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 10 g :

Oracle Application Server InterConnect: OracleAS InterConnect, available since the Oracle9 i AS 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 10 g , 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 i Studio tool provides a single interface to build such processes. An Oracle Workflow for Java (OW4J) engine, introduced with Oracle Application Server 10 g , 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, i Studio, and Oracle Workflow for Java. It also outlines some sample deployment sequences for business process integration.