SOA Suite

http://onlineappsdba.com/index.php/2007/07/24/oracle-bpel-process-manager-overview/

Oracle SOA Suite is unique in that it provides the following set of integrated capabilities:

• Messaging
• Service discovery
• Orchestration
• Web services management and security
• Business rules
• Events framework
• Business activity monitoring
  
  
  

  Standards Used by Oracle SOA Suite to Enable SOA

  Service Component Architecture (SCA) assembly model
  
  Service Data Objects (SDO)
  Business Process Execution Language (BPEL): BPEL versions 1.1 and 2.0 are supported
  XSL Transformations (XSLT)
  Java Connector Architecture (JCA)
  Java Messaging Service (JMS)
  Web Services Description Language (WSDL) file
  Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)

  
  

  Approaches for Designing SOA Composite Applications

  When creating a SOA composite application, you have a choice of approaches for building it:
  

  • Top-Down: You analyze your business processes and identify activities in support of your process. When creating a composite, you define all the SOA components through the SOA Composite Editor. You create all the services first, and then build the BPEL process, referencing the created services.
  • Bottom-Up: You analyze existing applications and assets to identify those that can be used as services. As you create a BPEL process, you build the services on an as-needed basis. This approach works well when IT must react to a change.

  
  

  
  On a UNIX operating system, it is highly recommended to enable Unicode support by setting the LANG and LC_Allenvironment variables to a locale with the UTF-8 character set. This action enables the operating system to process any character in Unicode. SOA technologies are based on Unicode. If the operating system is configured to use non-UTF-8 encoding, SOA components may function in an unexpected way. For example, a non-ASCII file name can make the file inaccessible and cause an error. Oracle does not support problems caused by operating system constraints.
  In a design-time environment, if you are using Oracle JDeveloper, select Tools > Preferences > Environment >Encoding > UTF-8 to enable Unicode support. This setting is also applicable for runtime environments.
  
  
  

  What Happens When You Create a SOA Application and Project

  Oracle JDeveloper automatically adds the following libraries needed for your SOA project:

  • SOA Design time
  • SOA Runtime
  • BPEL Runtime
  • Oracle Mediator Runtime
  • MDS Runtime

  
  
  http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E28271_01/dev.1111/e10224/fod_intro1.htm
  
  

SCA

For me Enterprise integration domain has been full of intresting thing, this time it is Service Component Architecture(SCA):

There are few hand-on SCA for Java:

Apache Tuscany beta version 2.0 had some issues so I tried 1.6

http://tuscany.apache.org/java-sca-documentation-menu.html
http://tuscany.apache.org/build-your-first-web-services-with-tuscany.html
http://tuscany.apache.org/getting-started-with-tuscany.html
http://biemond.blogspot.in/2009/11/working-with-apache-tuscany-java-sca.html

Oracle SOA uses SCA assembly model:

http://tuscany.apache.org/sca-java-architecture-guide.html

SCA provides specifications of:

Assembly model specification
Component implementation specifications
Binding specifications
Policy framework specification

Oracle SOA 11g

I must say cloud computing gone miles to make people lazy, importantly you can do what you want to do.

I have thought of doing some POC long back, tried a few times however was too difficult to have it on local machine: Oracle Virtulization has done it.

What do you need to try POC or start for Oracle SOA 11 g
1. Oracle Virtual Box(download VirtualBox-4.1.18-78361-Win.exe)
2. Oracle Ready to use OS(Linux)+ Oracle SOA 11 G platform. All parts of oel5u5-64bit-soabpm-11gr1-ps5-2-0-M.7z.001 to oel5u5-64bit-soabpm-11gr1-ps5-2-0-M.7z.007
3. Guide to install VBox and Linux+Oracle SOA(soabpmvirtualboxreadme-1612068.pdf)

My installation is ready with :

Oracle Enterprise Linux (64-bit)
Oracle XE Database
Oracle SOA Suite 11g
Oracle BPM Suite 11g
Oracle Service Bus 11g
Oracle Webcenter Content (Enterprise Content Management)
Oracle Webcenter Suite 11g
Oracle JDeveloper
JRockit
Sun Java SDK

Few hicups:
1. Virtual technology was not enabled in host machine, your virtual appliance will not run. Change you BIOS setting to enable Virtual technology.
2. Lot of things copied locally however need to be moved to virtual machine.You will have to add folder and finally you should be able to see hosted folders: in /media/ folder.

After few months on above setup I preferred and trust me it is worth(and fun) installing VBox, install linux 64 bit(download from eDelivery site), Oracle DB and SOA 11g on your own. I was lucky to get help from my colleagues working in Linux(do not try unless you are not good in Linux or you are lucky to get Linux help).