Wednesday, January 12, 2011







My Advice











  1. Brian,

    By package do you mean splitting the IAM stack (OAM/OIM/OAAM) from the IDM stack (OID/OVD) or each individual product in its own Domain?


  2. Eric,

    Yes, I mean splitting the IAM stack (OAM/OIM/OAAM) from the IDM stack (OID/OVD).

    Now, splitting up the individual products within a package into seperate domains is sometimes a good idea as well. For instance, people often install OIF into a different domain from OID and OVD. This is often done because OIF is seen as an "external" facing application where as OID and OVD are often seen as purely "internal".

    The one thing to watch out for when splitting up the products in one package is that some of the interoperabilities between these products depend on them being in the same domain. The integration between OAM and OIM is one example.

    Good question, I should probably write a follow-up post.

  3. Great post.

    In Production systems, it would be great if we split these components deploying them in seperate servers based on IDM and IAM Stack. It is easier to investigate if any problems occur in this way.

  4. Thanks for the post Brian, very informative! I'm a newbie to IDM - career DBA - and I'm curious about "BP" for installation. Would you separate the SOA and BI Publisher as well? Would you recommend only using the the SOA and BIPub products for IDM or could I point my existing apps at BIPub and take advantage of the capabilities rather than having another install base out there? Also, would you recommend renaming the installation homes? I'm playing with renaming my OIM "app server" install directory to Oracle_OIM1 instead of the typical Oracle_IDM1, rename OID from Oracle_IDM1 to Oracle_OID1, etc. Thanks again and I appreciate your feedback!!

  5. Richard,

    The SOA Suite used by OIM must be installed in the same domain as OIM. That being said, I recommend that people use another installation of SOA Suite for non-OIM purposes.

    I'm not sure about BI Publisher but I think the same advice would follow. Also, I'm not in sales but if you decide to use the BIPub that comes with OIM for other purposes be sure you have licenses that allow you to use it for other purposes.

    Finally, I'd be reluctant to rename the install directory (though I do agree with the naming conventions you want to change to). I'd be pretty worried about the original location being written to all sorts of various files. I'd say wait until next time to go with your new names.

    Good luck,


  6. Thanks for the feedback Brian, Let me clarify the BI Publisher question a bit. Can I install it on a separate server (virtual environment, in our case)? In the future, once I clear up the licensing issues, I want to use it for more than IDM. I don't think I want to put it in the same environment as IDM. I want to isolate them from each other. Would that make sense?

    Bummer about the renaming... I've done it in my sandbox environment... fortunately I haven't gone any further :-)

    I'm getting the hang of this... slowly but surely.. Thanks again!

  7. Yes, you should be able to install BI publisher in a separate environment.

    As for the renaming, maybe I'm being overly cautious. If it seems to work in your sandbox and you've tested it extensively then maybe it is OK.

  8. Hi Brian,

    Already I have a SOA 11g installed and working for other things. Is it possible to use that SOA for OIM 11g that I am going to install now?? I read that both things have to be in same domain. But is this scenario possible??

    Thanks & Regards,


  9. Yes, it is possible. In fact, installing SOA is a pre-requisite for OIM 11g today and they do have to be in the same domain.

    That being said, they also have to be at the same release level (ie

    I also recommend that if you are using SOA suite on its own, seperate from OIM, that you install a seperate instance of SOA suite on a seperate domain for the seperate usage.

  10. Hi Brian, thanks for this informative blog.
    I'm facing an issue related to upgrade and downgrade of SOA 11g.
    I'd installed IAM package Had configured OAM. Later in the same middleware home, thought of configuring OIM. With OIM, I needed SOA. Hence installed SOA, created schema using RCU Now the issue I faced here was SOA is not compatible with OIM I came to know later), hence had to uninstall SOA and install SOA and create schema using RCU Now while configuring domain for OIM, am facing JDBC connection issue for OWSM MDS schema. Connection is established but no rows are retrieved.
    If I want to reinstall OIM, I cannot do it in the same middleware home, because that would override the OAM configuration. So can I create new middleware home for OIM alone and can OAM and OIM in different domains be integrated if required??


  11. Moin,

    I feel your pain. One thing I worry about is whether or not SOA uninstalled cleanly or if there are still some libraries floating around your FMW home that could be incompatible with IAM

    That being said, on the topic of OAM and OIM in separate domains, the documentation says they need to be in the same domain.

    However, I have heard that this is due to the fact that the step-by-step instructions rely on the domain agent to protect the self service pages of OIM and that if you are using a real webgate/agent to protect the OIM self service pages that OIM and OAM can then be in separate domains.

    Keep in mind though that I have not tried this myself and the official support for OIM/OAM integration with them in separate domains is ambiguous.

    Another option might be to try and push through and resolve your OIM/schema problems.

