A Dozen Things to Know about SOA 12c

Oracle Corporation recently made its long-anticipated SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) 12c release. Oracle SOA 12c promises to.

While SOA 12c is loaded with features here are a dozen things you need to know now:

1.    12c Provides a Unified Platform for Both Cloud and On-Premise Applications 

The majority of the companies today  run their applications on some combination of on-premise, cloud or mobile and these organizations are seeking for a robust Integration platform solution from a single strategic point. Oracle unveiled just that with the introduction of Oracle SOA12c (12.1.3)  to meet this challenges with unified application integration solution to improve productivity and TCO.

2.    Developer Productivity Enhancements are a Plenty

If there is one thing that developers will LOVE about SOA 12.1.3 is that it provides no shortage of development productivity enhancements. Here are six dozen

• Major enhancements for developer productivity is providing one Single JDeveloper IDE for developing both OSB and BPEL/Mediator. Oracle has renamed Oracle Services Bus as Service Bus. Single Download for JDeveloper which includes (jdev, web logic server, JavaDB, EM FMW Control).
• Code Templates is another key feature of 12c, majority of the companies does global SOA implementations and biggest challenge with governance, standards and reusability and this is great enhancement in 12c where SOA COE team create a template for a integration pattern it can be web service to JMS or JMS to File and ask developers to build composites based on the Enterprise code templates.
• SOA 12c supports  Transformations XQuery and XSLT for BPEL – in earlier versions this was not supported.
• Integration Debugger is another new feature added to debug in design time to avoid major code issues it can be local or remote debugging.
• MDS is supported for Service Bus, but only limitation is you can retrieve artifacts from MDS for Service bus but you cannot publish to MDS.
• Fault Policy Editor GUI to edit the fault policies defined, earlier versions were using XML files.

As everyone understands, time = money when it comes to integrating disparate systems and these enhancements go a long way to making your developers more productive.

3.    Twin Options for Mobile Integration

Oracle provides two different options for mobile integration. First you can use Oracle Servcie Busby exposing REST/JSON services. Or you can use  Oracle Mobile Application Framework (Oracle MAF) which is a hybrid-mobile framework that enables developers to rapidly develop single-source applications and deploy to both the Apple iOS and Google Android platforms. Oracle MAF provides a complete MVC development framework -that leverage Java, HTML5 and JavaScript -with declarative user interface definition, device services integration and built-in security. Oracle MAF maximizes code reuse and results in faster development of compelling mobile applications.


4.    Cloud Integration – Triple SaaS Challenge Met

SAAS (Software as Service) Integration presents 3 key challenges session management, Security, CRUD operations. With an eye toward meeting those needs,  Oracle released Salesforce Cloud Adapter to which is available in both SOA12c or 11g to integrate Oracle E-Business Suite with salesforce.com

5.    Oracle Enterprise Manager

Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion middleware control (EM FMW Control) provides a comprehensive management solution for Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Fusion Middleware, and non-Oracle middleware technology. Oracle FMW Control Unified User Interface helps   performance monitoring, robust diagnostics, configuration management and lifecycle management across middleware software

-    One unified platform to see all the SOA composites end to end, it has multiple domains in the same console like (SOA Infra , Service Bus)
-    Optimize work managers
-    Error Hospital
-    Security management from EM console
-    Modularity by SOA_foundation profile Profiles arranged in decreasing order footprint to reduce the overall footprint of the SOA infrastructure. Reduce overall class loading and overall startup time of the server 

• SOA CLASSIC ~ SOA Foundation with B2B + BPM Modules
• SOA FOUNDATION WITH HEALTHCARE ~ SOA Foundation with B2B + Healthcare UI
• SOA FOUNDATION WITH B2B ~ SOA Foundation Enterprise + B2B
• SOA FOUNDATION ENTERPRISE ~ SOA Foundation + Full Adapter Set
• SOA FOUNDATION ~ Orchestration + Mediator + Rules + Partial Adapter set
• ORCHESTRATION ~ BPEL-Only + HWF + Partial Adapter set
• BPEL-ONLY  ~ BPEL Components + SOA Common Infrastructure + Partial Adapter set

6.    MFT – Managed File Transfer

A new functionality for Secure File exchange and management with internal and external partners is key part of SOA12c release, although MFT does require additional licensing  and does require  WebLogic server. A key benefit is it supports PGP Encryption and compression functionality. SOA specialists will be pleased to know that they’ll be able to easily integrate MFT with Oracle B2B/ODI/IDM.

7.    ESS – Enterprise Scheduler Service

Oracle Enterprise Scheduler (ESS) provides the ability to run different job types, including: Java, PL/SQL, and binary scripts, distributed across the nodes in an Oracle WebLogic Server cluster. Oracle Enterprise Scheduler runs these jobs securely, with high availability and scalability, with load balancing and provides monitoring and management through Fusion Middleware Control. It supports for job dependencies like sequential and parallel execution of jobs and serialized execution of incompatible jobs. ESS also requires additonial separate license.

8.    Oracle Event Processing (OEP)

Thanks to big data, spatial implementations are growing and enterprises are looking for more in-memory grid and connectivity tools with Big Data tools. OEP provides an open architecture for sourcing, processing, and publishing complex events through the enterprise.
   
9.    Oracle Coherence Adapter

It allows seamless integration with local/remote coherence cache and also allows to support of different operations like (put, get, remove, list, list keys, and remove all)

10.    Oracle LDAP Adapter

New technology adapter added to the stack. Supports Bidi with LDAPv3 and it is quick and easy to integrate with SOA Suite 12c. It also support Microsoft Active directory 2008.

11.    Oracle MSMQ

Integration with Microsoft Message Queueing (MSMQ) is a message infrastructure and a development platform for creating distributed, loosely-coupled messaging applications for the Microsoft Windows operating system

12.    Enhanced UMS Adapter

Oracle SOA 12c offers full sport for  for Email, SMS, IM.