Quick Tips for Oracle ADF 12c Certified Implementation Specialist (1Z0-419) Exam

I passed the ADF 12c Implementation Specialist Exam last month. Lot of people had queries on the pattern/study material etc., so thought to write a quick blog -

• The study material is same as Oracle ADF 11g Exam [D57350, D60499, D60501] though exam is much tougher than ADF 11g (I have cleared ADF 11g earlier as well)
• No new features or concepts in ADF 12c have been covered in the exam
• This is the best Oracle Exam I have given, totally conceptual, cringes you for time and challenges your concepts
• 87 questions in 120 mins with multiple choice questions, I took the entire time.
• Quite a few questions require you to choose the best option from all the right options :)
• Few questions have screenshots and questions are asked pertaining to them which I though was a great idea to check implementation experience
• If you have cleared the ADF 11g exam in the past and have got implementation experience, just a revision of the ADF 11g material should be good enough.
• Do not attempt this exam without having hands on in ADF, it's pointless :)
• Be very thorough on the ADF Lifecycle and ActionListener/ValueChangeListener order of execution, Nested AMs and transaction, DVT components, page templates, ADF BC; quite a few questions from there ! [D60501 is the guide to read for these]

Kudos to the certification team for such a comprehensive exam, I felt really happy on having cleared it !!

Useful links -
Exam Details and Topics (Cover all topics, questions from each are asked)
Study Guide details

OAM 11gR2 / 11.1.2.2 : Redirection to favicon.ico screen after authentication to a Portal

Scenario - After login to the Portal using OAM 11gR2PS2 login to access a protected resource for the first time (page not cached in browser), the end user is redirected to the favicon.ico url instead of the resource url. The browser needs to be refreshed with the Portal URL to get this to navigate to the Portal home page as expected.

Also if the favicon.ico is not present in the OHS /htdocs folder a 404 may also appear.

It was initially tricky to figure out that this issue was related to permissions in OAM. But if we remove the webgate entry from httpd.conf (i.e. Security layer is bypassed), we can confirm that this issue doesnot occur which means OAM is playing up here.

Cause -
This is caused by the favicon.ico being protected by OAM. 
If it's not in the browser cache, the client browser will fetch the favicon.ico resource on the server. It will get the favicon before the page, setting incorrectly the end_url parameter, redirecting to the favicon url instead of the resource url.

Solution -
Make sure that favicon.ico is created in <OHS_INSTANCE>/config/OHS/ohs1/htdocs/  folder so that there is no 404 ever. This is the icon which shows besides the website address.

Then, create a resource definition in OAM as documented in http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E27559_01/admin.1112/e27239/app_domn.htm#CACJJGCA 
1) set type as HTTP
2) define resource URL to /favicon.ico
3) set protection level to "excluded"  (More about excluded resources here )

Reference - Oracle Support Document 

OAM 11.1.2.2 (11gR2) - System error after submitting credentials from Custom Login Page

Scenario : Standard Custom Login Page doing form post to /oam/server/auth_cred_submit with username/pwd and 'request_id' in cookie.

Issue - Sporadic redirection to an error page with 'System Error has occurred' message with details -

[oam_server1] [TRACE] [] [oracle.oam.binding] [tid: [ACTIVE].ExecuteThread: '3' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)'] [userId: ] [ecid: 004sto37QpzDoYX5HvH7if00063I00002b,0:2] [SRC_CLASS: oracle.security.am.pbl.protocol.plugin.oam.AMFailureResponseHandler] [APP: oam_server#11.1.2.0.0] [SRC_METHOD: processResponse] [URI: /oam/server/auth_cred_submit] OAM-02073[[

oracle.security.am.common.utilities.exception.AmRuntimeException: OAM-02073
at oracle.security.am.engines.enginecontroller.AuthzEngineController.checkProtected(AuthzEngineController.java:438)
at oracle.security.am.engines.enginecontroller.AuthzEngineController.processEvent(AuthzEngineController.java:177)
at oracle.security.am.controller.MasterController.processEvent(MasterController.java:570)
at oracle.security.am.controller.MasterController.processRequest(MasterController.java:759)

Solution - 

As per Support Document Id 1578776.1-

"Verify that the custom login page is submitting the credentials to /oam/server/auth_cred_submit with the correct OAM Server Host and Port.The OAM_SERVER_HOST.DOMAIN and SSLPORT values should match those configured in the OAM Console -> System Configuration -> Access Manager Settings page for Load Balancing OAM Server Host and OAM Server Port.”

In  my case, the form post URL was pointing to https://<host>/oam/server/auth_cred_submit.

Once I had it changed to https://<host>:443/oam/server/auth_cred_submit, (adding missing port) this issue got resolved.

Please check the above support document for some other causes for this issue.