28 Using APIs

28.1.1 Using OIMClient

OIMClient is the entry point for accessing the services available in Oracle Identity Manager. You use the following sequence of steps when using OIMClient:

1. Create an instance of OIMClient with the environment information required to connect to Oracle Identity Manager application, as shown:

   Hashtable env = new Hashtable();
   
   env.put(OIMClient.JAVA_NAMING_FACTORY_INITIAL, "weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactory");
   env.put(OIMClient.JAVA_NAMING_PROVIDER_URL, http://OIM_HOSTNAME:OIM_PORT);
   OIMClient oimClient = new OIMClient(env);
   

   Here, replace OIM_HOSTNAME with the host name on which Oracle Identity Manager is deployed and OIM_PORT with the port number.

2. Login to the Oracle Identity Manager with the appropriate credentials, as shown:

   oimClient.login(OIM_USERNAME, OIM_PASSWORD);
   

3. Lookup a service, as shown:

   UserManager usermgr = oimClient.getService(UserManager.class);
   

4. Load operations on a service, as shown:

   HashMap userAttributes = new HashMap();
   ……………..
   UserManagerResult result = userMgr.create(new User(null, userAttributes));
   

28.1.2 Using the tcUtilityFactory

Earlier releases of Oracle Identity Manager supports tcUtilityFactory for accessing Oracle Identity Manager Services (or Utilities, as they are called in legacy releases). tcUtilityFactory continues to be supported. However, as mentioned earlier, Oracle recommends using OIMClient for building all client applications for Oracle Identity Manager.

You use the following sequence of steps when using tcUtilityFactory:

1. Create an instance of tcUtilityFactory with the environment information, such as username and password, as shown:

   tcUtilityFactory ioUtilityFactory = new tcUtilityFactory(env, "OIM_USERNAME", "OIM_PASSWORD");
   }
   

2. Look up utility or service by providing the fully qualified name of the utility, as shown:

   tcUserOperationsIntf moUserUtility = (tcUserOperationsIntf)ioUtilityFactory.getUtility("Thor.API.Operations.tcUserOperationsIntf");
   

3. Run operations on the utility, as shown:

   Hashtable mhSearchCriteria = new Hashtable();
   mhSearchCriteria.put("Users.First Name", psFirstName);
   tcResultSet moResultSet = moUserUtility.findUsers(mhSearchCriteria);
   

28.2.1 Services Introduced in Oracle Identity Manager 11g Release 1 (11.1.1)

Services introduced in Oracle Identity Manager 11g Release 1 (11.1.1) follow the following conventions:

• Package Names: Services are in packages whose names end with "api", for example:

  oracle.iam.request.api
  oracle.iam.identity.usermgmt.api
  

• Service Interface Names: Services introduced in 11g typically use the naming convention of "*Service", for example:

  oracle.iam.request.api.RequestService
  oracle.iam.selfservice.self.selfmgmt.api.AuthenticatedSelfService
  

  Some Identity Administration APIs use the "*Manager" naming convention for their APIs, for example:

  oracle.iam.identity.usermgmt.api.UserManager
  

28.2.2 Legacy Services or Utilities

Legacy services, also called utilities, follow the following naming conventions

• Package Names: All legacy APIs are in Thor.API.Operations package.

• Service Interface Names: Service names are of the form "*Intf", for example, Thor.API.Operations.tcImportOperationsIntf.

See Also:

Oracle Fusion Middleware Oracle Identity Manager Java API Reference for a full list of services available in Oracle Identity Manager. You can use the naming conventions above to find the APIs.

28.3.1 Mapping Between Legacy and New Services

In Oracle Identity Manager 11g Release 1 (11.1.1), some of the legacy APIs have been rewritten by using new architecture and the corresponding utility services or interface classes have been changed. Table 28-2 provides a high-level correspondence between the legacy and new interfaces.

28.4.1 Prerequisites for Developing Clients

The following prerequisites must be met for developing clients for Oracle Identity Manager:

• Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.6 installed and set in the path

• ANT 1.7 installed and set in the path

28.4.2 Setup and Configuration

Oracle Identity Manager package contains a ZIP file that contains the required libraries and configuration files for developing clients. It also contains a sample client, which you can use as the starting point for developing your application.

To run an application client for Oracle Identity Manager:

1. Copy OIM_ORACLE_HOME/server/client/oimclient.zip to the computer on which you want to develop the client, for example the oimclient/ directory. This directory is referred to as OIM_CLIENT_HOME in this document. Extract the ZIP file. Note that the oimclient.zip file consists of the conf, lib, sample, directories, oimclient.jar, and README.

2. Copy the application server-specific client library to the OIM_CLIENT_HOME/lib/ directory. For Oracle WebLogic Server, wlfullclient.jar is the client library. It is created in MIDDLEWARE_HOME/WL_HOME/server/lib/ directory, for example, /scratch/beahome/wlserver_10.3/server/lib/. Check if wlfullclient.jar is present. If not, then you must generate one by using the jarbuilder tool. See Oracle WebLogic Server documentation on how to generate wlfullclient.jar.

3. Edit and run the sample client. To do so:

   1. Open the OIM_CLIENT_HOME/sample/src/oracle/iam/samples/SampleOIMClient.java sample client file.

   2. Edit the following constants to point to the host on which Oracle Identity Manager is displayed:

      • OIMURL: The URL of the Oracle Identity Manager host computer

      • OIMUserName: Administrator username for Oracle Identity Manager

      • OIMPassword: Administrator password for Oracle Identity Manager

   3. Run the ant command. This compiles and runs the sample client. The sample generates the following output when it runs successfully:

      [java] LOGGER >> Creating client....
      [java] LOGGER >> Logging in
      [java] LOGGER >> Log in successful
      [java] LOGGER >> User Created
      

28.5.1 Using a Result Set Object

Legacy Oracle Identity Manager APIs extensively use the tcResultSet interface. The Thor.API.tcResultSet interface is a data structure that stores records retrieved from the database. Methods in the Oracle Identity Manager API that must return a set of data use a result set. This is a two-dimensional data structure in which the columns correspond to the attributes and rows correspond to the entities. For example, a result set that is returned by the method that searches for users, each row would represent data pertaining to one user, and each column in the row would be an attribute for that user.

You can scroll through the result set and retrieve individual entries corresponding to particular attributes by using the various methods provided. To locate a particular row in the result set, use the goToRow() method with the row number as a parameter. To retrieve the values for the columns from a row, use appropriate accessor methods, such as getStringValue(). To obtain the value from a specific column, pass the column name as a parameter to the accessor method. The column name is the descriptive code defined in the Oracle Identity Manager Meta-Data system.

The following table shows some sample metadata values. This mapping is based on lookup codes and can be looked up in the Design Console by using the Lookup Definition Form.

The following is an example of how to use a result set. This example obtains a result set by calling the findAllUsers() method. This method searches for all users matching certain criteria:

tcResultSet moResultSet = moUserUtility.findAllUsers(mhAttribs);

To check if the findAllUsers() method returned any records, use the isEmpty() method, for example:

boolean mbEmpty = moResultSet.isEmpty();

To retrieve the number of records found, use the getRowCount() method. If no records are found, then the method returns 0. The following is an example:

int mnNumRec = moResultSet.getRowCount();

To select a particular record in the system, use the goToRow() method:

moResultSet.goToRow(5);

To retrieve the values of attributes from the current row, use the appropriate accessor method, for example:

String msUserLastName = moResultSet.getStringValue("Users.Last Name");

28.5.2 Handling Oracle Identity Manager Exceptions

The API methods throw Oracle-defined Java exceptions. Instead of using the getMessage() method on the exception object received, you can access the isMessage internal variable to retrieve the exception message.

28.5.3 Cleaning Up

The tcUtilityFactory class manages all resources used by a utility or factory instance and provides a means to release these resources after they are used.

If you instantiate and use tcUtilityFactory to obtain utility class instances, to release the resources that are associated with the utility class, call the close(utility Object) method on the factory class. If the session has ended, then call the close() method on the factory instance to release all the utility classes, the session objects, and the database objects.

If you obtain a utility class directly by using static calls, after the utility object is no longer needed, call the close(object) method on the utility object.

28.7.1 About the APIs

The reconciliation APIs are a set of published APIs that can be used to create reconciliation events with single-valued and multi-valued attribute data and other features.

Reconciliation connector developers must use these APIs to push data to the reconciliation event repository.

Most of these APIs existed in earlier versions of Oracle Identity Manager. However, in 11g Release 1 (11.1.1), the implementation has changed and is based on the new reconciliation architecture introduced in the release.

Existing standard connectors also use these APIs; since the earlier APIs continue to be supported, no changes are necessary to those connectors.

28.7.2 New Reconciliation APIs in 11g Release 1 (11.1.1)

callingEndOfJobAPI is the only new reconciliation API in 11g Release 1 (11.1.1).

Each run of a connector is known as a job. In 11g Release 1 (11.1.1), reconciliation events are submitted to the reconciliation engine in batches. At the end of a job, the scheduler (which executes the connector scheduled task) executes a listener, which in turn invokes the callingEndOfJOBAPI. This API submits any open batch for processing to the reconciliation engine.

The API calls are similar for Multilanguage Supported (MLS) and non-MLS data. The connector passes in data to be reconciled as a HashMap. The difference is that if an attribute is MLS-enabled, then the key is the attribute name, while the value is another HashMap of MLS data. The keys of this MLS-specific HashMap are language codes, and the values are the corresponding locale-specific data obtained from target system. If there is any MLS data that does not have a locale defined with it in the target system, that data is passed with key "base" in the MLS input data HashMap.