E-Business Suite Integration with Integration Cloud Service and DB Adapter by Ulrich Janke

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Introduction

Integration Cloud Service (ICS) is an Oracle offering for a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to implement message-driven integration scenarios. This article will introduce into the use of ICS for integrating an on-premise E-Business Suite (EBS) instance via Database Adapter. While EBS in recent releases offers a broad set of integration features like SOAP and REST support (i.e. via Integrated SOA Gateway), these interfaces are not available in older versions like 11.5.x. In the past it has been a proven approach to use Oracle Fusion Middleware Integration products (SOA, OSB etc.) running on-premise in a customer data center to connect to an EBS database via DB Adapter. In a short time this feature will be available also in a cloud based integration solution as we will discuss in this article.

Unless we focus on EBS integration here the DB Adapter in ICS will work similarly against any other custom database. Main reason to use an EBS context is the business case shown below, where ICS is connected to Mobile Cloud Service (MCS) to provide a mobile device solution.

Business Case and Architecture

Not hard to imagine that Oracle customers running EBS 11.5.x might have a demand to add a mobile channel for their end-users. One option could be an upgrade to a recent release of EBS. As this will be in most cases a bigger project, an alternative could be the creation of a custom mobile solution via Oracle Jet and MCS as figured below. MCS is a PaaS offering and requires access to an underlying database via REST/JSON. This is the situation where ICS appears in this architecture.

In absence of native SOAP or REST capabilities being available in EBS 11.5.x tech stack, the integration via ICS would close that gap. Any database access activities (retrieving data, CRUD operations etc.) can run via an ICS/DB Adapter connection to an EBS on-premise database. ICS itself will provide a REST/JSON interface for the external interaction with EBS. This external interface is generic and not restricted to MCS as caller at all. However in our business case the ICS with DB Adapter fulfills the role of a data access layer for a mobile solution. Read the complete article here.

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Integration Cloud Service (ICS) On-Premise Agent Installation by Greg Mally

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The Oracle On-Premises Agent (aka, Connectivity Agent) is necessary for Oracle ICS to communicate to on-premise resources without the need for firewall configurations or VPN. Additional details about the Agent can be found under New Agent Simplifies Cloud to On-premises Integration. The purpose of this A-Team blog is to give a consolidated and simplified flow of what is needed to install the agent and provide a foundation for other blogs (e.g., E-Business Suite Integration with Integration Cloud Service and DB Adapter). For the detailed online documentation for the On-Premises Agent, see Managing Agent Groups and the On-Premises Agent.

On-Premises Agent Installation

The high-level steps for getting the On-Premises Agent installed on your production POD consist of two activities: 1. Create an Agent Group in the ICS console, and 2. Run the On-Premises Agent installer. Step 2 will be done on an on-premise Linux machine and the end result will be a lightweight WebLogic server instance that will be running on port 7001.

Create an Agent Group Read the complete article here.

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Implementing an SFDC Upsert Operation in ICS by Ricardo Ferreira Leave a Comment

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Introduction

While designing SOA services; especially those ones that represent operations around a business object, a common implementation pattern used is upsert. Upsert is an acronym that means the union of “update plus insert”. The idea behind is having a unique operation that decides which action to take – either update the existing record or insert a new one – based on information available in the message. Having one operation instead of two, makes the SOA service interface definition clearer and simpler.

Some SaaS applications offer upsert capabilities in their exposed services, and leveraging these capabilities can considerably decrease the amount of effort required while designing SOA services in an integration platform such as ICS. For instance, if you need to develop an upsert operation and the SaaS application does not have this functionality; you will have to implement that logic using some sort of conditional routing (see Content-Based Router pattern) or via multiple update and insert operations.

Salesforce.com (or SFDC for short) is one of those SaaS applications that offers built-in support for the upsert operation. This post will show how to leverage this support with ICS. Read the complete article here.

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Leveraging the Twitter Adapter in ICS – Tweeting through Oracle Integration Cloud Service by Lucas Jellema

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The Oracle Integration Cloud Service – ICS – comes loaded with a rich collection of Cloud Adapters. These adapters facilitate the integration with SaaS applications and internet services of various natures. These include Oracle SaaS applications (such as RightNow, Eloqua, ECommerce Cloud, ERP Cloud, HCM Cloud), on premises ERP applications (SAP, EBusiness Suite, Siebel) and assorted third party applications such as SalesForce, Facebook, Google Mail and Task, LinkedIn and Evernote. Through these adapters, interacting with said applications and services becomes a simple, declarative operation instead of a custom programming effort.

In this article, I will use the Twitter Adapter to create a connection to a Twitter Account (leveraging the Twitter API under the covers). The Twitter Adapters exposes over a dozen operations. I will use just the operation to publish a message (aka Tweet) in this example. From ICS, I will expose an integration through a simple REST connection. This allows trusted consumers to publish Tweets in a very easy way – leaving the authorization details and the API intricacies to ICS.

The steps I went through:

  • Grant access to [ICS Connection] app in the Twitter developer page and generate API Key and Consumer Key
  • Create a new ICS Connection based on Twitter Adapter; set up the API Key and Consumer Key
  • Create an ICS REST Connection (to expose)
  • Create an integration – between REST Connection as inbound (source) to Twitter Connection (as outbound destination); configure the endpoint (inbound) and operation (inbound and outbound)
  • Create the mappings for request and response
  • Define the tracking – business identifiers
  • Activate the integration
  • Test the exposed REST connection from any REST client, for example SoapUI, to Tweet a message through a simple REST POST call

Most of these steps are explained by the screenshots you will find below. Read the complete article here.

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Create an Integration on ICS to expose a REST API for a SOAP Connection for an external web service by Lucas Jellema

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In this article, I will show a little bit more of ICS – the Integration Cloud Service. In a previous article, I have introduced some concepts – such as Connection, Integration, Business Identifier. I have shown how to create an integration connecting two connections – an inbound and an outbound one (both of type SOAP).

In picture, that looks like this:

In this article, I will create a new connection (REST API style) and create an integration to expose this connection, leveraging the same outbound connection:

After creating the integration, I will activate it and invoke the new REST API from a web browser and from SOAP UI.

The steps are:

  • Create REST Connection
  • Create and activate the Integration (with the mappings for request and response and the business identifiers for tracking)
  • Invoke the REST API
Configure REST Connection

Go to the ICS Home Page and navigate to the Connections page.

Create a New Connection. Read the complete article here.

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The quick introduction to the Integration Cloud Service (Oracle PaaS– ICS) by Lucas Jellema

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Integration is the term we employ for ‘what ties systems together into end-to-end interaction flows’. Integration describes what we have to do to make applications in one domain talk to those in another, or systems in one enterprise talk to those in another. And to systems running in one cloud interact with those running in another cloud or those running on premises. Integration is ideally approached based on standard based service interfaces and encapsulated implementations. With generic integration facilities handling most of the protocol, format, and technology specific details, and translating interactions as much as possible to standard SOAP and REST exchanges. And with that generic platform handling monitoring, security, system errors and state when asynchronous exchanges are required.

The Oracle Integration Cloud Service (ICS from now on) provides the cloud based integration platform that can run and manage these integration flows. ICS exposes a browser based user interface through which the integration is first designed, then activated and managed. ICS provides adapters to easily interact with a number of popular SaaS applications (Salesforce, Oracle HCM Cloud, Oracle ERP Cloud, Oracle SalesCloud, Service Cloud | Right Now, Eloqua, CPQ, Gmail & Google Task, Evernote, …) and Platform Services and technologies (Oracle Database, Oracle Messaging Cloud Service, FTP, SOAP and REST services) as well as a collection of Social Networks (Twitter, Linked In, Facebook). With ICS it is straightforward to connect to any of these as a target and expose an tailor made, easy to use interface to ICS consumers. Some of these can also be a source for interactions: events in SaaS applications  – such as creation or update of a business object – can trigger ICS to perform an integration flow – pushing data derived from the event to some target.

In this article I will introduce some of the core terminology for ICS and demonstrate my first steps. I will create a SOAP service that exposes a simple operation to convert distances in meters to their equivalent in yards. This service is the based on an existing conversion service offered by a third party. ICS is used to virtualize this service and map to and from between the business friendly interface that I have devised and the pre-existing service interface.

Overview

You will see how I have to first create two connections. Connection is the ICS term for an external link – either outbound from ICS to target systems  (comparable to business services in Service Bus or a Reference in SCA composites) or inbound into ICS (from external consumers), similar to Proxy Service in Service Bus and Service in SCA composites. One connection is outbound, to the third party service that does distance conversions. The other connection is inbound – it describes the SOAP interface that I want to expose from ICS to my consumers. Read the complete article here.

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Oracle OpenWorld 2016 presentations

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At the SOA & BPM Partner Community workspace the SOA and BPM presentations have been published in ppt format (community membership required). We would like to encourage you to use the material to update your customer base. Make sure you get Oracle support to make your event an success:

· Use the Oracle marketing services for partners e.g. promote your events at the Oracle website.

· Host your event at an Oracle Customer Visitor Center and request Oracle speakers, please contact your Oracle partner manager

· Contact the Oracle Partner marketing team to support you and to request joint budgets.

· PaaS free trial accounts ICS and PCS, IoT and PaaS for SaaS for your event.

Oracle Process & Integration Cloud Service Presentations Now Available

Download and Review slides from all of ICS and PCS sessions here (community membership required).

The Oracle Process and Integration Product Management team, Oracle Development and our customers were extremely busy this year at Open World with 25+ sessions. We wanted to take the time to share with you our Oracle Open World Presentations.

· Inderjeet Singh General Session OOW 2016

· A must, take the time to review Vikas’s Oracle Integration Strategy Session!

· Learn more about Dubai Airports business-driven first-phase integration that went live in only 2 months.

· How GE Digital is saving 1m dollars using ICS for their ERP integration.

· How CIMA replaced MS BizTalk with SOA CS and reduced development time for new features by 40% and improved transaction completion times by 2X.

· How Calix created self-service request for enterprise application access using PCS & ICS.

· Learn more about Oracle APIP CS and what our customers, Mazda and Rabobank, think of our platform.

· …And so many more amazing SOA CS, ICS, PCS, 12c Upgrade case studies… Trek, LinkedIn, Rioch

SOA & BPM Partner Community

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Technorati Tags: OOW,Oracle OpenWorld 2016,ppt,presentations,Cloud,PaaS,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,OPN,Jürgen Kress

Oracle OpenWorld 2016 Summaries

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In case you missed the Oracle OpenWorld 2016 PaaS Partner Update webcast it’s now available on-demand here. Slides from the community webcasts are published here (community membership required)

Thanks to the whole community for the excellent summaries:

· Sven Bernhardt’s OOW 16: My thoughts and experiences

· Phil Wilkins Open World – Key Messages

· Remco Cats Oracle OpenWorld 2016

· Rolando Carrasco‘s Oracle Open World 2016

· Debra Lilley’s My OOW16 – Write Up

· Timo Hahn’s posts Day one & Day 2 & Day 3 & Day 4 & Day 5

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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Integration Cloud Service use-cases & get started

 

Maximize the value of your investments in SaaS and on-premise applications through a simple and powerful integration platform in the cloud. The use-case examples are great tips to get you started and spot opportunities are your customers! Get the use-cases here.

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Some thoughts on Oracle SOA Cloud Service

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Its been a few weeks now since Oracle released its new and highly fanfared SOA Cloud Service.

So what does this mean to Oracle SOA practitioners?. We personally think that this is an important moment in time, because the tide has finally led us to the existence of a fully fledged SOA platform offered in the form of an iPaaS, to go with a whole set of cloud services which already include: Integration, Process Automation, Document/Content Management, Mobile, Identity, etc.

There’s little doubt that digital disruption is and will continue fostering increasingly complex and sizable hybrid architectures. Web APIs have become the toast of the town and mobile-first strategies are at a premium for organizations looking to keep competitive and generate new revenue streams.

Besides the obvious use cases such as sandbox/dev environments and occasional production workload shifting, this is where SOA CS should jump in as a powerful, attainable and ready made enabler for companies looking to invest on digital transformation.

We just wrote a fairly detailed article about all this for Oracle OTN, including an excellent contribution from Dutch stalwart Robert van Mölken. Here’s the direct link:

SOA Cloud Service in a Nutshell

So please enjoy the article and don’t hesitate to ask any questions or post your comments about it. Watch the video here.

SOA & BPM Partner Community

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