Learner Series: Dynamically load XSL templates

I received a few requests from readers on how to dynamically load XSLT stylesheets in SOA 11g/12c.

This usecase finds importance when you have the following;

• You have one input source (master data) and multiple destinations each of which receives the same data in different formats
• Your destination requires minor changes on the data being sent and you don't want to redeploy the whole process causing downtime to other systems
• You have dynamic partnerlinks to connect to multiple targets each of those targets expect data in a certain format

We will leverage SOA-MDS to store and retrieve our XSL stylesheets dynamically at runtime.

Step 1: Develop your XSLT mappings and test them before you persist them on MDS
Ref: learn how to use MDS in 11g/12c

Once you have your stylesheets in MDS, you can reference them from within your BPEL process using the oramds:/ protocol

Step 2: You don't need to use the "Transform" activity in your BPEL. Use either of the following BPEL XPath Extension Functions to load and process your XSL stylesheets within your "Assign" activity.

ora:processXSLT()
ora:doXSLTransformForDoc()

For example, ora:processXSLT('oramds:/apps/stylesheets/xformOrder.xsl', $inputVariable.payload)

You can further parameterize this expression by using a DVM to store the XSL references and use dvm:lookup to get the first parameter - XML template location.