OFM 11g Launch – The fusion ages kicked in

Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g has finally arrived and it’ll give as well developers as customers the possibility to implement bleeding edge technology throughout the Oracle Stack.

Just looking at the different features and functionalities that have been build into the stack is amazing and most of all, you can’t get round fusion anymore.

So let’s have a look at what fusion has to offer us (it’ll swipe you of your feet!):

1. The BEA Integration Milestone:
   1. Weblogic Server will be the underlying backbone of all fusion applications, going from classic environments such as Forms, Reports to the web 2.0 environments such as Webcenter and ADF. What will this milestone offer us:
      1. Flexibility and agility by declarity of design
      2. Take decisions in real time by integrating analytics within the transactional context
      3. Power for the end-user so business and it can interact and collaborate whilst enabling end-users with a flexible, personalized and easy-to-use business oriented environment
      4. Ease-of-upgrade using automated tools to upgrade existing OC4J applications towards the new Web Logic Server
         1. Automated upgrade for soa components, webcenter applications, forms and reports applications
         2. Smart Upgrade for OC4J JEE Applications
            1. Descriptor analysis to report on recommended findings
            2. Upgrade all the pieces of configuration necessary (pick and choose)
      5. Consolidation and virtualization of the data-center to enable companies to maximize return on investment using the data grid

• Budget can go to development instead of administration and management

• Services-based delivery that will enable companies to re-use services throughout the enterprise using a standards based approach giving customers and partners the ability to work within a shared-service infrastructure
• Unified management and monitoring capabilities within one environment and a rich user interface

1. Enterprise Manager will be the window on the data-center!
2. Fusion Middleware Control gives you the ability to manage multi-domains, policies, alerts, SLA and much more in a single environment.

1. The Grid: A new model for efficient resource utilization:
   1. The Coherence in-memory data grid gives you the ability to paralyze computation across the grid
   2. Inherently use the grid for as well cpu as memory
   3. State-aware continuous availability for service infrastructure
   4. Software-only solution, no hardware costs necessary
   5. Off-heap storage = Significantly reduced coherence nodes
2. Unified Security Model
1. Using the Oracle Platform Security Services you can define a generic and integrated security model throughout the Oracle Stack = 1 Common Security Layer

So now we have the backbone of our infrastructure laid out, now it’s time to have a look at the different components that will offer these functionalities.

1. SCA – Service Component Architecture:
   1. Composites will be key throughout this stack which will give you the possibility to deliver and reuse any service that has been built Enterprise-wide. When you’re talking about data services, business services, web services or even mediator services, it’ll all be managed within one environment. In other words ease of development, deployment, management using a unified approach for as well business and IT.
      1. These composite services can be re-used in different ways throughout the business and it lifecycle going from business dashboards, to side-by-side versioning on composite level, to global-policy management, to unified management and monitoring of each aspect and transactions within and E2E-context and much more.
   2. Integration of BEA products :
      1. OESB will become the mediator component within the Service Component Architecture used for basic routing between components
      2. OSB will become the new service bus that’ll offer routing, transformation, chaining of services and much more within SCA
   3. B2B, BAM, BPEL, Human Workflow, OSB can be hooked up into the SCA cloud using Adapter technology to enable business and it to focus on different aspects of the organization whilst holding the needed agility and flexibility throughout the entire development lifecycle.
   4. A unified BPM Platform which is fully BPMN 2.0 compliant and leverages BPM capabilities using a single environment for as well business as IT, namely Jdeveloper
      1. Integration of BPM Studio within Jdeveloper
      2. Share processes and services using the BPM Process Composer and business Catalog
      3. Easy-to-upgrade using the migration path provided when going from 10g to 11g
2. Jdeveloper – The development environment for as well business and IT, a unique proposition

• Integration of BPM Studio
• Composite based development using Adapter-technology
• ADF which will put a face on each application that needs to be delivered to end-users
  • ADF render kits for Ajax and Flash
  • ADF render kits to .png (talking bandwidth and performance into account)
  • ADF render kits for usability purposes (e.g. Screen reader-functionality)
• Active Data Services Push
  • Data changes are pushed into the UI instead of needing to pull for data changes, using Coherence Cache Listeners and asynchronous calls
• Application Lifecycle Management
  • Pluggable interface to quickly access documentation, bugs, reports etc. used throughout the stack
• ADF Desktop Integration
• Build transactional spreadsheets using the existing binding layer of ADF

In other words SCA Suite, Webcenter Suite, Forms, Reports and Fusion Apps will use the same infrastructure which will enable the usage of consistent admin and management tools whilst leveraging capabilities of the infrastructure and database throughout the entire stack.

My 2 cents … Fusion has become a reality with unlimited functionality and features!
Working within a forms, JEE, DB or Apps environment, everyone will be using the same technologies throughout the stack … The fusion ages kicked in!

So what is FUSION exactly … well it’s exactly what you want it to be !!!

When you’re looking into Oracle 11g, what’s coming up, you will notice one thing very clearly … FUSION. SCA, Webcenter, Jdeveloper, OWB, ODI, BPM Suite, Oracle Service Bus, … it’s all becoming 1 user experience.

If we take a look at the Oracle Fusion Approach, you will have the same user experience in each environment you working in.

The IDE’s are converging, the management console’s are converging, … in other words the developer experience, dba experience, management experience, etl experience … every person, every team will work in the same UI, having the same experiences and in other words can team up with all different teams and projects.

It’s amazing when looking at OWB 11g release … it’s ODI put in a Jdeveloper UI, it’s like you’re working inside Jdeveloper not on a web application, soa architecture, database application … no your designing your datawarehouse.

AIA patterns can be used in BPA Suite, BPM Suite will hold all the features of BPMN to deliver a BPEL Blueprint which can be enriched in your Bpel designer. Bpel designer can be used in Jdeveloper or Eclipse, as well as the ESB Designer. Having the Jdeveloper experience and talking about data integration aspects and ETL, well no problem open up OWB 11g and have the same developer experience. The IDE looks the same, works in the same manner as Jdeveloper as well for OWB as for ODI, all suites converge … were do you have that experience now?

Moving towards 11g you will have the converge of BEA and Oracle to have a stronger middleware, an enhanced governance-approach (using AL Enterprise repository) and a whole new feature set coming up in SCA.

So now the million dollar question … when can we use all this great stuff ;o)

AIA – Application Integration Architecture

This week I went to the SOA Forum in Lisbon which was really interesting because I was able to discuss the different features of ODI, SCA, BPA, AIA, … with other partners and of course Oracle.

The AIA presentation was really great because now I got an in depth view of the amazing features and development that has been done by the Apps people.

AIA now delivers SOA integration to all the Apps people so your available to integrate with Siebel, SAP, … using Process Integration Packs, the so called PIPs. These packs include the needed services, data, error-handling, validation-logic etc. to be able to integrate your E-business Suite application to third-party clients.

What struck me the most was that a lot features should be made available to the SOA community as well, the fusion middleware stack so to say.

What are these amazing features that should be promoted to the fusion middleware stack:

• Enterprise Business Object : The EBO is being used within AIA to describe the true business objects (such as customer, product, …) in a standardized way. Through using these objects any services can retreive the payload and messages in a standardized way and integration is garantied in a loosely-coupled way.
• Enterprise Business Services : The EBS can be seen as the black dot in the middle that handles the payloads of 3-party applications and transforms your 3-party messages into standard EBO’s.
• Application Business Connectivity Service : ABC is the important part inside the PIP’s (Process Integration Packs) which will handle the interfacing with SAP, PeopleSoft, Siebel, … and respond with a standardized payload, namely the EBO to your EBS. => This connector can be seen as the Adapters you’re already familiair with within Enterprise Service Bus and BPEL.
• Composite Application Validation System and Composite Application Error Management and Resolution : enables you to test and simulate your integration services without the need for the whole architecture to be in place. No need for a Siebel-EBS dev, test, q&a and production environment, just test and simulate your processes using the AIA-validation and error packs. The error handling has been augmented so error messages are exchanged in a standardized way and the wright application and the wright user are notified in real-time. This validation logic and error handling could be a true value asset for the Fusion Middleware Market as well, which could just be a service offered by the SCA, by the composite.
• BSR = Business Service Repository, which is an extension on the already existing UDDI but is an answer to the common need for higher-level repositories for models and objects. The UDDI as we know it today only serves as a repository for services which are specific to applications. By taking this to the next level, the customer can now offer a portfolio of solutions instead of a portfolio of services. The BSR will act as a catalog of objects, messages and services that compose the integration scenarios.

AIA has tackled big integration issues already … and the fusion of apps and middleware will be the next level?