Chapter 21. Maven settings and repositories for Red Hat Decision Manager

When you create a Red Hat Decision Manager project, Business Central uses the Maven repositories that are configured for Business Central. You can use the Maven global or user settings to direct all Red Hat Decision Manager projects to retrieve dependencies from the public Red Hat Decision Manager repository by modifying the Maven project object model (POM) file (pom.xml). You can also configure Business Central and KIE Server to use an external Maven repository or prepare a Maven mirror for offline use.

For more information about Red Hat Decision Manager packaging and deployment options, see Packaging and deploying an Red Hat Decision Manager project.

21.1. Adding Maven dependencies for Red Hat Decision Manager

To use the correct Maven dependencies in your Red Hat Decision Manager project, add the Red Hat Business Automation bill of materials (BOM) files to the project’s pom.xml file. The Red Hat Business Automation BOM applies to both Red Hat Decision Manager and Red Hat Process Automation Manager. When you add the BOM files, the correct versions of transitive dependencies from the provided Maven repositories are included in the project.

For more information about the Red Hat Business Automation BOM, see What is the mapping between Red Hat Process Automation Manager and the Maven library version?.

Procedure

  1. Declare the Red Hat Business Automation BOM in the pom.xml file:

    <dependencyManagement>
     <dependencies>
      <dependency>
       <groupId>com.redhat.ba</groupId>
       <artifactId>ba-platform-bom</artifactId>
       <version>7.13.5.redhat-00002</version>
       <type>pom</type>
       <scope>import</scope>
      </dependency>
     </dependencies>
    </dependencyManagement>
    <dependencies>
    <!-- Your dependencies -->
    </dependencies>
  2. Declare dependencies required for your project in the <dependencies> tag. After you import the product BOM into your project, the versions of the user-facing product dependencies are defined so you do not need to specify the <version> sub-element of these <dependency> elements. However, you must use the <dependency> element to declare dependencies which you want to use in your project.
  3. For standalone projects that are not authored in Business Central, specify all dependencies required for your projects. In projects that you author in Business Central, the basic decision engine dependencies are provided automatically by Business Central.

    • For a basic Red Hat Decision Manager project, declare the following dependencies, depending on the features that you want to use:
    • For a basic Red Hat Decision Manager project, declare the following dependencies:

      Embedded decision engine dependencies

      <dependency>
        <groupId>org.drools</groupId>
        <artifactId>drools-compiler</artifactId>
      </dependency>
      
      <!-- Dependency for persistence support. -->
      <dependency>
        <groupId>org.drools</groupId>
        <artifactId>drools-persistence-jpa</artifactId>
      </dependency>
      
      <!-- Dependencies for decision tables, templates, and scorecards.
      For other assets, declare org.drools:business-central-models-* dependencies. -->
      <dependency>
        <groupId>org.drools</groupId>
        <artifactId>drools-decisiontables</artifactId>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
        <groupId>org.drools</groupId>
        <artifactId>drools-templates</artifactId>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
        <groupId>org.drools</groupId>
        <artifactId>drools-scorecards</artifactId>
      </dependency>
      
      <!-- Dependency for loading KJARs from a Maven repository using KieScanner. -->
      <dependency>
        <groupId>org.kie</groupId>
        <artifactId>kie-ci</artifactId>
      </dependency>

    • To use KIE Server, declare the following dependencies:

      Client application KIE Server dependencies

      <dependency>
        <groupId>org.kie.server</groupId>
        <artifactId>kie-server-client</artifactId>
      </dependency>

    • To create a remote client for Red Hat Decision Manager, declare the following dependency:

      Client dependency

      <dependency>
        <groupId>org.uberfire</groupId>
        <artifactId>uberfire-rest-client</artifactId>
      </dependency>

    • When creating a JAR file that includes assets, such as rules and process definitions, specify the packaging type for your Maven project as kjar and use org.kie:kie-maven-plugin to process the kjar packaging type located under the <project> element. In the following example, ${kie.version} is the Maven library version listed in What is the mapping between Red Hat Decision Manager and the Maven library version?:

      <packaging>kjar</packaging>
      <build>
       <plugins>
        <plugin>
         <groupId>org.kie</groupId>
         <artifactId>kie-maven-plugin</artifactId>
         <version>${kie.version}</version>
         <extensions>true</extensions>
        </plugin>
       </plugins>
      </build>

21.2. Configuring an external Maven repository for Business Central and KIE Server

You can configure Business Central and KIE Server to use an external Maven repository, such as Nexus or Artifactory, instead of the built-in repository. This enables Business Central and KIE Server to access and download artifacts that are maintained in the external Maven repository.

Important

Artifacts in the repository do not receive automated security patches because Maven requires that artifacts be immutable. As a result, artifacts that are missing patches for known security flaws will remain in the repository to avoid breaking builds that depend on them. The version numbers of patched artifacts are incremented. For more information, see JBoss Enterprise Maven Repository.

Note

For information about configuring an external Maven repository for an authoring environment on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, see the following documents:

Prerequisites

Procedure

  1. Create a Maven settings.xml file with connection and access details for your external repository. For details about the settings.xml file, see the Maven Settings Reference.
  2. Save the file in a known location, for example, /opt/custom-config/settings.xml.
  3. In your Red Hat Process Automation Manager installation directory, navigate to the standalone-full.xml file. For example, if you use a Red Hat JBoss EAP installation for Red Hat Process Automation Manager go to $EAP_HOME/standalone/configuration/standalone-full.xml.
  4. Open standalone-full.xml and under the <system-properties> tag, set the kie.maven.settings.custom property to the full path name of the settings.xml file.

    For example:

    <property name="kie.maven.settings.custom" value="/opt/custom-config/settings.xml"/>
  5. Start or restart Business Central and KIE Server.

Next steps

For each Business Central project that you want to export or push as a KJAR artifact to the external Maven repository, you must add the repository information in the project pom.xml file. For instructions, see Packaging and deploying an Red Hat Decision Manager project.

21.3. Preparing a Maven mirror repository for offline use

If your Red Hat Process Automation Manager deployment does not have outgoing access to the public Internet, you must prepare a Maven repository with a mirror of all the necessary artifacts and make this repository available to your environment.

Note

You do not need to complete this procedure if your Red Hat Process Automation Manager deployment is connected to the Internet.

Prerequisites

  • A computer that has outgoing access to the public Internet is available.

Procedure

  1. On the computer that has an outgoing connection to the public Internet, complete the following steps:
  2. Navigate to the Software Downloads page in the Red Hat Customer Portal (login required), and select the product and version from the drop-down options:

    • Product: Process Automation Manager
    • Version: 7.13.5

      1. Download and extract the Red Hat Process Automation Manager 7.13.5 Offliner Content List (rhpam-7.13.5-offliner.zip) product deliverable file.
      2. Extract the contents of the rhpam-7.13.5-offliner.zip file into any directory.
      3. Change to the directory and enter the following command:

        ./offline-repo-builder.sh offliner.txt

        This command creates the repository subdirectory and downloads the necessary artifacts into this subdirectory. This is the mirror repository.

        If a message reports that some downloads have failed, run the same command again. If downloads fail again, contact Red Hat support.

  3. If you developed services outside of Business Central and they have additional dependencies, add the dependencies to the mirror repository. If you developed the services as Maven projects, you can use the following steps to prepare these dependencies automatically. Complete the steps on the computer that has an outgoing connection to the public Internet.

    1. Create a backup of the local Maven cache directory (~/.m2/repository) and then clear the directory.
    2. Build the source of your projects using the mvn clean install command.
    3. For every project, enter the following command to ensure that Maven downloads all runtime dependencies for all the artifacts generated by the project:

      mvn -e -DskipTests dependency:go-offline -f /path/to/project/pom.xml --batch-mode -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true

      Replace /path/to/project/pom.xml with the path of the pom.xml file of the project.

    4. Copy the contents of the local Maven cache directory (~/.m2/repository) to the repository subdirectory that was created.
  4. Copy the contents of the repository subdirectory to a directory on the computer on which you deployed Red Hat Process Automation Manager. This directory becomes the offline Maven mirror repository.
  5. Create and configure a settings.xml file for your Red Hat Process Automation Manager deployment as described in Section 21.2, “Configuring an external Maven repository for Business Central and KIE Server”.
  6. Make the following changes in the settings.xml file:

    • Under the <profile> tag, if a <repositories> or <pluginRepositores> tag is missing, add the missing tags.
    • Under <repositories> add the following content:

      <repository>
        <id>offline-repository</id>
        <url>file:///path/to/repo</url>
        <releases>
          <enabled>true</enabled>
        </releases>
        <snapshots>
          <enabled>false</enabled>
        </snapshots>
      </repository>

      Replace /path/to/repo with the full path to the local Maven mirror repository directory.

    • Under <pluginRepositories> add the following content:

      <repository>
        <id>offline-plugin-repository</id>
        <url>file:///path/to/repo</url>
        <releases>
          <enabled>true</enabled>
        </releases>
        <snapshots>
          <enabled>false</enabled>
        </snapshots>
      </repository>

      Replace /path/to/repo with the full path to the local Maven mirror repository directory.

  7. Set the kie.maven.offline.force property for Business Central to true. For instructions about setting properties for Business Central, see Installing and configuring Red Hat Decision Manager on Red Hat JBoss EAP 7.4.