Configure Weblogic SSL to deny SSLv2

Quick post, with a quick solution.

We are going through some security audits, and one of the things that we had failed on was an SSL test on our OBIEE server. The issue was that by default, Weblogic was allowing SSLv2 and weak ciphers, something out security team doesn't like.

The solution took me some googleing, but I found the change and it was quite simple. Essentially we had to add a simple command line argument to our bi_server startup script:

-Dweblogic.security.SSL.protocolVersion=SSL3 -Dweblogic.security.disableNullCipher=true

That resolved it, and now we are passing the SSL check.

For reference on how we setup SSL for OBIEE in Weblogic on the appserver, check out the previous blog post.

How to Unit Test OBIA Informatica Changes

I've started getting into doing a bit of development with Informatica on our OBIA install (for reference, we are using OBIA 7.9.6.3 + Extension pack). Part of the "best practices" setup by our Oracle Consultant was to create a separate sandbox folder anytime we were making a change to an Infomratica mapping. The difficulty I had was how to test the workflow after I made my changes, as I can't run my change via DAC, without creating a separate execution plan, and I can't test directly in Infomratica, as it references a parameter file that exists on the server.

The solution was to extract the command that DAC would run (pmcmd), create a temporary parameter file, and then run my new mapping from my sandbox folder. And as always, I've created a helpful script to automate this!

Continue on to read for an explanation of what my script does, and a copy of said script.