The Oracle Blog

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Oracle Fusion Middleware Strategic Briefing

BEA Welcome and Oracle's Middleware Strategic Briefing

I just finished listening to the BEA Welcome and Oracle's Middleware Strategic Briefing by Charles Phillips (President) and Thomas Kurian (Senior Vice President) at Oracle. As part of the user community, I heard a lot of good things in this presentation. Oracle is continuing to excel at integrating acquisitions into their strategic directions. The strategic roadmap for integrating BEA into Oracle Fusion Middleware looks like a win for Oracle and BEA customers. The entire presentation can be replayed using RealPlayer.

Overall, I was impressed with Thomas Kurian's details of the BEA integration into Oracle and how that impacts Oracle Fusion Middleware technology. Thomas Kurian emphasized:

Oracle's solution offers a unified solution make up of modular components.
Key areas continue to be SOA, business intelligence, content management, Web 2.0 and process management.
There is a clear well-defined strategy for Oracle and BEA products. This will increase customer choices for how to implement their middleware solutions.
Oracle will continue to increase its investment in middleware technology.
Oracle has a number of local events planned for BEA customers and partners.

Key Points in Briefing

The key points that stood out to me:

Oracle's Application Integration Architecture (AIA) is demonstrating that Oracle picked the right framework for integrating Oracle and standards based solutions into enterprise solutions. AIA is showing flexibility as Oracle technology evolves.
The Oracle Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is still going to have JDeveloper as the key development tool but will also use an Oracle Eclipse Pack that will address all the BEA developers that have worked with Eclipse for years. This allows developers have have grown up with the Oracle JDeveloper tool and open source developers that use Eclipse to choose their IDE development tool of preference.
Oracle ADF will continue to be a key strategic piece of developing web based applications.
Oracle BPEL Process Manager will continue its key role in the SOA strategy.
Oracle Business Rules and BAM are going to continue their strategic roles.
BEA technology in areas where the BEA products or components excel, are going to be integrated into the Fusion Middleware modular components. Products like JRocket and parts of AquaLogic will strengthen Oracle Fusion Middleware in the future.
In areas where there is overlap between Oracle and BEA products, there is going to be some merging of products. This is something that should surprise no one. Customers are going to have to address this transition area.
BEA customers will be able to continue to use BEA products for existing support lifespans and no forced migration strategies are in place.
BEA developer and technology groups will move into the OTN online community.
SOA governance will include BEA AquaLogic Repository, Oracle Web Services Manager, EM SOA Management Pack, BEA AquaLogic Services Manager as key pieces.
Enterprise Portals will use Oracle WebCenter, BEA WebLogic Portal, BEA Commerce Services, BEA Collabra, BEA Pathways and BEA Ensemble as key components.
The Oracle Service Bus will integrate the Oracle ESB and BEA's service bus.

Summary

As the old saying goes, "the devil is in the details". However, the roadmap is clear and looks like a big win for Oracle and BEA customers. I liked knowing that my knowledge investment in areas such as Oracle ADF, BPEL, Oracle Business Rules and the Oracle Application Server continue to play a major role in Oracle Fusion Middleware. I also like knowing that leading edge components in BEA are going to integrate into the modular component design of Oracle Fusion Middleware. BEA technologists are going to have a larger transition.

Oracle Middleware expertise is going to continue to play a larger and larger role in the IT industry as Oracle Fusion applications start rolling out and as customers want to protect their current customizations to make sure they integrate into next generation business applications.

Labels: Oracle Fusion Middleware

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Oracle Open World - Following the Money

Oracle Open World from my perspective and a lot of people I've talked to was one of the best Oracle Open World in years. Main reasons:

Lots of energy and excitement over Oracle products and applications.
Great user and vendor turnout.
Oracle and user groups (IOUG, OAUG, Quest, IOUC, HEUG, etc) all working really well together. When this happens the entire Oracle user community gains.
Lots of innovation, Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Fusion Applications, Hyperion and Business Intelligence, Enterprise Web 2.0 and the new features in all the Oracle products.
Great networking with Oracle Connect, unconferences and an incredible array of evening networking events.
Great combination of Marketing presentations to understand strategic directions balanced with a very good technical presentations. There was plenty for everybody.

It was also an exciting conference for the future of the DBA. Companies have been using software, hardware and outsourcing to greatly reduce the number of working DBAs in the market. A key point that stood out to me is that there are going to be a lot of new opportunities for DBAs that are willing to learn new things they will be rewarded by being in hot demand for the next couple of years. Some key areas where growth will create a demand and high revenue for Oracle DBAs and Developers:

Data Infrastructure Administrators (DIAs) - who can manage multiple tiers of an Oracle infrastructure. These DBAs will support the Database Server and Application Server in an enterprise.
DBAs who can configure and support Hyperion and BI as it moves into the database. Hyperion may grow at a tremendous rate over the new few years.
Developers who can develop and customize Oracle Fusion Applications using Oracle Fusion Middleware.
DBAs who can configure and support the Oracle Application Server and Enterprise Web 2.0.
DBAs who can support advanced Oracle configurations such as RAC, Streams, Data Guard and OEM.
DBAs that can support Oracle applications.

There are additional areas but these are the three that stand out to me.

Labels: George Trujillo, Hyperion, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Open World

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Driving business with Middleware Tools BPEL and Business Rules

The current wave of technology is the alignment of IT applications (software) with business processes. Middleware technology tools are driving this direction. Increasing competitiveness in global markets, changing customer needs are requiring businesses to respond faster and faster to this change. Along with this is the importance of compliance and governance.

Two middleware tools are addressing these demands: the Business Process Execution Language and Business Rules. Both of these tools allow business users and processes to drive the direction of IT applications. Tools such as the Oracle BPEL Process Manager and Oracle Business Rules are providing customers with more agility and flexibility so they can have their IT applications be able to change quickly in a well-defined way.

The success of SOA projects are increased significantly with the use of BPEL. Adding more agility and flexibility with applications occurs when using business rules.

The Oracle Fusion Middleware technology stack continues to grow with Oracle Business Rules being added to the stack. 

Labels: Oracle Fusion Middleware

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Oracle Fusion Middleware: SOA and BPEL, like Harry Potter and Hermione

I get a lot of questions on SOA and BPEL, so I wanted to talk a little about them to make sure that if you are at a party and the topics of SOA and BPEL come up, you can join the conversation. When people are talking about the BPEL, WSDL, or the shizzle you need to understand what they mean. This is important because a few years ago RAC and margarita parties were very popular, now Oracle Fusion middleware and mojito parties are all the rage. In fact, I was at one of my favorite restaurants in San Francisco, Colibri a Mexican Bistro and while having a mojito the person next to me started talking about middleware.

Aligning Business Processes and Applications

Batman and Robin, the Green Hornet and Kato, Harry Potter and Hermione and now SOA and BPEL. For most of these you can't imagine one without the other. A key for enterprise organizations is focusing on improving the alignment of business processes with technology (software applications). Business processes are constantly changing and organizations need to be very good at managing that change.

Web services, the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and the Business Processing Execution Language (BPEL) have become very popular approaches to address the following important challenges:

Managing changes to business processes and reflect those changes with its applications.
Getting all kinds of different types of applications to work together.

Services
A service is an endpoint in a connection. The endpoint contains a standalone function (provider service) that can accept input (from a consumer service) to perform a task and then return a result. This function is self-contained and is not dependent on any other service to perform its specific task. A number of services can communicate with each other to perform more complex tasks. The services communicate using XML based WSDL service descriptions.

Web Services, WSDL, UDDI, XML and ESB

Web services is the technology for connecting services. Web Services has become the technology for achieving interoperability with different languages, operating systems and hardware platforms. Web services is a distributed technology for connecting different types of applications that are supported by all vendors. A web service is an application that provides some type of business functionality while hiding the details of how it works. Software applications can then use web services (software applications that provide specific functionality) to perform a task or operation.

The technology components that make Web Services work includes:

Web Services Description Language (WSDL) - Uses XML data structures for describing services as a set of endpoints. Service requests use WSDL to understand how to communicate and how to send information back and forth.
Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) - (UDDI) is a registry that stores information (WSDL) on services. Kind of like a phone book stores phone numbers.
The eXtraction Modification Language (XML) is a data structure containing metadata and data that is used for sending information back and forth. You can think of XML as being the plumbing that makes everything work.
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) - SOAP is the protocol for how XML based messages get sent across the Internet using HTTP/HTTPS.
An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is a communication infrastructure that allows different middleware products and protocols to communicate. The ESB provides routing, transformation, the management of services and message processing capabilities. All your applications may not be using web services, so the ESB can function as an intermediary for different types of communication.

The Service Oriented Architecture
The Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) provides services (web services), messaging (exchange of data), self-describing interfaces (WSDL), service registries (UDDI), service quality and the organization of services (BPEL) into business processes. SOA does not specify the technology components to use. SOA uses services that can be used without the service knowing anything about the application calling it and the calling application not needing to know how the service performs its task. SOA is an architecture that facilitates the creation of loosely coupled services (applications) that can be executed from any platform. Services communicate using well-defined descriptions or contracts using WSDL. This complete hides which language a service is written in. Services can be written in Java, .NET, C#, PL/SQL and PHP to name a few.

Changing Environments
The computer industry has gone through significant changes. From mainframes, to client-server, to multi-tiered web environments and now to a service oriented architecture. Every technology has had its place. Business flexibility, integration, coordinating business processes with applications have forced the move to a service oriented environment. What's funny is that SOA and web services can increase the life of legacy systems.

BPEL a common language.
The problem in getting technical and business people to communicate well is they need a common language. For example, technical people speak languages like Oraclese and business people speak languages like Parseltongue. The Business Processing Execution Language (BPEL) for Web Services (WS-BPEL) or (BPEL4WS) is a high level language that both technical and business people can both speak.

BPEL is a business process modeling language that can be executed. BPEL defines business processes for web services using XML. This is why BPEL plays such a strong role in the Service Oriented Archiecture.

Some of the features that BPEL offers:

Organizing how services (software applications) are aligned with business processes.
Definition of business processes.
Automation of web services.
Managing synchronous and asynchronous operations.
Executing services in sequence or in parallel.
Managing short or long running transactions.
Resuming interrupted or failed operations.
Scheduling activities.
Define business processes with several scopes.
Route messages.
Define business logic through the organization of services.
Create business processes from smaller processes.

BPEL is definitely helping organizations make the implementation of SOA successful. Tools such as the Oracle BPEL Process Manager are making it a lot easier to introduce BPEL into an organization and increasing the adoption of SOA. The Oracle BPEL Process Manager can be used by business analysts and technical people to communicate on how to align business processes and software applications.

The Oracle BPEL Process Manager runs in the Oracle JDeveloper product or it can be installed into tools such as Eclipse. The Oracle BPEL Process Manager also works with the majr application server vendors. Although we mention the Oracle BPEL Process Manager, BPEL products are available from IBM, Sun, Microsoft and a large array of 3rd party companies. The OASIS Technical Committee (WSBPEL TC) is currently working on the WS-BPEL 2.0 draft. This draft focuses more on extentions to the the existing WS-BPEL 1.1 version.

BPEL is a standard that manages web services and is language independent. However, most web services are implemented with the Java Enterprise Edition or Microsoft .NET. There are also BPEL servers that are provided by a number of different companies. BPEL helps the success rate of SOA projects. One way of looking at this is, think of a service of being a house or building that generates a product or needs a product, web services as being the houses or buildings, XML (WSDL) being how people in the houses and buildings communicate, SOA as being the town and BPEL defining how the town is organized.

Organizations that are using SOA and BPEL are having much more success with higher end-user satisfaction versus the companies that are trying to just implement web services. Hopefully this will put a little more shizzle in your conversations on SOA and BPEL.

Labels: Oracle Fusion Middleware