Middleware | Oracle Fusion Middleware

IBM Cloud Computing Architecture Certification..

2011-02-20T01:31:00.000+05:30

I could see Salesforce moving aggressively into cloud business along with IBM.
Since i was pretty much interested to Governance stuffs from the beginning was looking for SOA Governance certifications.So,finally ended up in planning for IBM Cloud certification. I found this certification quite interesting.

Certification title:
IBM Certified Solution Advisor - Cloud Computing Architecture V1

Here is the link:
http://www-03.ibm.com/certify/tests/ovr032.shtml

Objectives are fair: http://www-03.ibm.com/certify/tests/obj032.shtml

To start with i'm reading T.Sridhar Primers which helps you to understand cloud infrastructure.

http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_12-3/ipj_12-3.pdf
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_12-4/ipj_12-4.pdf

There's lot more scope to explore on this Cloud!!!.Shall keep posted.

Training for SOA Foundations practitioner..

2011-02-20T01:25:00.001+05:30

Well, I attended "Oracle SOA Suite 11g: Build Composite Applications" training from oracle university and i found it's very useful. In case you want start your career in SOA it helps. It helps you to understand soa,sca concepts, adapters,human workflows,handling exceptions and much more. :-)

Further to that, I had worked on BPEL Fault handlers and sensors so hoping it helps me further for this certification. Sometime before march 2nd week i've scheduled my "Oracle SOA Foundation Practitioner Certification" certification. In case you're planning i recommend you to attend that training.

Oracle SOA Foundation Practitioner Certification

2011-01-31T11:41:00.000+05:30

It's been many days i'm not blogging.all busy days around middleware.

Now I'm preparing for Exam Number: 1Z0-451 [Oracle SOA Foundation Practitioner]

It's recommended to attend these two training from oracle university before this certification:

Oracle University training courses
Oracle SOA Suite 11g: Build Composite Applications
Oracle SOA Suite 11g: Essential Concepts

These are the exam topics for this certification:

Service-Oriented Architecture Concepts
SOA Composite Applications
Adapters
Orchestrating Services with BPEL
Advanced BPEL Concepts
Working with Mediator Components
Human Workflow
Oracle Business Rules Concepts
Secure services and Composite Applications
SOA 11g Integration Points
Monitoring and managing SOA 11g Deployment

Shall keep posted as and when I hear more info about it.

SOA Suite Capabilities

2010-03-26T01:19:00.000+05:30

In this post I'm gonna talk about SOA components.Also, Very briefly about SOA components which gets configured when SOA suite is being installed.

Before we begin discussion on SOA Components, Let's understand ground level concept in SOA.

SOA Is an architectural style which helps in building connected enterprise applications to provide solutions to business problems.By following SOA - Enterprise applications modules can be exposed as web services which helps in easy integration and helps in reuse.There are lot more definitions comes up from google! Give a try.

From architectural style - Loose coupling, interoperability.From customer's perspective it's about more or less of integration of different legacy systems which helps IT to deliver, in greater flexibility and speed with Changing Markets,increasing competitive pressures, and evolving customer needs.

Here in SOA - Services play very important role and key factors in listing SOA Components ;).

Oracle Service Bus
Oracle BPEL Process Manager
Oracle Jdeveloper
Oracle Enterprise Manager
Some more...(Will be covered in next post)

SOA services have self-describing interfaces in platform-independent XML documents. Web Services Description Language (WSDL) is the standard used to describe the services.Services communicate with messages formally defined via XML Schema (also called XSD). Means, Playaround with data.

Communication among consumers and providers or services typically happens in heterogeneous environments, with little or no knowledge about the provider. Services exchange information through messages.Messages require Transformation when communication happens from one XML to another due to use of different messages in different services. i.e Produces output document as an XML document.

Since messages can be received through any protocol such as HTTP(s), JMS, File , and has to be send messages through same or different protocol proper Routing for messages is required.

That's the reason - Oracle Service Bus - Does message transformation, routing..etc.

Prior to Service Bus, you require an automated system which develops SOA Services/Composites.

Integrated development Environments should provide a capability of building service oriented appliactions using latest industry standards like Java, XML, Web Services.It should support complete end to end development life cycle including coding, debugging, testing and deploying applications.

Here Comes - Oracle Jdeveloper - It's Integrated Development Environment that simplifies the development of Java-based SOA applications and user interfaces with support for the full development life cycle.

There is still more of it. Orchestrations of services are required as and when there is a requirement to combine existing services into new services.Solution should be provided where assembling a set of discrete services into an end-to-end process can be done.Radically, which helps in reducing the cost and complexity of process integration initiatives.

There's a solution - Oracle BPEL Process Manager - provides a comprehensive, standards-based and easy to use solution for assembling a set of discrete services into an end-to-end process flow, radically reducing the cost and complexity of process integration.

There's still lot more into SOA.How about management and monitoring of SOA?

Once SOA composite is being developed there should be a way to configure, monitor and manage during runtime.There should be a tool or application or solution which helps administrators in providing unparalleled visibility into execution of processes showing complete end to end representation in graphical diagram.

How about Web browser-based, graphical user interface ? - Oracle Enterprise Manager - Management and monitoring of Oracle SOA Suite is done through Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control.

There are some more components which makes Successful SOA! like Service Security, Service Repository, Service Policies which will be covered in next post.Stay tuned.

What is soa-infra?

2010-03-03T09:37:00.001+05:30

Well,This post is to explain very shortly about soa-infra.

Heard of it? It's an J2EE Compliant application and can be deployed over Weblogic Server.It's responsible for managing composites that you deploy and it manages composites life cycle.

Generally, during development phase, you deploy soa composite application designed in Oracle JDeveloper to soa-infra.using soa-infra application we should be able to monitor soa composite apps or individual composite instances.

Using Enterprise Manager(EM) one can configure soa-infra to it and monitor the states of composites that's being deployed.

Cloud Computing

2010-02-25T18:50:00.001+05:30

There is lot of buzz going on with cloud computing.
In very basic terms cloud computing indicates - cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to shared pool of configurable resources such as networks,servers,storage or any kind of applications which can be provisioned to customers rapidly on need basis.

Cloud computing can be deliverd into different model depending on requirement.
It defines basically three models where industries are looking over.

1) Software as a Service(SaaS)
2) Platform as a Service(PaaS)
3) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Here,to explain briefly

SaaS is basically about sharing an application to customers.But,Customer or end user will not be having access to operating system being used or any kind of hardware or network infrastructure on which it's running. Customer just uses the application.
Here, SaaS provider installs, manages and maintains the software. The provider does not necessarily own the physical infrastructure in which the software is running. Regardless, the consumer does not have access to the infrastructure; they can access only the application.

PaaS is basically about sharing a hosted environment to run their applications.But,Here customer can have control over application being used.
Here, PaaS provider manages the cloud infrastructure for the platform, typically a framework for a particular type of application. The consumer’s application cannot access the infrastructure underneath the platform.

IaaS is basically about sharing or providing infrastructure related resources such as storage,networking components or may be middleware too.Major difference here is customer can have control over Operating system, storage, deployed applications, network resources being used.
Here, IaaS provider maintains the storage, database, message queue or other middleware, or the hosting environment for virtual machines. The consumer uses that service as if it were a disk drive, database, message queue, or machine, but they cannot access the infrastructure that hosts it.

With all this,The most important concern is about security of cloud services. I am gonna discuss in great details on this with certain customer use cases.But,Finally to achieve cloud computing "Service Management" really plays a very important role.In addition to that, SLA's, Lifecycle management,Governance plays the key.

I am really not impressed with cloud computing as it's just term used as how IT trend is going on. you must have heard about IaaS long term ago ?

Oracle Certified SOA Architect.

2010-02-25T18:09:00.000+05:30

Welcome Techies.

I am happy to share that i am now certified as Oracle SOA Architect Expert. :-)

From hereon,I would be sharing many more intretesting and hot topics in IT world happenings..

Oracle JDev 11g Technology Preview 4 is out there

2008-05-03T10:35:00.000+05:30

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/11/index.html

See also "New Features" doc: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/collateral/papers/11/newfeatures/index.html

Thanks to all 3000 Fusion Users or bloggers..

2008-04-23T23:50:00.001+05:30

Hi all
My blog reached to visitors of count 3000 now since from 5/28/2007 .Hang on folks,Soon i will be coming with posts on OID, SOA, and an Fusion middleware architecture in much more detail...+ ESB and BPEL with examples.

Thanks all..Happy blogging.

Those days are over..Fusion NoMore ConFusion..

2008-02-04T23:22:00.000+05:30

As i said,Nomore confusion about Oracle Fusion Middleware/Oracle Fusion applications..If you still have confusions that means you are not in touch with what is going on with oracle technologies.
Let me try to make it clear..

Oracle Fusion: is nothing but integration of Oracle applications such as EBusiness Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel, Retek, JD Edwards,etc. into a set of next generation applications based on open industry standards. these nextgeneration applications will be based on the SOA (Service oriented architecture)
Oracle Fusion middleware : is the platform which can used to build/develop fusion applications.
oracle has selected some of the below technologies as foundation for fusion.
>J2EE
>Webservices
>SOA
>BPEL

Some of the oracle fusion components:
>Oracle Jdev
>J2EE
>Oracle application development framework (ADF)
>TopLink
>XML
>WebServices
>SOA
>BPEL
>Identity Management
>Single sign-on
>Grid control

Reset the Oracle EM password/ Administrator password.

2008-01-24T11:33:00.000+05:30

Reset the Administrator (oc4jadmin) Password

Problem

If you forget or do not know the oc4jadmin password, then you cannot monitor or administer the application server or its components with the Application Server Control Console.

Solution

Reset the oc4jadmin password using the following procedure while you are logged in as the user who installed the Oracle Application Server instance:

Stop OC4J and the Application Server Control.

Enter the following command in the Oracle home of the application server instance:

(UNIX) ORACLE_HOME/opmn/bin/opmnctl stopproc ias-component=OC4J
(Windows) ORACLE_HOME\opmn\bin\opmnctl stopproc ias-component=OC4J

Locate and open the following file in a text editor:

(UNIX)ORACLE_HOME/j2ee/home/config/system-jazn-data.xml
(Windows)ORACLE_HOME\j2ee\home\config\system-jazn-data.xml

Locate the line that defines the credentials property for the oc4jadmin user.

The following example shows the section of system-jazn-data.xml with the encrypted credentials entry in boldface type:

jazn.com

.
.
.

oc4jadmin

OC4J Administrator

OC4J Administrator
{903}4L50lHJWIFGwLgHXTub7eYK9e0AnWLUH

Replace the existing encrypted password with the new password.

Be sure to prefix the password with an exclamation point (!). For example:

!mynewpassword123

The password for the oc4jadmin user should conform to following guidelines:

Must contain at least five characters, but not more than 30 characters.

Must begin with an alphabetic character. It cannot begin with a number, the underscore (_), the dollar sign ($), or the number sign (#).

At least one of the characters must be a number.

Can contain only the following characters; numbers, letters, and the following special characters: US dollar sign ($), number sign (#), or underscore (_).

Cannot contain any Oracle reserved words, such as VARCHAR.

Delete cached password data by deleting the contents of the following directory:

(UNIX)
ORACLE_HOME/j2ee/oc4jinstance/persistence/ascontrol/ascontrol/securestore/
(Windows)
ORACLE_HOME\j2ee\oc4jinstance\persistence\ascontrol\ascontrol\securestore/

Start OC4J and the Application Server Control.

After the restart, the Application Server Control will use your new Administrator (oc4jadmin) password, which will be stored in encrypted format within the system-jazn-data.xml file.

2007-10-26T01:41:00.000+05:30

deleted the post

Uninstalling Oracle Products on Windows 2000

2007-10-22T23:49:00.002+05:30

Ensure that you are logged in as a user with Administrator privileges
If any Oracle services (their names always begin with "Oracle") are running, then stop them:
1. Right-click My Computer > Manage > Services and Applications > Services
2. Scroll down to the Oracle services
3. For each service with status "Started", select the service and click Stop
Use the Oracle Installer to uninstall the software:
1. Click Start > Oracle - <home> > Oracle Installation Products > Universal Installer
2. Click Installed Products
3. For each product, expand the Oracle home you want to uninstall, select the product, click Remove, and then click Yes
4. Exit the Installer
Start the registry editor: Click Start > Run > type regedit and press Enter
Note the value of the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ORACLE\inst_loc (probably "C:\Program Files\Oracle\Inventory")
Delete the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ORACLE
Delete all keys under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ODBC that are related with the "Oracle ODBC Driver"
Delete all keys under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall that are related to Oracle
Delete all keys under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services that begin with ORACLE or ORAWEB
Delete all keys under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog\Application that begin with ORACLE
Delete all keys under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT that begin with Ora or ORCL (e.g. Oracle*, ORADC*, ORAMMC*, OraOLE*, OraPerf*, and ORCL*)
Delete all keys under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes that begin with Ora or ORCL (e.g. Oracle*, ORADC*, ORAMMC*, OraOLE*, OraPerf*, and ORCL*)
Delete the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Oracle
Delete all keys that match the pattern HKEY_USERS\*\Software\Oracle
Close the registry
Clean the environment:
1. Click Start > Settings > Control Panel > System > Advanced tab > Environment variables
2. Edit the PATH variable in the System Variables section:
  - Remove all references to Oracle homes (e.g. d:\ora904mt)
  - If JRE was installed by Oracle, then remove the JRE path
3. If there is a CLASSPATH variable in the System Variables section, then note its value and then delete it
4. If there are any other Oracle variables in the System Variables section (e.g. ORACLE_HOME, ORACLE_SID, TNS_ADMIN, JSERV, or WV_GATEWAY_CFG), then delete them
5. Click OK and then OK again to close the System Properties box
6. Close the Control Panel
Remove remaining folders and icons:
1. Right-click Start and select Explore
2. Navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs
3. Delete the folders that begin with Oracle
4. Delete the folder whose name was pointed to by HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ORACLE\inst_loc
5. Close the Explorer window
Delete all folders and files in the C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Temp\ directory
Delete the Oracle home directories
Right-click Recycle Bin, select Empty Recycle Bin, and click Yes
Defragment you disk:
1. Right-click My Computer > Manage > Storage > Disk Defragmenter
2. For each drive, select it and click Defragment
Reboot the computer

Top 10 things to do to prepare for Fusion Applications.

2007-10-22T23:49:00.000+05:30

1. Consider Upgrading to the Latest Release of your Applications.
For example, Oracle E-Business Suite - 11i10 or R12, PeopleSoft Enterprise - 8.8, 8.9 or 9.0, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne - 8.11 or 8.12, Siebel - 7.8, 8.0 applications

2. Rethink your Customization Strategy

a) Is what I put in place still valid and worth keeping?
b) If they are still required, should customers evaluate if there
are better ways of doing/developing these customizations?
c) Should I think about engineering for the future with products
that will survive the upgrade to Fusion? What are those
products?
d) What are the benefits of implementing Fusion technology?

3. Put together a Project Plan to migrate to Fusion

a) Are there areas where you will need to upgrade first?
b) Do I need to evaluate the drivers (business as well as IT)
to upgrade to Fusion Applications?
c) Is there a pilot project for upgrading to Fusion, based on
geography, departmental/functional silos or other reasons?

4. Take advantage of Oracle’s Fusion Architecture and Fusion Middleware

a) How can I evaluate the benefits of Oracle Fusion
Architecture?
b) Does it solve business problems such as security and
compliance, integrating new business flows at lower cost
and or is it just about cleaning and consolidating the
critical data?
c) You can actually use the Fusion Technology today. Go to
www.oracle.com/fusion for more details.

5. Consider Master Data Management

a) Master Data Management (MDM), is a data hub tool that
enables you to synchronize critical data such as
customers, suppliers and products - in a single, accurate,
consistent view of the company’s data, whether from
packaged, legacy or custom applications.
b) You should consider consolidating and cleaning your
critical data about customers, suppliers and products
before going to Fusion.

6. Move to SOA-based Integration

a) Find out from Oracle what they are doing to make their
suite (EBS, PSFT, SEBL and JDE) of applications
SOA-enabled? Are they providing new capabilities in each
product to help them play in a SOA world?
b) Check out Oracle Fusion Middleware – it is a complete
product line - much more than just the application server. It
includes a process orchestration modeling tool BPEL PM,
business activity monitoring (BAM), as well as an
enterprise services bus (ESB). All these tools are known
as the SOA suite and can be used by ALL Oracle
customers today (EBS, PSFT, SEBL, JDE as well as other
point solutions such as Oracle Retail, G-Log etc... ).
c) Consider leveraging Oracle’s Application Integration
Architecture (AIA), which develops a number of Process
Industry Packs to integrate various applications products,
namely SEBL, EBS, G-Log, PSFT etc…. these can be
tailored by customers to fit their applications infrastructure.

7. Extend your Business Intelligence Portfolio

a) Adopt Oracle’s enterprise reporting, publishing & business
intelligence tool (comes with each of our Applications). All
applications have been certified with Fusion BI known as
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition or OBI EE,
which includes XML Publisher (also known as BI Publisher)
b) Start converting your reports to XMLP.Your users will love it! c) Leverage OBI EE as well as XMLP to improve and enhance
your enterprise reporting & analytics today. You will be a
head of the game - these are part of the Fusion Technology.

8. Secure your Global Enterprise by Consolidating

a) Review your custom and legacy applications. You may be
at risk not only to data fragmentations but also to security
fragmentation which could increase your security
vulnerability and security risks.
b) Start consolidating security functions by centralizing
access control (by implementing LDAP and SSO), ensuring
data privacy and enabling compliance for the entire
enterprise.
c) Externalize security functions from the applications (where
it was built by the traditional applications) to a centralized
and professionally managed security infrastructure).
d) Get ahead of the curve by using Oracle’s Fusion Security
(known as the Oracle Identity Management), knowing it is
the security infrastructure for Fusion Applications.

9. Consider Grid Computing

a) Think “Grid” at all levels before going to Fusion. Especially
in a SOA-world where services are independent, well-
defined encapsulations of software functionality that can be
invoked over a network using heterogeneous platforms and
execution environments.
i. Grid computing is about resource allocation,
information sharing & high availability at lower cost.
ii. Resource allocation ensures that all who need or
request resources are getting what they need, that
resources are not standing idle while requests are
going unserviced.
iii. Information sharing makes sure that the users and
applications need is always available.
iv. High availability features guarantee all the data and
computation is always there, just like a utility
company always provides electric power.

10. Centralize your Lifecycle Management

a) Minimize hardware, software and system management
costs by moving to Oracle’s Grid Control, also known as
the Oracle Enterprise Manager - that is the centralized
management tools that help you manage your applications,
database, middleware, operating system, storage and the
network – all from one console.
i. Oracle Enterprise Manager works with most of
Oracle’s applications, using the Applications
Management Packs. These packs reduce efforts to
manage multiple environments, allow faster discovery
and diagnosis of incidents and provide rapid
provisioning and scaling.
b) What is great about the console is that it is the very same
console that will also manage the Fusion Applications.
c) Start with Grid Control today. You will be able to plug in
your first Fusion pilot along side your EBS, PSFT or SEBL
applications as if it were just another application in your
enterprise.
d) Grid Control will be the hub of Oracle Applications Lifecycle
Management.

JUnit for beginners.

2007-08-25T14:43:00.000+05:30

JUnit is an open source framework designed for the purpose of writing and running tests in the Java programming language. JUnit, has been important in the evolution of test-driven development.
JUnit , making it possible to write and test source code quickly and easily. JUnit allows the developer to incrementally build test suites to measure progress and detect unintended side effects. Tests can be run continuously. Results are provided immediately. JUnit shows test progress in a bar that is normally green but turns red when a test fails. An ongoing list of unsuccessful tests appears in a space near the bottom of the display window. Multiple tests can be run concurrently. No subjective human judgments or interpretations of test results are required. The simplicity of JUnit makes it possible for the software developer to easily correct bugs as they are found.

Few reasons to know why to use?

1) JUnit tests allow you to write code faster while increasing quality.2) JUnit is elegantly simple and writing Junit tests is inexpensive. 3) JUnit tests check their own results and provide immediate feedback. 4) JUnit tests can be composed into a hierarchy of test suites. 5) It increase the stabilty of software.

You can download a latest version of JUnit.

STEP1 : Writing a Test Case

import junit.framework.TestCase;
public class ShoppingCartTest extends TestCase {
private ShoppingCart cart;
private Product book1;
protected void setUp() {
cart = new ShoppingCart();
book1 = new Product("Pragmatic Unit Testing", 29.95);
cart.addItem(book1);
}
protected void tearDown() {
// release objects under test here, if necessary
}
public void testEmpty() {
cart.empty();
assertEquals(0, cart.getItemCount());
}
public void testAddItem() {
Product book2 = new Product("Pragmatic Project Automation", 29.95);
cart.addItem(book2);
double expectedBalance = book1.getPrice() + book2.getPrice();
assertEquals(expectedBalance, cart.getBalance(), 0.0);
assertEquals(2, cart.getItemCount());
}
public void testRemoveItem() throws ProductNotFoundException {
cart.removeItem(book1);
assertEquals(0, cart.getItemCount());
}
public void testRemoveItemNotInCart() {
try {
Product book3 = new Product("Pragmatic Version Control", 29.95);
cart.removeItem(book3);
fail("Should raise a ProductNotFoundException");
} catch(ProductNotFoundException expected) {
}
}
}

STEP 2: Write a Test Suite

we'll write a test suite that includes several test cases. The test suite will allow us to run all of its test cases in one fell swoop.
To write a test suite, follow these steps:
Write a Java class that defines a static suite() factory method that creates a TestSuite containing all the tests.
Optionally define a main() method that runs the TestSuite in batch mode.
The following is an example test suite:

import junit.framework.Test;
import junit.framework.TestSuite;
public class EcommerceTestSuite {
public static Test suite() {
TestSuite suite = new TestSuite();
suite.addTestSuite(ShoppingCartTest.class);
suite.addTest(CreditCardTestSuite.suite());
return suite;
}
/**
* Runs the test suite using the textual runner.
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
junit.textui.TestRunner.run(suite());
}
}

You can Download Complete source code.

I hope you got an idea how to run and why to use?

I will update it further very soon,....

Concept of SOA (Service Oriented Architecture)

2007-08-25T11:44:00.000+05:30

This is a very good notes for Beginners to know about SOA.

SOA is not a technology or something you install. It is a concept, or rather an approach to modelling your system, and one that is different from the standard client/server model you may be used to. As opposed to large, proprietary applications that do everything, SOA is a design meant to try to integrate numerous and diverse software applications with common interfaces, in the name of code reuse/maintainability, and adaptibility. The notion of using a group of independent applications to accomplish a shared task is also sometimes referred to as grid computing.

Everyone knows that "Web Services" are one of the hottest things lately. An SOA is essentially a collection of such services, communicating with one another, generally through XML. (Of course I am over-simplifying things: SOA can involve any kind of self-contained service communicating in any way.)

SOA is not specific to any technology, indeed every "family" of technologies has its own SOA solution, and usually you can mix-and-match your own. However, open-source XML-based technologies such as BPEL, SOAP and WSDL are very commonly used.

I will update few more details related to SOA Soon..

What is Business Process Execution language (BPEL) ?

2007-08-24T20:20:00.001+05:30

Why BPEL came into picture?

The purpose/idea behind almost new technology for application development is to provide an business application with less effort and also which can be easily adapted to changing nature of business processes without much effort.

Integrating a different applications is always a difficult task for various functional or technical realted reasons.eventhough JAVA has provided the excellent platform to develop such applications,as business application cannot be isolated.

So,now here SOA will come into picture,we can say integration challenges were resolved by Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and web services technologies.Thus we can now access different functionalities of different legacy and new developed applications in a standard way (through web services). Such access to functionalities is important because typical companies have a large number of existing applications which have to be integrated.

Developing the web services and exposing the functionalities is not sufficient. We also need a way to compose these functionalities in the right order – a way to define business processes which will make use of the exposed functionalities. We would obviously prefer a relatively simple and straightforward way to define such processes, particularly because we know that business processes change often, therefore we would like to modify them easily.

This is where the BPEL (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services, also WS-BPEL or BPEL4WS) becomes important. BPEL allows composition of web services and is thus the top-down approach to SOA – the process oriented approach to SOA.

What is oc4j standalone....?

2007-06-23T11:31:00.000+05:30

Hello All,

Hope you are playing well with oracle fusion middleware..
small confusion i would like to clear..
difference between oc4j and oracle application server...

OC4J standalone?

OC4J standalone is a distribution of Oracle Application Server product that contains just the J2EE and Web Services components. OC4J standalone is much smaller than the full Oracle Application Server product and is downloaded as a single zip file. It is executed as a single Java process.

OC4J standalone is J2EE 1.3 compatible and is able to be used in both development and small scale production environments. OC4J standalone provides its own inbuilt HTTP/S listener to allow clients to execute Web applications that it has deployed. Application deployment and server configuration of OC4J standalone is performed by the manual editing of a simple set of XML files.

For large scale enterprise deployments, the Oracle Application Server product is likely to be more suitable with its comprehensive feature set including Oracle HTTP Server, process monitoring and management capabilities, and its configuration and management console.

I Hope concept is now somewhat clear :)

Oracle Certifies PeopleSoft Applications with Oracle® Fusion Middleware

2007-06-10T12:46:00.000+05:30

PeopleSoft Customers to Benefit from Oracle’s Hot-Pluggable Service-Oriented Architecture..

Oracle today announced it has certified Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise applications with Oracle(r) Fusion Middleware 10g Release 2. The certification enables customers to protect, extend and evolve their existing investments in PeopleSoft applications using Oracle Fusion Middleware, an integrated suite of standards-based middleware products for building and deploying Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA). This marks a key milestone in the delivery of the Oracle Fusion Architecture.

Oracle's certification of PeopleSoft, Oracle E-Business Suite and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications with Oracle Fusion Middleware is expected to benefit customers both immediately and in the long-term. Today, the certifications make it easier for organizations to use SOAs to integrate their PeopleSoft applications with other packaged and custom applications as well as legacy systems using Oracle Fusion Middleware. Additionally, the common services-oriented middleware platform is expected to make it easier for customers to upgrade to new versions of Oracle's applications; to integrate applications via portal, data and business process layers; and to define, manage and change security policies across a collection of business services while laying the overall foundation for a SOA.

Pricing
Oracle Fusion Middleware for PeopleSoft customers is available for $60,000 per CPU. It features key components of Oracle Fusion Middleware including portal, BPEL, business-to-business integration, business activity monitoring, business intelligence, single sign-on, Web cache and the Oracle Fusion Middleware PeopleSoft adapter. Terms, conditions and restrictions apply.

Oracle Fusion Middleware Overview

2007-05-28T23:41:00.000+05:30

Lets briefly discuss about Oracle Fusion Middleware and one liner on its various components to give you a feel of Oracle Fusion Middleware.

What is Fusion Middleware ?
Oracle Fusion Middleware is a family of oracle product's which will help in application development and integration solution to Identity Management, Collaboration Suite & Business Intelligence reports.
Various products of Fusion Middleware Family are

Application Server
BPA Suite (Business Process Analysis)
Business Integration
Business Intelligence
Collaboration Suite (Content, RTC, Mail Server, Discussion, Calendar)
Data Hub
Data Integrator Developer Tools
EDA Suite (Event Driven Architecture Suite)
Identity Management
SDP Suite (Service Delivery Platform)
SOA Suite (Service Oriented Architecture)
Web center Suite

For most of us grasping/understanding all of them at once is difficult so I 'll be discussing one liner about all these components and later I'll cover them in detail based on each components importance & use in real world.

Application Server
-----------------------
This is core component in Oracle Fusion Middleware. Various component of Application Server are Webcache, j2ee, wireless & portal and uses Infrastructure Services like Single Sign-On and Oracle Internet Directory.

Business Process Analysis (BPA)
---------------------------------------
This helps in modelling business process and converting them to IT executable. Various components of BPA suite helps business user to design, model, simulate and optimize business process. This helps in reducing gap between strategy and actual execution of that strategy. Various components of BPA are Architect, Repository, Simulator & Publisher.

Business Integration
-------------------------
Connecting or Integrating processes, Applications or information with business partners using hot pluggable products which are based on Services Oriented Architecture.

Business Intelligence
--------------------------
This product covers most of business Intelligence needs in today's world like ad hoc query analysis, reporting & publishing, dashboards and real time analysis.

Collaboration Suite
------------------------
This product provides tools to collaborate seamlessly from any application or device in an enterprise. Key component of Collaboration Suite are Real Time Collaboration, Content Services (iFS in past), Workspaces, eMails, Discussions, Calendar . More on this coming soon...

Data Hub
------------
It is central location for your entire enterprise data from all sources to get 360 degree view of enterprise data. You can update & clean you data in data hub and then use application to view this data.

Data Integrator
-------------------
As name suggest this product integrate vast amount of data across heterogeneous systems. This is based on ELT (Extract Load & Transform) architecture and provide Hot-Pluggable (Drop & Deploy) knowledge modules.

EDA Suite (Event Driven Architecture)
---------------------------------------------
Product to create, process, analyze and manage with as less possible custom coding . component of EDA suite are BAM (Business Activity Monitoring), Business Rules, Enterprise messaging, ESB (Enterprise Service Bus), Sensor Edge Server. You will know more about these components in comping topics on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Suite.

Identity Management
----------------------------
OID and Oracle SSO integrated with various other Identity management components like Web Access Control, Federated Identity & user provisioning.

SOA Suite
------------
Product for building , managing & developing SOA's . Various components of SOA suite are BPEL, Web Service Manager, BAM (Business Activity Manager)

2007-05-28T23:32:00.000+05:30

How Customers Can Prepare for Fusion Applications...

While at Collaborate 07 in Las Vegas last month, I happen to attend an incredible session led by my colleage, Nadia Bendjedou, about �What Customers Can Do Today to Prepare for Fusion Applications�. For those of you who didn�t get to attend this or haven�t had a chance to participate in one of her many Webcasts and or Podcasts, I thought I would highlight some of her best practices � Top 10 things to do to prepare for Fusion Applications.

1. Consider Upgrading to the Latest Release of your Applications.

For example, Oracle E-Business Suite - 11i10 or R12, PeopleSoft Enterprise - 8.8, 8.9 or 9.0, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne - 8.11 or 8.12, Siebel - 7.8, 8.0 applications

2. Rethink your Customization Strategy

a) Is what I put in place still valid and worth keeping?
b) If they are still required, should customers evaluate if there
are better ways of doing/developing these customizations?
c) Should I think about engineering for the future with products
that will survive the upgrade to Fusion? What are those
products?
d) What are the benefits of implementing Fusion technology?

3. Put together a Project Plan to migrate to Fusion

a) Are there areas where you will need to upgrade first?
b) Do I need to evaluate the drivers (business as well as IT)
to upgrade to Fusion Applications?
c) Is there a pilot project for upgrading to Fusion, based on
geography, departmental/functional silos or other reasons?

4. Take advantage of Oracle�s Fusion Architecture and Fusion Middleware

a) How can I evaluate the benefits of Oracle Fusion
Architecture?
b) Does it solve business problems such as security and
compliance, integrating new business flows at lower cost
and or is it just about cleaning and consolidating the
critical data?
c) You can actually use the Fusion Technology today. Go to
www.oracle.com/fusion for more details.

5. Consider Master Data Management

a) Master Data Management (MDM), is a data hub tool that
enables you to synchronize critical data such as
customers, suppliers and products - in a single, accurate,
consistent view of the company�s data, whether from
packaged, legacy or custom applications.
b) You should consider consolidating and cleaning your
critical data about customers, suppliers and products
before going to Fusion.

6. Move to SOA-based Integration

a) Find out from Oracle what they are doing to make their
suite (EBS, PSFT, SEBL and JDE) of applications
SOA-enabled? Are they providing new capabilities in each
product to help them play in a SOA world?
b) Check out Oracle Fusion Middleware � it is a complete
product line - much more than just the application server. It
includes a process orchestration modeling tool BPEL PM,
business activity monitoring (BAM), as well as an
enterprise services bus (ESB). All these tools are known
as the SOA suite and can be used by ALL Oracle
customers today (EBS, PSFT, SEBL, JDE as well as other
point solutions such as Oracle Retail, G-Log etc... ).
c) Consider leveraging Oracle�s Application Integration
Architecture (AIA), which develops a number of Process
Industry Packs to integrate various applications products,
namely SEBL, EBS, G-Log, PSFT etc�. these can be
tailored by customers to fit their applications infrastructure.

7. Extend your Business Intelligence Portfolio

a) Adopt Oracle�s enterprise reporting, publishing & business
intelligence tool (comes with each of our Applications). All
applications have been certified with Fusion BI known as
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition or OBI EE,
which includes XML Publisher (also known as BI Publisher)
b) Start converting your reports to XMLP.Your users will love it! c) Leverage OBI EE as well as XMLP to improve and enhance
your enterprise reporting & analytics today. You will be a
head of the game - these are part of the Fusion Technology.

8. Secure your Global Enterprise by Consolidating

a) Review your custom and legacy applications. You may be
at risk not only to data fragmentations but also to security
fragmentation which could increase your security
vulnerability and security risks.
b) Start consolidating security functions by centralizing
access control (by implementing LDAP and SSO), ensuring
data privacy and enabling compliance for the entire
enterprise.
c) Externalize security functions from the applications (where
it was built by the traditional applications) to a centralized
and professionally managed security infrastructure).
d) Get ahead of the curve by using Oracle�s Fusion Security
(known as the Oracle Identity Management), knowing it is
the security infrastructure for Fusion Applications.

9. Consider Grid Computing

a) Think �Grid� at all levels before going to Fusion. Especially
in a SOA-world where services are independent, well-
defined encapsulations of software functionality that can be
invoked over a network using heterogeneous platforms and
execution environments.
i. Grid computing is about resource allocation,
information sharing & high availability at lower cost.
ii. Resource allocation ensures that all who need or
request resources are getting what they need, that
resources are not standing idle while requests are
going unserviced.
iii. Information sharing makes sure that the users and
applications need is always available.
iv. High availability features guarantee all the data and
computation is always there, just like a utility
company always provides electric power.

10. Centralize your Lifecycle Management

a) Minimize hardware, software and system management
costs by moving to Oracle�s Grid Control, also known as
the Oracle Enterprise Manager - that is the centralized
management tools that help you manage your applications,
database, middleware, operating system, storage and the
network � all from one console.
i. Oracle Enterprise Manager works with most of
Oracle�s applications, using the Applications
Management Packs. These packs reduce efforts to
manage multiple environments, allow faster discovery
and diagnosis of incidents and provide rapid
provisioning and scaling.
b) What is great about the console is that it is the very same
console that will also manage the Fusion Applications.
c) Start with Grid Control today. You will be able to plug in
your first Fusion pilot along side your EBS, PSFT or SEBL
applications as if it were just another application in your
enterprise.
d) Grid Control will be the hub of Oracle Applications Lifecycle
Management.

Is Oracle Fusion really Con-Fusion

2007-05-28T23:00:00.000+05:30

If you ask yourself,what is Oracle Fusion then everybody will be having there own opinion. :)
I would like to hear from you all in your words ( via comments on this post ) about what you think is Oracle Fusion.
Most common confusion over fusion among most of guys i discuss/met is thinking Oracle fusion middleware and Oracle fusion applications are same...EVEN Earlier i thought the same thing, i mean i was confused of both terms.
In actual Oracle Fusion Middleware will be used in providing/building Oracle Fusion Applications using Existing Oracle Applications (Oracle E-Business Suite, Siebel, PeopleSoft, JD Eward).

Oracle Fusion Midleware is collection of Oracle Midleware products i.e.
--Oracle Application Server (Portal, Wireless, Forms, Reports, discoverer, Webcache, OC4J)
-- Oracle Identity management (OID, SSO,Web Access Manager, CA, Identity Federation)
--Oracle SOA Suite (Service Oriented Suite)
--Oracle Collaboration Suite (RTC, Mail Server, Discussion, Content, Calendar)
--Oracle DW & BI (BI Beans, OWB, OLAP, Express Server, OSA, OFA, DATAMART)
--Oracle development Tools (Designer, developer, SCM,forms, reports)
-- Oracle Data hubs

and
Oracle Fusion Applications will be collection of Oracle Applications i.e.
--Oracle E-Business Suite / CRM
--Oracle Peoplesoft enterprise
--Oracle Siebel CRM.
--Oracle JD Edward Enterprise

These fusion applications will use Fusion Middleware mentioned above....

So in conclusion!

Oracle Fusion is the sum of already existing app development tools, re-badged and re-bunched so they look like a new product.

Oracle Fusion Applications will be the current spread, re-developed using Fusion tools.

The keyword of course is "will".

Or: nothing has changed. Therefore: no conFusion.
Pun intended.

It remains to be seen how well the j2ee-inspired development tools will cope with 8000 tables and 20000 indexes.

I'd love to see how long it would take the j2ee bean container to start up.

but roll-on the powerpoint!

Oracle Fusion Development Tools

2007-05-28T22:45:00.000+05:30

The roadmap for Oracle Fusion strategy is becoming clearer, thanks to most recent article by Steven Chan. So the question is, what will be the development skills required by Oracle Fusion Developer?

In order to answer this, lets have a look at current skillsets required for Oracle Apps, and then map those to Oracle Fusion.

Oracle Apps : SQL
Oracle Fusion : Future is bright for SQL.

Oracle Apps : PL/SQL
Oracle Fusion : Oracle's current stance is that pl/sql will be integrated part of their Fusion Product.

Oracle Apps : XML Gateway
In Oracle Apps, you can post XML Documents to XML gateway using protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, JMS & SMTP. For example Payables Invoices can be posted to XML Gateway by your trading partners. XML Gateway can also be used for outbound XML messages, by extracting data from Views/Tables.
Oracle Fusion : BPEL
BPEL supports all the above protocols. Hence I see no reason why BPEL will nor replace XML Gateway Product.

Oracle Apps : Oracle Forms
In Oracle Apps most of the Core data entry screens and many of the inquiry screens were built using D2k Forms. Oracle Forms can't run in the browser directly, hence this limitation was overcome by developing Applet called JInitiator.
Oracle Fusion : ADF with Faces[JSF] appears to be winning the race. Have a look at http://www.jsfcentral.com

Oracle Apps : Oracle Reports
Thousands of reports have been written using Oracle Reports uptill Release 12.
Not a single one of these will be carried forward to Oracle Fusion.
Oracle Fusion : XMLP
Yes, no surprises here. It is indeed XML Publisher.
Oracle Report is proprietry tool that works just with Oracle Database. Also, Oracle would like their reporting tools to converge into a single reporting tool for Peoplesoft, JD Edwards & Oracle Apps.
XML Publisher will hopefully become as powerfull as Oracle Reports by the time Oracle Fusion is released.

Oracle Apps : OA Framework
Oracle Fusion : The answer is same as that for Oracle Forms above. However one must continue to learn OA Framework, as its concepts like Personalizations, Extensions will be carried forward to ADF. Both are MVC based topologies.

Oracle Apps : Oracle Discoverer
Oracle Fusion : I think this will remain, as Discoverer is a part of Oracle Fusion Middleware. At the end of the day, XMLP is not a business intelligence tool.

Oracle Apps : Oracle Web ADI
Oracle Fusion : XMLP. I wonder why Web ADI will be needed, as letter can be printed off using XML Publisher itself.

Oracle Apps : Oracle Workflows
Oracle Fusion : This will certainly be replaced by BPEL too.

Clearly the future is :-
Web Services with BPEL
Java/J2EE
XML/CSS/XSL/JavaScript/ADF
SQL & PL/SQL

1. When Fusion?
-->Sometime in 2008, but I don't think Fusion will be fully ready by 2008. By 2008 you will have some part of its functionality ready.

2. J2EE & Java in Fusion?
ADF is a MVC design pattern. In response to the usage of Oracle Forms, I did accept that future of ADF in Fusion is uncertain, as they might build a new framework based on peopletools UI(DHTML based).
Java will also be used to develop new webservices, although PL/SQL now has similar capabilities too.

3. IDE?
It has to be jDeveloper if they go for ADF Faces.

Oracle Fusion Middleware

2007-05-28T22:11:00.000+05:30

Oracle Fusion Middleware is a portfolio of standards-based software products, produced by Oracle, that spans multiple services, including J2EE and developer tools, integration services, business intelligence, collaboration, and content management. Many of the products included under the Oracle Fusion Middleware banner are not themselves middleware products, Fusion Middleware essentially being a rebranding of many of Oracle's products outside of their core database and applications software offerings. According to Oracle, 30,000 organizations are current Fusion Middleware customers.

Oracle Fusion Middleware is designed to support development, deployment, and management of Service-Oriented Architecture. It includes what Oracle calls "Hot-Pluggable" architecture, which allows users to leverage existing investments in applications and systems from other software vendors such as IBM, Microsoft, and SAP AG.

Oracle Fusion Middleware Components

Enterprise Application Server
- Oracle Application Server
Integration & Process Management
- BPEL Process Manager
- Business Activity Monitoring
- Business Rules
- Enterprise Connectivity (Adapters)
- Enterprise Messaging Service
- Enterprise Service Bus
- Integration B2B
- Service Registry
- Web Services Manager
Development Tools
Business Intelligence
- Business Intelligence 10g
- Business Activity Monitoring
- Discoverer
- Data Hubs
- XML Publisher
- Reports Services
Systems Management
- Enterprise Manager 10g
- Web Services Manager
User Interaction
- Collaboration Suite
- Portal
- Real-Time Collaboration
- Unified Messaging
- Workspaces
Identity management
- Identity Management
- Single sign-on
Grid Infrastructure
- Services Registry
- Application Server Security