Oracle Application Server 10g Essentials [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Chapter 15. Integration Components

Within your organization, you may have a
mixture of business applications based on various technologies
deployed in different areas of the business. You may also need to
share data and business processes with other organizations and
partners. To allow you to successfully manage the entire business,
such disparate systems must be able to access and share business
processes, data, and services. An integration strategy is key to
making effective use of these resources.

Oracle Application Server integration components provide the
framework needed to bring together such resources in a variety of
ways:

Enterprise Application
Integration (EAI) is enabled through collaborative interaction
between applications.

Business-to-business (B2B)
collaboration is enabled by an exchange of documents among
"trading partners," two parties
that take part in a business transaction. Oracle sometimes refers to
this scenario as OracleAS
PartnerConnect.

Web Services integration enables business
processes to incorporate Web Services present in local networks or
externally over the Internet.

This Oracle Application Server integration framework allows you to
establish a common view of data and business processes by providing
these capabilities.

Two specific integration platforms are provided in Oracle Application
Server 10g:

Oracle Application Server InterConnect

OracleAS InterConnect, available since the
Oracle9iAS application server, provides
high-speed message exchange (e.g., exchange of hundreds of messages
per second) via brokers that are available for a variety of
applications, queuing mechanisms, and data movement protocols.

Oracle Application Server ProcessConnect

An addition to Oracle Application Server 10g,
OracleAS ProcessConnect enables business
process integration and automation through the use of J2EE Connector
Architecture-based adapters.

OracleAS InterConnect is most commonly used for database-to-database
(data) integration or application-to-application integration (EAI).
It can synchronize data through transformations involving multiple
trading partners.

OracleAS ProcessConnect provides a single middleware software
solution targeted for business process integration within an
enterprise or with trading partners. This platform can enable
Business Activity
Monitoring (BAM) through the retrieval of such runtime data as the
number and status of activities and the current state of an
integration object. Business Process Optimization
(BPO) reports can also be produced, indicating business process
efficiency (e.g., fulfillment completion time).

BAM is the aggregation and correlation of data from many sources to produce key performance indicators (KPIs). The KPIs can provide business advisories or to trigger specific business processes designed to improve business results when predefined threshold values are reached. This automatic triggering of business processes is called Business Process Optimization.

An alternative to using OracleAS ProcessConnect for defining and
deploying business processes and events is to use a combination of
OracleAS InterConnect with Oracle Workflow. The InterConnect
iStudio tool provides a single interface to
build such processes. An Oracle Workflow for Java (OW4J)
engine, introduced with Oracle Application Server
10g, complements the PL/SQL-based Oracle
Workflow engine previously available with the Oracle database. OW4J
enables Oracle Workflow deployment to the middle tier. It also
supports the execution of methods in Java classes, EJBs, and Web
Services.

This chapter describes the various integration facilities available
with Oracle Application Server: OracleAS ProcessConnect, OracleAS
InterConnect, iStudio, and Oracle Workflow for
Java. It also outlines some sample deployment sequences for business
process integration.