Help with use of Java Stored Procedures to invoke Java Code within Applicat

Question

Good afternoon everyone
Our development team is looking for some assistance/validation of a design strategy we are deploying for a client. Let me first layout the environment and then the design issue at hand:
Business User Workstation component: Oracle SQL*Developer 1.5.x
Reporting Tool: Actuate e.Spreadsheet A10
Application Web UI: J2EE application developed with Eclipse
Application Scripting: Application has a scripting component whereby business users can write Oracle PL/SQL to perform many of the functions that are available in the Web UI, but can be batched up or repeated several times.
Application Server WebLogic 9.2.3 (client constraint)
Database Serve: Oracle 11g, Release 11.1.0.7
Lots of other stuff included but irrelevant for this conversation.
Here's the scenario in question:
1.     Through the scripting solution, the application user must use PL/SQL to invoke functionality within the Web UI. All PL/SQL that the application user creates does not contain any SQL. Instead our security model mandates that “pre-defined” routines will perform all of the SQL operations against the database; the application user simply invokes the stored procedures of functions to perform activities in the database.
2.     There is a component of the scripting application that facilitates the creation of reports. In our application, we are using Actuate’s e.Spreadsheet Engine to create the report and format the report based on a template. The template is provided as input, as well as other data items, into Actuate for processing. The net result is the report is created by the Actuate e.Spreadsheet engine in pdf format and then sent back to the user for distribution to other users in the company.
3.     The Actuate e.Spreadsheet engine consists of one or more JAR files within the Application Server framework. The Web UI utilizes these JAR files as well to perform report generation and data manipulation activities. In the case of the reporting functionality, the pdf report that is generated by Actuate is returned into either the Web UI or into the scripting component for persistence in the database. The mechanism exists to create multi-step jobs that can create multiple reports in one run.
4.     So to facilitate the above, we are creating one or more Java Stored Procedures that will mediate the communication between the PL/SQL the user’s create and the Java components that are required for business processing. PL/SQL will invoke one or more Java Stored Procedures. Then the Java Stored Procedures invoke Actuate e.Spreadsheet, generate the report, saves the report in the database and returns control back to the invoking procedure.
So the question is: Is this a viable and correct use of Oracle Java Stored Procedures. What are the advantages/disadvantages of doing so? Any security issues or potholes that you can think of? Tuning issues for the JVMs? Any white papers that you can think of?
For any Oracle employees that respond, material such as Oracle Whitepapers, etc. would be great.
I can be contacted at [phone] or at [email protected]
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

So are you planning on loading the entire e.Spreadsheet engine into the database server's JVM?
If so, I would expect that to work, but I expect that you'd have some performance issues. I'd expect that the process of building these PDFs is going to be relatively expensive. Tuning the database server's JVM tends to be rather more challenging than tuning JVM's in an app server.
If not, I'm not sure how the Java stored procedure would invoke the e.Spreadsheet engine on the application server. It is possible to use Oracle AQ to send a JMS message, but I don't think you can use the standard J2EE JMS APIs-- I think you'd have to use Oracle's AQ interface.
Justin