An Introduction to Oracle’s Integration Cloud Service (ICS) by Jennie DeRosa

December 11, 2015 Leave a comment

clip_image002Overview

Last month, Oracle made available their latest tool within their integration cloud strategy, Integration Cloud Service (ICS).  With the number of SaaS applications growing, the need to integrate is becoming more important, making ICS even more relevant.

The intended usage of ICS are implementations of simple, light weight integrations between SaaS applications.  It resides within the cloud, is built off the Oracle Service Bus, and is available on a monthly subscription basis.

Pre-built solutions will be available in the marketplace (think app store), allowing for reusable integrations to be purchased, implemented in an accelerated manner. This will provide the option to reuse existing integrations as-is, or build on top of the existing, customizing for your business integration needs. If the pre-built solutions don’t meet your integration needs, the capability to develop your own from scratch is always on option. Either way, the development of an integration within ICS can be done using the capabilities detailed in this article.

Within ICS, there are 4 aspects: Integrations, Connections, Lookups, and Packages. Each of these will be discussed in further detail.

Integrations

Developing integrations between SaaS applications is done in ICS via a web based tool. Using drag and drop capabilities, an integration can easily be defined. Since the tool is built on top of OSB, the functions defined within the VETO (validate, enrich, transform, and operation) integration design pattern are available for implementation: Read the complete article here.

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.

Blog Twitter LinkedIn image[7][2][2][2] Facebook clip_image002[8][4][2][2][2] Wiki

Filed under Cloud, SOA Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Protecting Sensitive Data in Oracle SOA Suite 12c by Jennie DeRosa

June 1, 2015 Leave a comment

clip_image001

Given the recent security breaches, data security should always be a concern when designing and creating IT solutions. In particular, what are some considerations that should be made when implementing a solution within the Oracle SOA Suite? Is it sufficient to protect the data using WS-Security/SSL or is additional security needed? If you have sensitive data traversing through the SOA Suite then additional security must be considered.

As noted within the National Institute Standards and Technology (NIST) publication, ‘to appropriately protect the confidentiality of personally identifiable information (PII), organizations should use a risk-based approach’. To understand what is considered PII, or sensitive data, along with recommendations to protect PII read Guide to Protecting the Confidentiality of Personally Identifiable Information.

WS-Security and SSL only will protect data outside a SOA composite or Service Bus. Once the data hits either one of these, it is viewable in clear text within audit trails, console or logs. This means sensitive data is viewable within the console and log, causing this data to be unencrypted at rest. An example of this is shown below. Anyone with access to EM (Enterprise Manager) could view the sensitive data just by opening the audit trail of a process: Read the complete article here.

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.

Blog Twitter LinkedIn image[7][2][2][2] Facebook clip_image002[8][4][2][2][2] Wiki

Filed under SOA Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Message Aggregation in Oracle SOA Suite 12c by Jennie DeRosa

May 30, 2015 Leave a comment

 

clip_image002Within the Oracle SOA Suite, message aggregation is a concept that allows for multiple messages to be routed to the same BPEL process, based on a value(s) defined within the incoming payload. This is implemented within BPEL through the use of correlation sets.

To implement this, a correlation set is defined and will contain one or more properties. These properties have aliases to values within the input payload message (i.e. PurchaseOrderNumber), which are used for the correlation of messages.

Oracle SOA Suite 12c has provided a wizard that allows for easy definition of the correlation set, properties and property aliases which are all necessary for correlation to occur. Below are the steps required to configure your BPEL process to perform message aggregation via correlation set.

Configuration Steps

The first step is to create the Correlation Set. Right click on the initial receive of the process and select ‘Setup Correlation…’ Read the complete article here.

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.

Blog Twitter LinkedIn image[7][2][2][2] Facebook clip_image002[8][4][2][2][2] Wiki

Filed under SOA Tagged with , , , , , ,

Protecting Sensitive Data in SOA Suite 12c by Jennie DeRosa

April 12, 2015 1 Comment

clip_image002

Given the recent security breaches, data security should always be a concern when designing and creating IT solutions. In particular, what are some considerations that should be made when implementing a solution within the Oracle SOA Suite? Is it sufficient to protect the data using WS-Security/SSL or is additional security needed? If you have sensitive data traversing through the SOA Suite then additional security must be considered.

As noted within the National Institute Standards and Technology (NIST) publication, ‘to appropriately protect the confidentiality of personally identifiable information (PII), organizations should use a risk-based approach’. To understand what is considered PII, or sensitive data, along with recommendations to protect PII read Guide to Protecting the Confidentiality of Personally Identifiable Information.

WS-Security and SSL only will protect data outside a SOA composite or Service Bus. Once the data hits either one of these, it is viewable in clear text within audit trails, console or logs. This means sensitive data is viewable within the console and log, causing this data to be unencrypted at rest. An example of this is shown below. Anyone with access to EM (Enterprise Manager) could view the sensitive data just by opening the audit trail of a process:

Read the complete article here.

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.

Blog Twitter LinkedIn image[7][2][2][2] Facebook clip_image002[8][4][2][2][2] Wiki

Filed under SOA Tagged with , , , , , ,

XSLT and DVMs – Design Time Execution in Oracle Service Bus 12c by Jennie DeRosa

March 21, 2015 Leave a comment

 

clip_image002Within Oracle Service Bus 11g, there is not an easy way to reference Domain Value Maps (DVM), like there is in Oracle SOA Suite 11g Composites. Typically, a kluge solution is implemented as a workaround in a Service Bus 11g project. With Oracle Service Bus 12c, this has changed, DVMs are now accessible in XQuery and XSL maps.

While this is good news, the even better news is that XSL maps which contain references to DVMs can now be successfully executed at design time, allowing for testing within JDeveloper. Testing of XSL maps at design time is always a good practice, it allows for catching bugs early in the development process.

Within this article, I will provide an overview of the configurations required to enable testing an XSL map at design time, which references a DVM within an Oracle Service Bus 12c project.

Overview of creation of a DVM along with publishing to the MDS repository can be found here: http://technology.amis.nl/2014/06/27/soa-suite-12c-using-domain-value-map-dvm-in-service-bus-projects/

One prerequisite step necessary when referencing a DVM outside of the current Service Bus project is to import the resource from the Meta Data Storage (MDS).  OSB 12c cannot contain references to resources, like a DVM, within the MDS repository. Rather, the resource needs to be imported into the Service Bus project, as shown below.

Select the DVM within the MDS repository and select ‘Import Resource’: Read the complete article here.

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.

Blog Twitter LinkedIn image[7][2][2][2] Facebook clip_image002[8][4][2][2][2] Wiki

Filed under SOA Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Service Bus 12c – Exposing a Pipeline as a REST Service by Jennie DeRosa

March 19, 2015 1 Comment

 

clip_image002Within Oracle Service Bus 12c, there are several ways to implement a pipeline as a REST service.

One approach is to REST enable an existing SOAP service. In this scenario, a pipeline is supported by both SOAP and REST based interactions. A video that provides a good overview of the required steps to implement this can be found here.

Another way is to derive it from a pipeline WSDL (REST bindings in OSB 12c are based on a WSDL document). The steps below detail the configurations required to accomplish this.

The first step is to create a pipeline that is a WSDL-based service. If the WSDL does not exist, it can be generated from a schema. To do this, select the ‘Create a WSDL’ icon in the Pipeline Service creation wizard to open the Create WSDL dialog.  Before selecting ‘Finish’, be sure the ‘Expose as a Proxy Service’ is not checked, since we will be generating a REST based proxy in a later step. Read the complete article here.

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.

Blog Twitter LinkedIn image[7][2][2][2] Facebook clip_image002[8][4][2][2][2] Wiki

Filed under SOA Tagged with , , , , , , , ,