation>
<xsd:appinfo>NXSDSAMPLE=/ElementEntryAllSrc.dat</xsd:appinfo>
<xsd:appinfo>USEHEADER=false</xsd:appinfo>
</xsd:annotation>
</xsd:schema>

In Native Format Builder, change “|” separator to “,” in the sample file and change it to “|” for each element in the generated schema.

Transform Source XML Data to HDL Canonical Schema

Since we are using canonical schema, all we need to do is map the source data appropriately and Native Format Builder will convert each object into HDL output file. The transformation could be complex depending on the source data format and organization of data values. In our sample use case, each row has one ElementEntry object and 3 ElementEntryValue sub-objects respectively.

The following provides the organization of the data elements in a single row of the source:

The main ElementEntry entries are mapped to each respective row, but ElementEntryValue entries attributes are located at the end of each row. In this sample it results 3 entries. This can be achieved easily by splitting and transforming each row with different mappings as follows:

<xsl:for-each select=”/ns0:Root-Element/ns0:Entry”> – map pair of columns “1” from above diagram

<xsl:for-each select=”/ns0:Root-Element/ns0:Entry”> – map pair of columns “2” from above diagram

<xsl:for-each select=”/ns0:Root-Element/ns0:Entry”> – map pair of columns “3” from above diagram

Metadata Attribute

The most common use cases are to use “merge” action for creating and updating objects. In this use case, it is hard coded to “merge”, but the action could be set up to be dynamic if source data row has this information. The “delete” action removes the entire record and must not be used with “merge” instruction of the same record as HDL cannot guarantee in which order the instructions will be processed. It is highly recommended to correct the data rather than to delete and recreate it using the “delete” action. The deleted data cannot be recovered.

This is the sample schema developed in JDeveloper to split each row into 3 rows for ElementEntryValue object:

<xsl:template match=”/”>
<tns:Root-Element>
<xsl:for-each select=”/ns0:Root-Element/ns0:Entry”>
<tns:Entry>
<tns:METADATA>
<xsl:value-of select=”‘MERGE'”/>
</tns:METADATA>
<tns:ElementEntry>
<xsl:value-of select=”‘ElementEntryValue'”/>
</tns:ElementEntry>
<tns:EffectiveStartDate>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C2″/>
</tns:EffectiveStartDate>
<tns:EffectiveEndDate>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C3″/>
</tns:EffectiveEndDate>
<tns:AssignmentNumber>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C1″/>
</tns:AssignmentNumber>
<tns:MultipleEntryCount>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C4″/>
</tns:MultipleEntryCount>
<tns:LegislativeDataGroupName>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C5″/>
</tns:LegislativeDataGroupName>
<tns:ElementName>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C6″/>
</tns:ElementName>
<tns:EntryType>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C9″/>
</tns:EntryType>
<tns:CreatorType>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C10″/>
</tns:CreatorType>
</tns:Entry>
</xsl:for-each>
<xsl:for-each select=”/ns0:Root-Element/ns0:Entry”>
<tns:Entry>
<tns:METADATA>
<xsl:value-of select=”‘MERGE'”/>
</tns:METADATA>
<tns:ElementEntry>
<xsl:value-of select=”‘ElementEntryValue'”/>
</tns:ElementEntry>
<tns:EffectiveStartDate>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C2″/>
</tns:EffectiveStartDate>
<tns:EffectiveEndDate>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C3″/>
</tns:EffectiveEndDate>
<tns:AssignmentNumber>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C1″/>
</tns:AssignmentNumber>
<tns:MultipleEntryCount>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C4″/>
</tns:MultipleEntryCount>
<tns:LegislativeDataGroupName>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C5″/>
</tns:LegislativeDataGroupName>
<tns:ElementName>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C6″/>
</tns:ElementName>
<tns:EntryType>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C11″/>
</tns:EntryType>
<tns:CreatorType>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C12″/>
</tns:CreatorType>
</tns:Entry>
</xsl:for-each>
<xsl:for-each select=”/ns0:Root-Element/ns0:Entry”>
<tns:Entry>
<tns:METADATA>
<xsl:value-of select=”‘MERGE'”/>
</tns:METADATA>
<tns:ElementEntry>
<xsl:value-of select=”‘ElementEntryValue'”/>
</tns:ElementEntry>
<tns:EffectiveStartDate>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C2″/>
</tns:EffectiveStartDate>
<tns:EffectiveEndDate>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C3″/>
</tns:EffectiveEndDate>
<tns:AssignmentNumber>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C1″/>
</tns:AssignmentNumber>
<tns:MultipleEntryCount>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C4″/>
</tns:MultipleEntryCount>
<tns:LegislativeDataGroupName>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C5″/>
</tns:LegislativeDataGroupName>
<tns:ElementName>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C6″/>
</tns:ElementName>
<tns:EntryType>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C13″/>
</tns:EntryType>
<tns:CreatorType>
<xsl:value-of select=”ns0:C14″/>
</tns:CreatorType>
</tns:Entry>
</xsl:for-each>
</tns:Root-Element>
</xsl:template>

BPEL Design – “ElementEntryPro…”

This is a BPEL component where all the major orchestration activities are defined. In this sample, all the activities after transformation are reusable and can be moved to a separate composite. A separate composite may be developed only for transformation and data enrichment that in the end invokes the reusable composite to complete the loading process.

SOA Cloud Service Instance Flows

The following diagram shows an instance flow:

ElementEntry Composite Instance

BPEL Instance Flow

Receive Input Activity – receives delimited data to XML format through Native Format Builder using File Adapter

Transformation to Canonical ElementEntry data

Transformation to Canonical ElementEntryValue data

Conclusion

This post demonstrates how to automate HCM inbound and outbound patterns using SOA Cloud Service. It shows how to convert customer’s data to HDL format followed by initiating the loading process. This process can also be replicated to other Fusion Applications pillars such as Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).

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