An Oracle White Paper October 2012

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer

Disclaimer
The following is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracles products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer

Introduction ....................................................................................... 1 Enterprise Application Integration Styles ........................................... 2 Data-centric Integration ..................................................................... 3 Open Interface Tables, Views, and Concurrent Programs ............. 3 Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator ................................. 4 Integration through Native Interfaces ................................................. 6 PL/SQL and Java APIs .................................................................. 7 Process-centric Integration ................................................................ 7 Oracle Workflow ............................................................................ 7 Event-driven Integration .................................................................... 8 Oracle Workflow Business Event System ...................................... 9 B2B Integration................................................................................ 10 Oracle XML Gateway and Oracle E-Commerce Gateway............ 10 Integration through Web Services.................................................... 11 Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway...................... 11 Oracle Fusion Middleware Adapter for Oracle Applications (also called Oracle E-Business Suite Adapter) ..................................... 13 Oracle Integration Repository .......................................................... 14 When to Use What A Comparative Guide ..................................... 16 Native Interfaces Versus Web Services ....................................... 16 Service Oriented Integration Versus Event Driven Integration ..... 18 Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway Versus Oracle E-Business Suite Adapter ................................................ 19 Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway Service Invocation Framework Versus Other Web Service Clients ........... 21 Oracle Workflow Versus Oracle BPEL Process Manager ............ 21 Oracle Mediator Versus Oracle BPEL Process Manager Versus Oracle Service Bus ...................................................................... 23 Oracle Integration Repository Versus Oracle Enterprise Repository ................................................................................... 26 Oracle XML Gateway Versus Oracle E-Commerce Gateway Versus Oracle B2B ...................................................................... 28 Conclusion ...................................................................................... 29

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer

Introduction
One of the most pervasive challenges for organizations is integrating their individual software applications, ERP, and custom installations that automate their business tasks and processes. Increasingly, organizations are realizing that collaboration with supply chain partners can enhance their productivity, and that aligning business processes across enterprise departments can reduce operational costs. It has become important to address each integration need with the right approach and the right enabling technology. Enterprise application integration presents technical as well as non-technical challenges. Some of the non-technical challenges are high integration cost, risks, and changing business needs due to mergers, acquisitions, diversification, reorganization, and compliance to new industry standards. Common technical challenges include integrating applications in heterogeneous environments and maintaining consistent information across systems with different interfaces, data models, and process designs. Oracle E-Business Suite recognizes the importance of integration and has opened several key integration points supporting different integration technologies. While an integration point may be available through various technologies and products, it is important to use the best approach for the particular integration requirement. This document outlines common enterprise application integration styles and the various Oracle E-Business Suite products and technologies provided within the application technology layer to address the specific needs of these integration styles. This document also presents a comparative guide on when to use which integration-related Oracle E-Business Suite product.

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer

Enterprise Application Integration Styles

Enterprise Application Integration is the ability to link different types of enterprise applications and business processes together so that they can communicate smoothly and effectively to conduct ebusiness. These applications may reside within the same enterprise (inter-application integrations) or span multiple enterprise boundaries connected over the Internet, such as for integration with partner applications. Depending upon what, why, when, and how two or more enterprise applications need to be integrated, enterprise application integrations can be broadly categorized into the following styles:

Figure 1: Enterprise application integration styles

Data-centric integration Integration through native interfaces Process-centric integration Event-driven integration B2B integration Integration through Web services Oracle E-Business Suite provides a robust set of native technologies and products to address each of the above integration styles.

Figure 2: Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 integration products and technologies

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer

For many of the integration technologies and products from Oracle E-Business Suite, there are optional products from Oracle Fusion Middleware that add on value to the integration.

Figure 3: Oracle E-Business Suite integration products and technologies with related Oracle products

Data-centric Integration
Data integration is the process of consolidating, managing, and moving information from different data sources, including databases, data files, and applications such as ERP, CRM, legacy, and data warehouses. In most data integration scenarios, data is moved on a regular schedule that ranges from hourly to nightly or biweekly intervals. Data integration is usually used in conjunction with services that ensure data integrity, such as data de-duplication and data cleansing. Data-centric integrations address the requirement of bulk data replication across different systems and bulk data upload. An example of data-centric integration is bulk upload of recurring transactions such as sales orders which need to be tallied for commission payment to appropriate salespeople.

Open Interface Tables, Views, and Concurrent Programs

Open interface tables are used as an external integration point for data to be imported into Oracle EBusiness Suite. These tables serve as a staging point for inbound data prior to batch validation and import into transaction tables. Usually, open interface tables are associated with concurrent programs. Concurrent programs systematically examine data for flaws by using rules, algorithms, and look-up tables and then take appropriate action to cleanse the data. During data cleansing, data that is incorrect, incomplete, improperly formatted, or duplicated is marked for correction, and validated data is moved to appropriate base tables in Oracle E-Business Suite. Records marked for correction can be edited and resubmitted for import.

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer

Similarly, for an outbound flow of information from Oracle E-Business Suite to external applications, data can be exported from open interface tables. The associated concurrent program extracts the data from the base tables and stores it in the open interface tables. Various Oracle E-Business Suite products have also defined open interface views that group related data for easier processing. These views can be used for reporting or for data export. This approach assumes that the data from external sources is already loaded to open interface tables for inbound transactions, or that the data will be extracted from open interface tables and views by external applications for outbound transactions. Oracle XML Gateway and Oracle E-Commerce Gateway load data to open interface tables after any required trading partner validation and code conversions for their respective inbound transactions. Similarly, Oracle XML Gateway and Oracle ECommerce Gateway use open interface tables, views, and concurrent programs for outbound transactions. Oracle E-Business Suite customers can also use data-centric integration tools, such as SQL Loader programs, Oracle Golden Gate, or Oracle Data Integrator, to load the bulk data into open interface tables or extract bulk data from open interface tables and views. Oracle Golden Gate works against the change data capture logs of databases and can work across a heterogeneous database landscape, while Oracle Data Integrator works directly against the database tables and uses an extract, load, and transform approach to handling data.

Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator

Data consolidation sometimes requires manual intervention such as manual data verification or minor data changes in batch data just before uploading data to Oracle E-Business Suite. The data that needs to be reviewed and updated may vary frequently, and it may not be feasible to automate the changes. Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator provides a quick way to address such requirements, by integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with familiar desktop applications such as spreadsheets.

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer

Figure 4: Uploading data to an Oracle E-Business Suite application from an Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator spreadsheet

Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator is a metadata driven framework that allows data to be downloaded into the spreadsheet from a file or from the Oracle E-Business Suite database using a SQL query or Java program. The resulting spreadsheet is created in an application-specific format, where the end user can review data, edit data, and then upload data back to Oracle E-Business Suite. Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator performs basic validation before uploading data to open interface tables. Then, depending on the integrator definition, Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator validates the uploaded data against business rules and submits the associated concurrent program to import the data to the base transaction tables. Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator enables Oracle E-Business Suite end users to do the following:

Create a formatted document such as a spreadsheet on the desktop containing application-specific fields for data entry. Import data into the desktop document from the database using a SQL query or Java program, or from a text file. Work with the data in the desktop application while enforcing the owning application's business rules. Upload data from the desktop document into Oracle E-Business Suite. Validate the data being uploaded and receive immediate feedback about the results of the validation during the upload process. Submit a program to import data from the open interface staging tables to Oracle E-Business Suite base tables.

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer

Figure 5: Creating and managing custom integrators from Oracle E-Business Suite Desktop Integration Framework

Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator also provides the Oracle E-Business Suite Desktop Integration Framework, which is a wizard-driven design-time tool to create, update, and manage custom desktop integrators. It supports function-based security and lets you include UI widgets such as a date-time picker and lists of values within the generated spreadsheets. Because Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator downloads and uploads data to and from a spreadsheet on a local desktop over the network, this product is recommended for small scale data consolidation and data conversion scenarios. For more information on Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator and Oracle E-Business Suite Desktop Integration Framework, refer to the following documentation:

Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator Implementation and Administration Guide Oracle E-Business Suite Desktop Integration Framework Developer's Guide

Integration through Native Interfaces

Every enterprise application has its own technology stack, which usually supports customization using native technologies. APIs are interfaces that an enterprise application developer exposes to provide access to application logic, business rules, and data. Customers can then use these APIs to build, customize, and extend the enterprise application for their usage. An example of using native interfaces is creating an application wrapper that saves additional custom information in custom tables along[RA1] with application-specific information. In such cases, the customer usually has a custom implementation

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer

at different layers that is, a custom user interface in the presentation layer, custom application logic, and custom tables. Another example is using native APIs to retrieve statistics from Oracle E-Business Suite database and create custom reports.

PL/SQL and Java APIs

Oracle E-Business Suite publishes APIs that can be used to create or update business objects, re-use seeded business logic and rules, and retrieve business data. These APIs are native technologies and are suitable for working within the network; they are not suitable for integration across instances using remote invocations across networks. These APIs are recommended for Oracle E-Business Suite customizations and extensions.

Process-centric Integration
A business process is a coordinated set of business functions that may be driven by human actions or governed by automated business rules. Complex business processes may involve multiple enterprise applications, whereas simple processes happen within one application, such as a performance appraisal process within an HR application.

Oracle Workflow
Oracle Workflow provides a workflow management system that supports business process-based integration within Oracle E-Business Suite applications. It enables modeling, automation, and continuous improvement of business processes, routing information of any type according to userdefined business rules. Oracle Workflow Builder provides a graphical drag-and-drop process designer.

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer

Figure 6: Oracle Workflow Builder

Oracle Workflow supports processes with looping, parallel, merge, and diverging flows. The routing and business rules can be defined in the form of PL/SQL or Java APIs. Oracle Workflow lets people receive notifications of items awaiting their attention through e-mail, and continues the process based on their e-mail responses. Users can also view their list of things to do, including necessary supporting information, and take action using a standard Web browser. Oracle Workflow processes together with the Business Event System can be used for point-to-point message based integration, or as a messaging hub for complex system integration scenarios. You can model business processes that include complex routing and processing rules to handle events powerfully and flexibly. For more information on Oracle Workflow, refer to the following documentation:

Oracle Workflow Users Guide Oracle Workflow Developers Guide

Event-driven Integration
Event-driven integrations can address the requirement to allow asynchronous actions or initiate a longrunning offline business process on the occurrence of a business event. This type of integration is also used to monitor key business events and status updates. It provides a non-intrusive mode of enterprise application integration. For example, an enterprise application can raise a business event whenever a purchase order is created or updated. Interested parties can subscribe to this business event, and depending upon business rules send an alert or notification to the floor manager on stock levels.

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer

Oracle Workflow Business Event System

The Oracle Workflow Business Event System provides event-driven processing in Oracle E-Business Suite. On occurrence of a business event in Oracle E-Business Suite, the Business Event System triggers event subscriptions that specify the processing to execute for that event. Subscriptions can include the following types of processing:

Executing custom code on the event information Sending event information to another workflow process Sending event information to named communication points called agents on the local system or external systems Sending event information to a Web service as a SOAP request

Figure 7: Business event subscription action types

You can communicate events among systems within your own enterprise and with external systems as well. For more information on the Oracle Workflow Business Event System, refer to the following documentation:

Oracle Workflow Developers Guide Oracle Workflow API Reference

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer

B2B Integration
B2B is the integration of an enterprise application and its business processes with external business applications operated by customers, suppliers, and trading partners. Business data are exchanged between trading partners in standard format. These integrations are driven by industry-level standards such as OAG, IFX, and EDIFACT.

Oracle XML Gateway and Oracle E-Commerce Gateway

Oracle XML Gateway is a product from Oracle E-Business Suite that facilitates the bidirectional communication of business critical data between Oracle E-Business Suite applications and third party applications or trading partners in the form of well-formatted XML messages. It is used to generate and consume DTD-based XML messages triggered by business events. These XML messages can be exchanged with trading partners through any of three communication modes Oracle Transport Agent, Web services, or JMS. Oracle XML Gateway leverages Oracle Workflow, the Business Event System, Oracle Advanced Queuing, and other database components.

Figure 8: Trading partner setup for Oracle XML Gateway

Oracle E-Commerce Gateway allows electronic exchange of data between trading partners in ASCII file format. Interface data files are exchanged in a standard format to minimize manual effort, speed data processing, and ensure accuracy. A third party EDI Translator is required to map the flat file data between Oracle E-Business Suite and the EDI standard of choice such as ASC X12 or EDIFACT. For more information on Oracle XML Gateway and Oracle E-Commerce Gateway, refer to the following documentation:

Oracle XML Gateway Users Guide Oracle e-Commerce Gateway Users Guide

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Oracle e-Commerce Gateway Implementation Manual

Integration through Web Services

Heterogeneous and hybrid IT environments are common in todays enterprises. In a heterogeneous environment, applications are built on different technology platforms, operating systems, and programming languages. In a hybrid enterprise environment, the enterprise uses both on-premise and cloud-based applications. Integration through Web services is the recommended integration approach for such environments. Web services provide interoperability between applications running on disparate platforms. The fundamental specifications that Web services are based on are SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), WSDL (Web Services Description Language), and UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration). SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI are XML-based, making Web service protocol messages and descriptions human readable. These SOAP messages are transported over the standard internet transport protocol, HTTP/HTTPS. Web service-based integration addresses the following requirements:

Integrating enterprise applications from different vendors Integrating enterprise applications built on different technologies Integrating enterprise applications with business or trading partner applications Point-to-point system integration with loose coupling of participating applications Integrating on-premise enterprise applications with on-cloud or hosted enterprise applications

Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway

Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway is a SOA-based integration infrastructure product from Oracle E-Business Suite that helps organizations to provide, consume, and monitor Web services for integrations in a heterogeneous ecosystem. It has four major components Oracle Integration Repository, Service Provider, Service Invocation Framework, and Service Administration.

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Figure 9: Out-of-box service enablement of Oracle E-Business Suite

Service Provider (for inbound) In Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway, Service Provider exposes the public integration interfaces as standard Web services. Interfaces of the following types can be exposed as SOAP-based Web services: PL/SQL, Concurrent Program, XML Gateway, Business Service Object, and Java APIs for Forms (a subset of Java APIs). When Service Provider receives a SOAP request for an Oracle E-Business Suite Web service, it ensures that the request is authenticated against JAAS-based security and authorized against Oracle E-Business Suite function security. It supports both Username Token (in PlainText) and SAML Token (Sender Vouches) based authentication types. Valid Web service requests are executed by the underlying Oracle E-Business Suite API. The response from the API is sent as a SOAP response to the calling Web service client for a synchronous interaction pattern. Service Invocation Framework (for outbound) The Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway Service Invocation Framework (SIF) provides the ability to invoke any third-party external public Web service that is exposed and available for consumption through the standard Web service communication mode of SOAP over HTTP. The response can be consumed by Oracle E-Business Suite through any of the following:

Oracle Workflow process Oracle Forms PL/SQL API OA Framework page Java program Java or PL/SQL based Concurrent program

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Figure 10: Wizard-driven WSDL parser from Business Event Subscription page

Service Invocation Framework leverages the Oracle Workflow Business Event System to invoke and consume Web services. It supports the Username Token (in PlainText) based authentication type. The required user credentials are secured in FND_VAULT. Service Administration provides a set of administrative capabilities such as monitoring service requests through Service Provider and configuring logging and auditing for Web services through Service Provider. Oracle Integration Repository is described later in this paper.

Oracle Fusion Middleware Adapter for Oracle Applications (also called Oracle EBusiness Suite Adapter)
Oracle E-Business Suite Adapter provides comprehensive, bidirectional, multimodal, synchronous and asynchronous connectivity to Oracle E-Business Suite from non-Oracle applications through Oracle Fusion Middleware SOA Suite. It exposes integration interfaces in Oracle Integration Repository as JCA services, which can be consumed from Oracle BPEL Process Manager and Oracle Service Bus.

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Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer

Figure 11: Oracle Applications Module Browser - Search and browse Oracle E-Business Suite interfaces while creating an adapter service in a BPEL process from Oracle JDeveloper

The key features of Oracle E-Business Suite Adapter include secured, trusted connection to Oracle EBusiness Suite, application context-ready transaction support, and connectivity to multiple versions of Oracle E-Business Suite. It service-enables the integration interfaces of Oracle E-Business Suite in earlier releases including Release 11i and Release 12.0.

Oracle Integration Repository

Oracle Integration Repository is a catalogue of all the public integration interfaces of Oracle EBusiness Suite. It exposes integration interfaces of the following types: PL/SQL API, Java API, concurrent program, Oracle XML Gateway message, Oracle E-Commerce Gateway message, Business Service Object, open interface table or view, and business event. Oracle Integration Repository displays detailed information about each interface, such as a description of the API, the methods in the API, and the IN and OUT parameters of each method along with their meaning. The information in the repository is automatically updated with each Oracle E-Business Suite

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release. Web service-enabled interfaces display the Web service information such as the WSDL, Web service status, and associated authentication types. Additionally, Oracle E-Business Suite users with Oracle Integration Repository administrator privileges can perform Web service life cycle activities such as generating and deploying the service from the Interface Detail page of Oracle Integration Repository.

Figure 12: Generating Web service artifacts for a PL/SQL API from Oracle Integration Repository

Oracle E-Business Suite customers can also upload Oracle E-Business Suite customizations and extensions to the repository to get a unified view of Oracle E-Business Suite and their customizations. The custom interfaces can be uploaded to Oracle Integration Repository in three simple steps:

Annotate the custom interface source file following the published Oracle Integration Repository annotation standards and guidelines. Validate the annotated source file using the Oracle Integration Repository Parser tool. Annotations are extracted as an ildt file. Upload the ildt file containing the parsed annotations using the FNDLOAD utility. The custom interface information is then accessible from Oracle Integration Repository. For more information on Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway, Oracle Integration Repository, and Oracle E-Business Suite Adapter, refer to the following documentation:

Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway Users Guide Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway Developers Guide

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Oracle Fusion Middleware Adapter for Oracle Applications Users Guide

When to Use What A Comparative Guide

The following section is a guide to selecting the appropriate technologies, Oracle E-Business Suite products, and related Oracle products for your integration requirements.

Native Interfaces Versus Web Services

Technology plays a key role in selecting the integration approach. Web services come from the current technology stack, and they have a clear advantage over APIs built on native technologies such as PL/SQL or Java. Still, there are scenarios where it is beneficial to use interfaces in native technologies. Integration using Web services is the ideal approach for integrations across corporate firewalls, such as integrating on-premise enterprise applications with on-cloud or hosted enterprise applications. The advantage of using Web services is that they transport XML-based SOAP messages using the standard Internet transport protocol, HTTP. That is, these messages are transmitted over port 80, an open port for Web server firewalls.

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Figure 13: Native interfaces versus Web services

In general, standard Web services are designed to work seamlessly in heterogeneous environments that reside on disparate operating systems and platforms. Even if your enterprise has homogeneous environments, if you are looking to integrate an Oracle E-Business Suite application with an enterprise application from any other vendor, then Web services that provide loose coupling is the recommended integration style. For intra-application integration between two Oracle E-Business Suite modules for example, Order Management and Supply Chain Management, if both Oracle E-Business Suite products expose the desired public APIs built on the same technology, such as PL/SQL or Java, then it is recommended to integrate using those APIs in native technologies instead of Web services. In this case, integration using native technologies with procedure calls within the same JVM will be much faster than Web service requests over HTTP.

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Service Oriented Integration Versus Event Driven Integration

Generally, industry practice recommends using service oriented integration to send service requests in the following circumstances:

You know what service to run and when to execute the service. You want to be notified when service completes its execution successfully. You want to receive the results of service invocation. Conversely, use event driven integration to announce an event in the following circumstances: You want to notify all consumers that might be interested. You do not care how each consumer will react to an event. You do not want to wait for reactions from consumers. One key point to consider is that service oriented integration provides loose coupling; a change in a service or a halted service can break or interrupt the Web service client processing. Event driven integration, on the other hand, provides nearly decoupled integration; a change in a consumer is nonintrusive and will not affect the announcer processing. In Oracle E-Business Suite, business events are raised to indicate the occurrence of a key business activity or a change in the state of a key business object. Internally, these business events are used to initiate business workflows or business-to-business transactions, integrating with other Oracle EBusiness Suite applications. The question of Web service based integration versus business event driven integration may arise in scenarios such as the following. An enterprise has a requirement to check the stock level in a warehouse whenever there is a change in the quantity ordered in a purchase order. Suppose that the Oracle E-Business Suite purchasing application publishes a PL/SQL API to get the order quantity for a purchase order, and that it also publishes a business event that is raised whenever the purchase order is updated. The PL/SQL API can be exposed as a Web service. In this case, there are two options: o o Poll the purchasing database continually through the Web service for any change in order quantity. Subscribe to the business event and listen to any changes in order quantity.

In such a scenario, subscribing to the business event is the recommended integration strategy. Conversely, consider a scenario where you want to select a supplier based on the quote price. Oracle E-Business Suite has published an API to get the quote price. Suppose that a business event is also raised whenever there is a change in the quote price. In this case, it is advisable to use the Web service to get the quote price from Oracle E-Business Suite instead of subscribing to the business event. Following are the key considerations for cases in which you should use Oracle E-Business Suite Web services rather than using business events through the subscription model:

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The consumer program needs to create, update, or delete a key business object in Oracle E-Business Suite. The consumer program is a business critical process that depends on the status of business object in Oracle E-Business Suite (provider side). On the other hand, the subscription model fits for the following cases: The consumer program uses the status of business object in Oracle E-Business Suite for reporting or notification purposes. The consumer program is not business critical, and failure of the consumer program does not affect or stop the business process within Oracle E-Business Suite.

Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway Versus Oracle E-Business Suite Adapter
The Oracle E-Business Suite Adapter from Oracle SOA Suite is the only solution that service-enables Oracle E-Business Suite in Release 11i and Release 12.0. However, from Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 on, customers have two options for SOA-based integration with Oracle E-Business Suite: Oracle E-Business Suite Adapter and Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway. This section will examine when to use Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway versus Oracle EBusiness Suite Adapter for SOA-based integrations with the most recent release of Oracle E-Business Suite, Release 12.1.3.

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Figure 14: Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway versus Oracle E-Business Suite Adapter

There are a few distinctive characteristics of these two service enabling products. Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway provides service enabling capability from Oracle E-Business Suite, while Oracle E-Business Suite Adapter is a solution from Oracle Fusion Middleware shipped as part of Oracle SOA Suite. Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway exposes Oracle E-Business Suite public APIs as standard Web services, whereas Oracle E-Business Suite Adapter provides JCA-based services. The standard based Oracle E-Business Suite Web services available through Oracle EBusiness Suite Integrated SOA Gateway can be invoked from any standard Web service client such as Apache Axis, WLS JAX-WS, BPEL, or .NET clients. Oracle E-Business Suite Adapter is available from the Oracle JDeveloper SOA plug-in for BPEL and Oracle Service Bus. The next decision factor depends on the underlying technology of the public interface. Java-based interfaces Business Service Objects and Java APIs for Forms (a subset of the Java interface type) are exposed as Web services through Oracle Integrated E-Business Suite SOA Gateway only. Open

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interface tables and EDI maps are two interface types that are not supported as Web services through Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway in Release 12.1.3. Consequently, if you know which API you want to use as Web service, check the underlying interface type. PL/SQL APIs, concurrent programs, and Oracle XML Gateway message maps can be exposed as Web services from Oracle EBusiness Suite Adapter as well as Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway. The next deciding factor is whether you have any requirements such as support for an asynchronous interaction pattern, transaction in distributed processing, and other Web service standards such as MTOM and Reliable Messaging. These requirements are supported for Oracle E-Business Suite Adapter by nature of the parent Oracle SOA Suite and OWSM framework. Finally, if you need a SOAP-based Web service, then you should use Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway instead of Oracle E-Business Suite Adapter, which provides JCA-based Web service binding.

Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway Service Invocation Framework Versus Other Web Service Clients
Next, consider the outbound scenario for service-based integration with Oracle E-Business Suite. Service Invocation Framework from Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway provides a built-in capability to invoke and consume external Web services. With SIF, integration developers need not deal with complex SOAP APIs to invoke and consume Web services. Here are some scenarios when you may want to invoke and consume external Web services from Oracle E-Business Suite:

Synchronous Request only interaction pattern: on occurrence of a key business event in Oracle EBusiness Suite, initiate an external business process such as a BPEL-based process exposed as a Web service. This is an example of Invoke-and-forget. Synchronous Request-Response interaction pattern: as part of your business logic, use a service provided by an external provider such as getting the current exchange rate for a currency. This is an example of Invoke-and-consume. If you have a requirement to consume an external service as part of an Oracle E-Business Suite extension, you should use SIF. You may need to consider an alternate Web service client if the Web service provider demands support for following:

Asynchronous Web service with callback Advanced security policies such as Username Token with Password Digest or SAML Token Web service requests with MTOM, Reliable Messaging, or Addressing Any binding other than SOAP

Oracle Workflow Versus Oracle BPEL Process Manager

Oracle Workflow is a complete workflow management system that supports system-centric and human-centric business process based integrations in Oracle E-Business Suite. Oracle BPEL Process

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Manager is a Web service orchestration, standards-based business process product from Oracle SOA Suite. Oracle BPEL Process Manager along with other components such as Human Workflow, Business Rules, and Mediator can be used to automate complex business processes. Common questions are: Does Oracle BPEL replace Oracle Workflow? For Oracle E-Business Suite extensions, can I build a custom Workflow process or do I need to construct a BPEL process? The answers depend on the scenario and the integration requirement.

Figure 15: Oracle Workflow versus Oracle SOA Suite (Mediator, BPEL, Human Workflow, Business Rules)

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In general, you can define simple to medium business processes using Oracle Workflow. Starting in Release 12.1.x, Service Invocation Framework from Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway provides a mechanism to invoke external Web services from Oracle E-Business Suite. As part of a workflow process in Oracle E-Business Suite, you can invoke an external Web service by raising a business event. However, if your business requirement is to invoke a Web service in real-time as part of business process, then you may need to consider a BPEL process. Because the reason is that SIF uses a Java-based rule function to invoke a Web service, whereas a workflow process is a database level process and so the event is executed in deferred mode. Hence, if you have business logic implemented in Java, then you can invoke web service synchronously from Java layer. Also, as of Release 12.1.3 SIF does not support the asynchronous with callback interaction pattern. Consequently, if the target Web service prescribes the asynchronous with callback interaction pattern, then you should use BPEL, which supports this pattern. If a key requirement is support for advanced notifications such as SMS, voice, or instant messaging, then you should consider using Human Workflow with BPEL. Additionally, if you foresee extensive use of XPath, XSLT, or XQuery-based data manipulation steps between process activities or steps, then you should consider Mediator with BPEL, since Oracle Workflow does not support these. Oracle Workflow does support error and exception handling. The Workflow Engine traps errors produced by function activities by setting a save point before each function activity. If an activity produces an unhandled exception, the Oracle Workflow Engine performs a rollback to the save point and sets the activity to the ERROR status. However, if you need to implement complex compensation and error handling logic in your business process, then BPEL supports these. Another aspect to consider is how you model business processes. Oracle Workflow processes can be defined using a standalone desktop tool called Oracle Workflow Builder. BPEL and BPM provide a more user-friendly graphical tool to build and review business process, available as a plug-in to Oracle JDeveloper.

Oracle Mediator Versus Oracle BPEL Process Manager Versus Oracle Service Bus
If your requirement calls for SOA components from Oracle Fusion Middleware, consider the following points to decide when to use Oracle Mediator versus Oracle Service Bus, and Oracle Service Bus versus BPEL.

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Figure 16: Oracle Mediator versus Oracle Service Bus

While Oracle Service Bus provides enterprise service virtualization, re-use, and management, the Mediator component provides certain localized mediation capabilities. The lifecycle of a Mediator component is tightly coupled with that of the SOA composite application that provides the application logic. Within the context of a single composite application, Mediator provides following capabilities:

Connectivity abstraction from a business process Inline data transformation and mapping Message filtering The key considerations for choosing Oracle Service Bus over Oracle Mediator are:

Traffic shaping - throttling, prioritization, and parallel processing End point management - service pooling, load balancing, system fault isolation, and recovery Enterprise level service mediation Oracle BPEL Process Manager from Oracle SOA Suite provides robust business process orchestration and management capabilities. Oracle Service Bus can be used for simple transactional service aggregation scenarios; however, being a stateless engine, it is best used for short-lived single transaction semantics.

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Figure 17: Oracle Service Bus versus Oracle BPEL Process Manager

The key considerations for choosing BPEL over Oracle Service Bus are:

Service needs to maintain state Service requires complex transaction management Multiple transactions required Compensation logic required on rollback Long-running business process

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Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer

Exception handling requires human workflow Service needs to handle asynchronous callbacks reliably

Oracle Integration Repository Versus Oracle Enterprise Repository

Like many enterprise applications, Oracle E-Business Suite exposes public Application Program Interfaces (APIs) to integrate and customize various Oracle E-Business Suite applications. All public integration interfaces of Oracle E-Business Suite are listed in Oracle Integration Repository as a catalogue. Oracle Integration Repository is a single point of access for Oracle E-Business Suite customers, partners, and system integrators to look for the public integration interfaces of Oracle EBusiness Suite applications. Oracle Enterprise Repository from the Oracle SOA Governance solution is a metadata repository that provides a solid foundation for delivering governance throughout the service-oriented architecture lifecycle by acting as the single source of truth for information surrounding SOA assets and their dependencies. A frequent question raised by Oracle E-Business Suite customers is where to host information related to Oracle E-Business Suite extensions or customizations in Oracle Integration Repository or Oracle Enterprise Repository?

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Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer

Figure 18: Oracle Integration Repository versus Oracle Enterprise Repository

From Release 12.1.1 on, Oracle Integration Repository is an integral part of Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway. Also, starting in Release 12.1.2, Oracle Integration Repository supports custom interfaces of certain interface types. Although Oracle Enterprise Repository is from Oracle SOA Governance Suite, you can store and manage any IT related assets. So if you are looking for advanced governance capabilities that co-exist with assets from other vendor based enterprise applications, then Oracle Enterprise Repository may be the answer. Especially when you are looking for dependency or impact analysis of Oracle E-Business Suite customizations with non-E-Business Suite assets, the ability to define and store custom asset metadata, and the ability to notify interested subscribers of any changes in asset metadata, then Oracle Enterprise Repository may be the candidate. Oracle Integration Repository does provide limited information about the relationships between assets, such as the concurrent program associated with an open interface table, the Service Data Objects used by Business Service Objects, and the business events raised by APIs. Note that Oracle E-Business Suite is not currently integrated with Oracle Enterprise Repository.

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Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer

Oracle XML Gateway Versus Oracle E-Commerce Gateway Versus Oracle B2B
Oracle E-Business Suite provides built-in support for various business-to-business transactions across various industries. Oracle XML Gateway and Oracle E-Commerce Gateway provide the infrastructure to support the business-to-business transactions, while the relevant Oracle E-Business Suite applications predefine and ship the transactions to provide a meaningful transaction process flow. These transactions support industry standards such as OAG, Rosettanet, UCCNet, cXML, EDIFACT, ASX12, and ODETTE. XML-based transactions are provided through Oracle XML Gateway, whereas ASCII flat file-based transactions are provided through Oracle E-Commerce Gateway. The EDI transactions through Oracle E-Commerce Gateway are batch-oriented, while Oracle XML Gateway messages are event-based and are transactional in nature. In fact, because Oracle XML Gateway provides a set of tools and services to define custom transactions, you can use Oracle XML Gateway for any DTD-based XML transactions. However, Oracle XML Gateway does not support XSD-based XML message creation or consumption. Consequently, Oracle E-Business Suite supports built-in OAG transactions only through version 7.2.1; the more recent versions of OAG based on XSD are not supported through Oracle XML Gateway. Oracle XML Gateway supports the following transport and communication protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, JMS, and SOAP over HTTP/HTTPS. Similarly, you can use Oracle E-Commerce Gateway for any ASCII flat file-based transactions. You may need to use third party EDI translators for mapping and conversion to industry standards such as EDIFACT, ASX12, and ODETTE. The transport and communication of EDI transactions through VAN depends on third party implementation. Oracle B2B is a binding component from the Oracle SOA Suite platform that enables the secure and reliable exchange of business documents between an enterprise and its trading partners. Oracle B2B supports business-to-business document standards, security, transports, messaging services, and trading partner management. Oracle B2B also supports Health Level 7, which enables health care systems to communicate with each other. Protocol Type Document Protocol Oracle XML Gateway Oracle ECommerce Gateway ASCII flat file based only, depends on third party EDI translators. Oracle B2B

Only DTD based versions of OAG (7.1, 7.2) and cXML transactions that are shipped by Oracle EBusiness Suite applications. RosettaNet PIP business documents are supported through Supply Chain Trading

All versions of EDIFACT, EDI X12, HL7. RosettaNet PIP business documents, OAG, cXML, Positional flat file (includes SAP iDoc). UCCnet, NCPDP Telecom, EDIEL.

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Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer

Connector. Packaging protocol MIME, SOAP Not applicable. ASCII flat files are generated and consumed. Not applicable. ASCII flat files are placed in file system. File transport may be handled by third party software. MIME 1.0, S/MIME 2.0, S/MIME 3.0, SOAP, XML digital signature (XMLDSig), XML encryption (XMLEncrypt) AQ, Email (SMTP 1.0, IMAP 1.0, POP3), File, FTP and SFTP (SSH FTP), HTTP (HTTP 1.0, HTTP 1.1) and HTTPS (HTTPS 1.0, HTTPS 1.1), JMS, TCP/IP

Transport Protocol

SMTP, HTTP, HTTPS, JMS

Message exchange protocol

AS1-1.0, AS2-1.1, MLLP-1.0, ebMS-1.0, ebMS-2.0 (ebXML Messaging Service), RosettaNet-01.10, RosettaNet-V02.00, Generic File-1.0, Generic AQ-1.0, Generic FTP-1.0, Generic SFTP-1.0, Generic JMS1.0, Generic HTTP-1.0, Generic Email-1.0, Generic TCP

Conclusion
Oracle E-Business Suite provides various options to integrate its functional capabilities with other Oracle applications as well as third party enterprise applications. To completely use the power of integration, it is imperative to understand different enterprise integration styles and the different products in the application technology layer of Oracle E-Business Suite that cater to each of these integration styles, as well as the other Oracle products that supplement these products from Oracle EBusiness Suite. It is important to understand when to use which product offering. This white paper outlines the recommended integration strategy for Oracle E-Business Suite applications with any other application.

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Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3: Integration Products and Technologies Primer October 2012 Author: Rekha Ayothi Contributing Authors: Clara Jaeckel, Rajesh Ghosh , Steven Chan, Veshaal Singh Oracle Corporation World Headquarters 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA 94065 U.S.A. Worldwide Inquiries: Phone: +1.650.506.7000 Fax: +1.650.506.7200 oracle.com

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