An old enhancement request of ours came to my attention again yesterday when a change to the TNS name of an Automation Engine database led to a partial system outage.
In the JDBC section of the ucsrv.ini file, one specifies a JDBC connection string (Oracle in our case) that instructs the AE processes (CPs, WPs, and JWPs) how to connect to the database. The Java Work Process does not work correctly if the Oracle JDBC connection string is based on LDAP. It should.
Non-LDAP connection string
SQLDRIVERCONNECT=jdbc:oracle:thin:@//ABX4-SCAN.MYCOMPANY.COM:1521/DB123.CORP.MYCOMPANY.COM
LDAP connection string
SQLDRIVERCONNECT=jdbc:oracle:thin:@ldap://oranamesldap1.mycompany.com:3389/DB123,cn=OracleContext,dc=mycompany,dc=com
The advantage of using a connection string based on LDAP is that we can put a DB name in the string, and not a DB host name. This means if the DB host name changes, it will still work.
The JWP should support LDAP-based connection strings.
If we had had this capability in place yesterday, we would not have run into this problem, because the JWP would have been shielded from changes to the TNS names.
And starting with v12.1, this idea also applies to the JCP. As more and more features of the Automation Engine are moved to Java processes, the utility of this enhancement increases too.
If you like the idea, please vote for it. (Right now, it has only two votes.)