Debugging Oracle ESS portlet Producer/Consumer registration errors

When working with Fusion Apps ESS, you may encounter errors during job submissions that has to do with remote rendering of job parameters. ESS i.e. EssCentralUiApp utilizes portlet technology to remotely invoke a business view that is implemented as an Schedule Request Submission(SRS) ADF task flow.

In such cases, the ess server diagnostics logs will contain exception stack trace like below:

Caused by: javax.naming.NameNotFoundException; remaining name 'ESS_SRS_PortletProducerName_<webModuleName>_<hostname>_com'
        at oracle.adf.share.jndi.ContextImpl.findObject(ContextImpl.java:647)
        at oracle.adf.share.jndi.ContextImpl.lookup(ContextImpl.java:144)
        at oracle.adf.share.jndi.ContextImpl.lookup(ContextImpl.java:149)
        at javax.naming.InitialContext.lookup(InitialContext.java:392)
        at oracle.portlet.client.techimpl.wsrp.WSRPClientUtils.getProducerConnection(WSRPClientUtils.java:118)
        at oracle.portlet.client.techimpl.wsrp.WSRPClientUtils.getProducerConnection(WSRPClientUtils.java:98)
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oracle.apps.fnd.applcp.srs.model.exception.PortletProducerRegistrationException: Fail to lookup producer id with dynamic registration
       at oracle.apps.fnd.applcp.srs.model.srsService.applicationModule.PortletRegistrationServiceAMImpl.lookupPortletProducerIdEx(PortletRegistrationServiceAMImpl.java:187)
        at oracle.apps.fnd.applcp.srs.model.srsService.applicationModule.PortletRegistrationServiceAMImpl.lookupPortletProducerId(PortletRegistrationServiceAMImpl.java:133)
        at oracle.apps.fnd.applcp.srs.view.backing.ScheduleRequestSwitcher.computeTaskFlowId(ScheduleRequestSwitcher.java:105)
        at oracle.apps.fnd.applcp.srs.view.backing.ScheduleRequestSwitcher.<init>(ScheduleRequestSwitcher.java:43)
        at sun.reflect.GeneratedConstructorAccessor1056.newInstance(Unknown Source)"
=======================================================================  
These errors typically indicate that the portlet producer registration has succeeded and there is some problem on the Portlet Binding side or the dynamic portlet producer registration on the EssCentralUiApp side has failed and there is some problem getting a valid portlet instance id.  Usually, you can get past these errors by manually deleting the portlet producer registration entry to force ESS to dynamically register the producer again.

Remember, the portlet producer lookup for dynamic registration is based on the specific name derived from value of the ESS jobDefinition property 'EXT_PortletContainerWebModule'. One can either follow these steps to delete the producer associated with EssCentralUiApp from Enterprise Manager (EM) or use WLST commands.

1. Login to EM console of ESS Server associated with Common Domain
2. Navigate to the WebCenter Service Configuration page as shown 

3. Select “portlet producer” and inspect the list of registered portlet producers 
4. Look for the offending webmodule entry from the exception stack; you should see only one entry
5. Delete the producer entry 
    (sometimes bouncing the server may help see the changes take effect)

In other cases, you may hit errors that are caused due to a stale WebService connection entry that needs to be removed. Exceptions like
.........
[ess_server1] [ERROR] [] [oracle.apps.fnd.applcp.srs]
....[APP: EssCentralUiApp]
.. [APPS_SESSION_ID: F145330E505C6A13E0436810C10A43B7] Register Producer failed due to errors.
@ Connection exists:
@ ESS_SRS_PortletProducerName_<webModuleName>_<hostname>_com-wsconn
        at oracle.apps.fnd.applcp.srs.model.srsService.applicationModule.PortletRegistrationServiceAMImpl.lookupPortletProducerIdEx(PortletRegistrationServiceAMImpl.java:187)
        at oracle.apps.fnd.applcp.srs.model.srsService.applicationModule.PortletRegistrationServiceAMImpl.lookupPortletProducerId(PortletRegistrationServiceAMImpl.java:133)
        at oracle.apps.fnd.applcp.srs.view.backing.ScheduleRequestSwitcher.computeTaskFlowId(ScheduleRequestSwitcher.java:105)
        at oracle.apps.fnd.applcp.srs.view.backing.ScheduleRequestSwitcher.<init>(ScheduleRequestSwitcher.java:43)
        at sun.reflect.GeneratedConstructorAccessor1056.newInstance(Unknown Source)"

Here, you can go through the System MBean browser to delete the portlet producer WS Connection entry from EM.

1. Login to EM in the CommonDomain and launch the System MBean Browser.     
2. Navigate to "ADFConnections" MBean
 Application Defined MBeans -> oracle.adf.share.connections -> Server: ess_server1 -> Application: EsscentralUiApp -> ADFConnections -> ADFConnections

3. Expand the "WebServiceConnection" node and verify that the stale connection 'ESS_SRS_PortletProducerName_<webModuleName>_<hostname>_com-wsconn' exists
4. Navigate back to the "Operations" tab and click on the 'removeConnection' operation.

After deleting the WS Connection entry, you may also want to delete the portlet producer registration entry as an extra measure.

For more information, refer the Fusion Applications Administrator's Guide chapter on "Troubleshooting Oracle WebCenter Portlets"