Manually deleting MDS entries

The MDS in the Oracle Soa Suite 11g is a very powerful concept. We use it a lot in our projects. At the start of each project, we enthusiastically add all kinds of artifacts, only to find out later that we didn't really need them, that the folder structure of our project in the MDS has changed, that we didn't like the names we gave the artifacts etc etc. Sounds familiar? Eventually, obsolete items start to clutter our projects. Recently I got a tip on how to manually delete items from the MDS and I would like to share this valuable piece of information. It goes like this:

• Go to the Enterprise Manager
• Go to the SOA Infrastructure menu
• Go to Administration -> System MBean Browser

• Scroll down to the entry "oracle.mds.lcm"
• expand Server: (your servername) -> Application: soa-infra -> MDSAppRuntime, here you will find the bean MDSAppRuntime

• Go the the tab called "Operations" and click the link "deleteMetadata" (I always choose the first one)

• if you click on the pencil next to the item "docs", you can add the documents you want to delete. Wildcards are permitted!

• once you're done adding the artifacts you wish to delete, click on the button "OK'. Back in the previous screen, you now click on "Invoke".

That's it! Your project MDS is neat and tidy again. Of course, be careful not to remove essential, internal SOA Suite artifacts...