Oracle 12c SOA Suite Features

Introduction

Recently Oracle released the new exciting version of Oracle Service Oriented Architecture – SOA 12c (12cR1 – 12.1.3.0.0). This release comes after the 11g release 11.1.1.7.0. Oracle has taken feedback from several customers and partners about the existing version of the product, things that they wanted in SOA which would help them provide the broader functionality and at the same time reduce the time to production. This version of SOA comes with a lot of new features which has already sparked so much excitement among the SOA fans. SOA 12c introduces a whole new product – Oracle Managed File Transfer which enables secure file exchange and management with internal departments and external partners.

Integration Challenges

With all the craze about Cloud, Mobile and IoT, Oracle has decided to introduce the hot trends in SOA Suite. To stay active in the fast-changing market, customers are more inclined to adapt these hot trends and use them across their different products. One of the major challenges, customers face these days is how to integrate disparate applications running on different platforms. SOA 12c provides features like templates, cloud integration adapters and mobile ready integration to speed up the integration time-to-market.

New Features

1.  Cloud Integration

Oracle SOA 12c provides a cohesive set of capabilities to integrate and simplify diverse environments by providing with direct and interchangeable connections to cloud and on-premise systems.

2.  Oracle Cloud Adapter

Oracle has introduced SaaS applications integrations by releasing Oracle Cloud Adapters for salesforce.com, Oracle RightNow, Oracle Sales Cloud, Eloqua and Big Machines.

3.  Cloud Adapter SDK

With the help of Cloud Adapter SDK, new SaaS applications can be easily integrated with the enterprise business applications. Design Time Component:

ü  Connection API

ü  Metadata Browser

ü  Query Support

ü  Artifact Generation

Runtime Component:

ü  Session API

ü  Security API

ü  Transformation API

4.  Mobile Integration

In order to use services and API seamlessly by mobile applications, REST and JSON standards are widely followed in this release. REST Binding is used to expose the services through JSON/REST.

5. Internet of Things (IoT) Integration

By integrating Oracle Event Processing with Oracle Service Bus and Oracle Event Delivery Network, real-time analysis of high volume of data generated by sensing various IoT devices can be easily done.

6.  Quick Start Installer

A single file to install all the core components of SOA Suite including Jdeveloper with integrated WebLogic server. The installation usually completes in less than 30 minutes.

7.  Unified Design Editor

This release comes with the unification of major components of Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Service Bus and Oracle Event Processing under a common IDE – Jdeveloper.

8.  Templates and BPEL Subprocesses

Three types of SOA starter templates are available with this release. Templates provides an easy way to package SOA Composites or BPEL fragments and distribute them to other departments.

ü  Project templates

ü  Component templates

ü  Custom activity templates

9.  Debugger and Tester Enhancements

A visual debugger has been introduced in this release to allow effective debugging and testing during the development. It allows the setting of request and reply breakpoints within a composite.

10.  New Adapters for On-premise Integration

Several new on-premise Application and Technology Adapters are available for Oracle SOA Suite

12c.

ü  Oracle Adapter for SAP R/3

ü  Oracle Adapter for JD Edwards World

ü  Coherence Adapter

ü  Oracle Adapter for MSMQ

ü  Oracle Adapter for LDAP

ü  Enhanced UMS Adapter

11.  Other new key features in Adapters

ü  Cross-Platform Support

ü  Scheduled Activation and Deactivation

ü  Debugger Integration

ü  Monitoring and Diagnostics

12.  Data Translations and Transformations

ü  Native XSD

ü  XQuery Mapper

ü  XSLT Advanced views

13.  Management Improvements

Dashboards, Instance Tracking and Error Hospital

The Fusion Middleware Control console now includes the management of Oracle Service Bus Projects. Error hospital allows you to aggregate flow instances that have generated faults and perform actions on instances with common faults collectively.

14.  Performance Tuning

Oracle SOA 12c provides pre-tuned database profiles to automatically enable appropriate performance features based on the expected data size. Enterprise Scheduler Service provides the ability to schedule the SOA services and manage the complete life cycle of job definition.

15.  Continuous Integration

The newly added Maven Plugin in Oracle SOA 12c allows development teams to use Maven to create, build, package and deploy SOA projects. It also allows to use Continuous integration server such as Hudson to manage SOA project life cycle.

16.  Additional Enhancements

ü  Encrypt/Decrypt Personally-Identifiable Info (PII)

ü  Fault Policy Editor in BPEL

ü  SOA Design Time Meta Data Services Repository

ü  Startup acceleration through modularity profiles and lazy loading

ü  Re-sequences in Service Bus

17.  Managed File Transfer (MFT)

Oracle Managed File Transfer enables secure file exchange and management between internal departments and external partners. It protects against inadvertent access to unsecured files at every step in the end-to-end transfer of files.

18.  B2B

Oracle B2B 12c is tightly integrated with Oracle SOA suite and Oracle Managed File Transfer. B2B users will be able to send and receive messages in Oracle B2B using Managed File Transfer. It also introduces document streaming for large payloads. For enhanced management and monitoring, B2B is also integrated with the SOA Error Hospital.

19.  Oracle SOA Suite for Healthcare Integration

It is designated to provide healthcare organisations with comprehensive integration capabilities within a unified middleware platform. Some of the key features are:

ü  Wizard based installer

ü  Enhanced Web-services Support

ü  Managed File Transfer Support

ü  End to End Monitoring

Summary

Oracle SOA Suite 12c provides a comprehensive set of products to solve the rapidly increasing challenges of integrating with cloud applications, mobile applications and Internet of Things by offering industry’s most highly integrated platform.

References

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/soasuite/overview/index.html
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/soasuite/overview/wp-soa-suite-whats-new-12c-2217186.pdf