How to install the Oracle Integration Cloud on premises connectivity agent (18.1.3) by Jacco Cijsouw

Recapitulation on how to install the Oracle Integration Cloud on premises connectivity agent

Recently (april 2018) I gained access to the new Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC), version 18.1.3.180112.1616-762,  and wanted to make an integration connection to an on-premise database. For this purpose, an on premise connectivity agent needs to be installed, as is thoroughly explained by my colleague Robert van Mölken in his blog prepraring-to-use-the-ics-on-premises-connectivity-agent.

With the (new) Oracle Integration Cloud environment the installation of the connectivity agent has slightly changed though, as shown below. It gave me some effort to get the new connectivity agent working. Therefore I decided to recapture the steps needed in this blog. Hopefully, this will give you a headstart to get the connectivity agent up and running.

Prerequisites

Access to an Oracle Integration Cloud Service instance.

Rights to do some installation on a local / on-premise environment, Linux based (eg. SOA virtual box appliance). Read the complete article here.

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Oracle Integration Cloud: New! The Data Mapper Activity by Jan Kettenis

In a previous blog I discussed a work-around for not having a Script activity in Oracle Integration Cloud’s Process Builder. In this blog I will discuss another work-around which is actually not a work-around, but the real thing: the Data Mapper!
As you can read in a previous blog about the matter, not having the equivalent of the Script activity of the on-premise BPM Suite, was an omission that we often had to find a work-around for. The one I used was the Business Rule activity. However, some weeks ago the Business Rule activity got deprecated (you could clearly see that).

With the latest release of OIC (which may not yet be public available when you read this) the Business Rule activity has vanished. At the same time the Data Mapper activity has been added.

The Data Mapper activity has no properties other than that you can put it in draft mode. Read the complete article here.

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Deploying OIC – Definitive Tip #9 By Phil Wilkins

When ICS was launched it delivered on of the values of PaaS namely you didn’t need to worry about setting up storage, database and compute, it was all sorted out for you. Admittedly it come with a lack of elasticity when it came to resilience and scaling. In contrast Services such as SOA CS which required you to go through each of the layers, but gave you a degree of flexibility. The whilst simpler than building SOA on-premises it still represents a laborious and fiddly process that took time.

When OIC (Oracle Integration Cloud) arrived and the introduction Universal Credits we had a pricing model that made it a lot easier to be elastic in terms of approach to resourcing, but a deployment model that following SOA CS rather than ICS. To an extend, one step forward, and another back.

Fortunately we are seeing head way that means we have recovered that backward step. This recovery comes in the form of Oracle Cloud Stack (CSM for short and sometimes referred to as PSM or PaaS Stack Manager). I’m not sure that Cloud Stack has garnered the attention it perhaps deserves. So let’s quickly look at what it does. In simple terms it provides an environment build automation capability. Cloud Stack takes a YAML (Yet Another Markup Language – rather appropriate name given the broad range of notations we find for describing Oracle product configuration) and uses it to then build an environment. The great thing about it is that you provide all the configuration (or script it) and describe the component dependency chain. The dependency chain ultimately forms part of the YAML file, but Cloud Stack includes a web interface which means configuration including defining dependencies can be done visually (as illustrated). For example a database is needed for JCS to support ADF, so you can create additional storage, then define the DB followed by JCS itself. The YAML file can accommodate the description of dependencies so it can create each component in the order needed. The composition of components in the YAML file are considered to be a Stack – hence the name. Read the complete article here.

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Continuous Integration with Apiary, Dredd, and Wercker by Nick Montoya

There are many tools in the market to design, develop, and test API’s. Some of these tools could be used separately. Some others could be combined. Every time a change is introduced in the design or implementation of an API, it would be nice to have tests and builds run automatically. Continuous Integration (CI) is a software development practice that allows builds and tests to be triggered every time new code is pushed to the repository. There are may tools that could be used to build this CI pipeline. This blog will share the experience of building a CI pipeline using Apiary (bought by Oracle in January 2017) for API Design and Wercker (bought by Oracle in April 2017) to help achieve this CI goal.

1. 1. Create an API definition in Apiary

Apiary (apiary.io) improves API development by promoting a documentation first approach. It is a platform for designing HTTP based web APIs. It starts with API documentation, then Apiary creates mock services and tests. Apiary support two formats for API description: API Blueprint and Swagger.

In Apiary, from the API dropdown select “Create New API Project” and the “New API” screen will popup. Read the complete article here.

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Why API-led architecture is important to drive digital transformation by Sander Rensen

Many organizations have more than one application running to support their business processes. This is often driven by the fact that multiple divisions within the same organization have their own requirement to run their day-to-day operations. The IT landscape can quickly become a monstrous beast that is difficult to manage and tame. The different systems generate a lot of data that is stored in a variety of different locations with a common problem that the business doesn’t know where and how to access the data. Digital enablement to modernize your IT landscape becomes slow and painful. The key to drive digital transformation is to have the ability to quickly access the data with minimum effort.

This is where an API-led architecture is key to access, manage and secure the data from one single entry-point with the use of APIs. There are several good API platforms on the market that can support an API led architecture. However, make sure when you select a product that it can support:

• APIs can be accessed from anywhere on-premise and in the cloud.
• APIs can be easily found in a central repository a bit like a shopping basket.
• APIs can be configured to comply with the latest security rules like GDPR.
• APIs should be polymorph meaning that the back-end services to retrieve the data can be fetched with any preferred programming language.
• The throughput of requests when calling the API can be configured like throttling or rate limit to ensure back-end services are protected against DoS attacks.

These are a selection of the key features to think about. The Oracle API Platform CS, released last June, is mature enough to support an API-led architecture. Read the complete article here.

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Oracle API Platform Cloud Service: using the Developer Portal for discovering APIs via the API Catalog and subscribing applications to APIs by Marc Lameriks

At the Oracle Partner PaaS Summer Camps VII  in Lisbon last year, at the end of august, I attended the API Platform Cloud Service & Integration Cloud Service bootcamp.

In a series of article’s I will give a high level overview of what you can do with Oracle API Platform Cloud Service.

At the Summer Camp a pre-built Oracle VM VirtualBox APIPCS appliance (APIPCS_17_3_3.ova) was provided to us, to be used in VirtualBox. Everything needed to run a complete demo of API Platform Cloud Service is contained within Docker containers that are staged in that appliance. The version of Oracle API Platform CS, used within the appliance, is Release 17.3.3 — August 2017.

See https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/paas/api-platform-cloud/whats-new/index.html to learn about the new and changed features of Oracle API Platform CS in the latest release.

In this article in the series about Oracle API Platform CS, the focus will be on the Developer Portal, discovering APIs via the API Catalog and subscribing applications to APIs. As a follow-up from my previous article, at the end the focus is on validating the “Key Validation” policy of the “HumanResourceService”API.
_{[https://technology.amis.nl/2018/04/14/oracle-api-platform-cloud-service-using-the-management-portal-and-creating-an-api-including-some-policies/]}

Be aware that the screenshot’s in this article and the examples provided, are based on a demo environment of Oracle API Platform CS and were created by using the Oracle VM VirtualBox APIPCS appliance mentioned above.

This article only covers part of the functionality of Oracle API Platform CS. For more detail I refer you to the documentation: https://cloud.oracle.com/en_US/api-platform.

Short overview of Oracle API Platform Cloud Service

Oracle API Platform Cloud Service enables companies to thrive in the digital economy by comprehensively managing the full API lifecycle from design and standardization to documenting, publishing, testing and managing APIs. These tools provide API developers, managers, and users an end-to-end platform for designing, prototyping. Through the platform, users gain the agility needed to support changing business demands and opportunities, while having clear visibility into who is using APIs for better control, security and monetization of digital assets.
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Architecture: Read the complete article here.

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API Platform Custom Host Name and Certificate by Greg Mally

Once you have provisioned an Oracle API Platform CS instance, one of the first things you will notice is the access to the various consoles are done via Public IP addresses:

Another issue you will come across is that the certificate used for the instance is “Not Secure”, and therefore HTTPS is disabled due to an invalid certificate:

The focus of this blog is to walk through the details of how to customize your APIPCS environment for your business, which includes defining a host name and changing the default demo certificate to one that matches your new host name. This will allow your consumers/users to leverage the APIPCS specific to your company vs. some random IP address/cryptic host name.

High-Level Steps/Checklist Read the complete article here.

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Great APIs need a plan! by: Robert Wunderlich

We recently released API Platform Cloud service 18.1.5 and with that we are introducing phase 1 of plans!  To be fully transparent, we’ve had plans built into the service from day 1, but this marks a step in making the feature available.

What are plans you may ask?

Plans provide the measured access to one or more APIs serving as the foundation for monetization.

Plans define limits at the subscriber level that stretches across APIs.

To explain this further, let’s use the example of a rate-limit.  A rate limit controls the number of calls within a certain time period.  The API Rate Limit protects a system by limiting the number of calls that may be made to a particular API, no matter who is calling the API.  For example, if my back-end system can handle no more than 10000 requests per second, I may set an API Rate Limit of 10000 per second which would apply for all callers.

Another limit is the Application Rate Limit, which we can call the "fair share" limit.  This stipulates that no one application can get more than a limited number of calls within a certain time period.  For example, I may decide that no one application can get more than 1000 calls per second.  If I have 5 applications subscribed then this means that there can be a total of 5000 requests per second.

Plans takes this forward in a much richer way in that I can set limits for the consumer.  With plans, the API consumer now subscribes to the plan and APIs are entitled to that plan.  When a consumer subscribes to the plan, the consumer gets access to all of the APIs entitled in the plan. Read the complete article here.

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