Oracle Fusion Middleware Overview

Lets briefly discuss about Oracle Fusion Middleware and one liner on its various components to give you a feel of Oracle Fusion Middleware.

What is Fusion Middleware ?
Oracle Fusion Middleware is a family of oracle product's which will help in application development and integration solution to Identity Management, Collaboration Suite & Business Intelligence reports.
Various products of Fusion Middleware Family are

Application Server
BPA Suite (Business Process Analysis)
Business Integration
Business Intelligence
Collaboration Suite (Content, RTC, Mail Server, Discussion, Calendar)
Data Hub
Data Integrator Developer Tools
EDA Suite (Event Driven Architecture Suite)
Identity Management
SDP Suite (Service Delivery Platform)
SOA Suite (Service Oriented Architecture)
Web center Suite

For most of us grasping/understanding all of them at once is difficult so I 'll be discussing one liner about all these components and later I'll cover them in detail based on each components importance & use in real world.

Application Server
-----------------------
This is core component in Oracle Fusion Middleware. Various component of Application Server are Webcache, j2ee, wireless & portal and uses Infrastructure Services like Single Sign-On and Oracle Internet Directory.

Business Process Analysis (BPA)
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This helps in modelling business process and converting them to IT executable. Various components of BPA suite helps business user to design, model, simulate and optimize business process. This helps in reducing gap between strategy and actual execution of that strategy. Various components of BPA are Architect, Repository, Simulator & Publisher.

Business Integration
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Connecting or Integrating processes, Applications or information with business partners using hot pluggable products which are based on Services Oriented Architecture.


Business Intelligence
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This product covers most of business Intelligence needs in today's world like ad hoc query analysis, reporting & publishing, dashboards and real time analysis.

Collaboration Suite
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This product provides tools to collaborate seamlessly from any application or device in an enterprise. Key component of Collaboration Suite are Real Time Collaboration, Content Services (iFS in past), Workspaces, eMails, Discussions, Calendar . More on this coming soon...

Data Hub
------------
It is central location for your entire enterprise data from all sources to get 360 degree view of enterprise data. You can update & clean you data in data hub and then use application to view this data.

Data Integrator
-------------------
As name suggest this product integrate vast amount of data across heterogeneous systems. This is based on ELT (Extract Load & Transform) architecture and provide Hot-Pluggable (Drop & Deploy) knowledge modules.

EDA Suite (Event Driven Architecture)
---------------------------------------------
Product to create, process, analyze and manage with as less possible custom coding . component of EDA suite are BAM (Business Activity Monitoring), Business Rules, Enterprise messaging, ESB (Enterprise Service Bus), Sensor Edge Server. You will know more about these components in comping topics on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Suite.

Identity Management
----------------------------
OID and Oracle SSO integrated with various other Identity management components like Web Access Control, Federated Identity & user provisioning.

SOA Suite
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Product for building , managing & developing SOA's . Various components of SOA suite are BPEL, Web Service Manager, BAM (Business Activity Manager)
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How Customers Can Prepare for Fusion Applications...

While at Collaborate 07 in Las Vegas last month, I happen to attend an incredible session led by my colleage, Nadia Bendjedou, about �What Customers Can Do Today to Prepare for Fusion Applications�. For those of you who didn�t get to attend this or haven�t had a chance to participate in one of her many Webcasts and or Podcasts, I thought I would highlight some of her best practices � Top 10 things to do to prepare for Fusion Applications.

1. Consider Upgrading to the Latest Release of your Applications.

For example, Oracle E-Business Suite - 11i10 or R12, PeopleSoft Enterprise - 8.8, 8.9 or 9.0, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne - 8.11 or 8.12, Siebel - 7.8, 8.0 applications

2. Rethink your Customization Strategy

a) Is what I put in place still valid and worth keeping?
b) If they are still required, should customers evaluate if there
are better ways of doing/developing these customizations?
c) Should I think about engineering for the future with products
that will survive the upgrade to Fusion? What are those
products?
d) What are the benefits of implementing Fusion technology?

3. Put together a Project Plan to migrate to Fusion

a) Are there areas where you will need to upgrade first?
b) Do I need to evaluate the drivers (business as well as IT)
to upgrade to Fusion Applications?
c) Is there a pilot project for upgrading to Fusion, based on
geography, departmental/functional silos or other reasons?

4. Take advantage of Oracle�s Fusion Architecture and Fusion Middleware

a) How can I evaluate the benefits of Oracle Fusion
Architecture?
b) Does it solve business problems such as security and
compliance, integrating new business flows at lower cost
and or is it just about cleaning and consolidating the
critical data?
c) You can actually use the Fusion Technology today. Go to
www.oracle.com/fusion for more details.

5. Consider Master Data Management

a) Master Data Management (MDM), is a data hub tool that
enables you to synchronize critical data such as
customers, suppliers and products - in a single, accurate,
consistent view of the company�s data, whether from
packaged, legacy or custom applications.
b) You should consider consolidating and cleaning your
critical data about customers, suppliers and products
before going to Fusion.

6. Move to SOA-based Integration

a) Find out from Oracle what they are doing to make their
suite (EBS, PSFT, SEBL and JDE) of applications
SOA-enabled? Are they providing new capabilities in each
product to help them play in a SOA world?
b) Check out Oracle Fusion Middleware � it is a complete
product line - much more than just the application server. It
includes a process orchestration modeling tool BPEL PM,
business activity monitoring (BAM), as well as an
enterprise services bus (ESB). All these tools are known
as the SOA suite and can be used by ALL Oracle
customers today (EBS, PSFT, SEBL, JDE as well as other
point solutions such as Oracle Retail, G-Log etc... ).
c) Consider leveraging Oracle�s Application Integration
Architecture (AIA), which develops a number of Process
Industry Packs to integrate various applications products,
namely SEBL, EBS, G-Log, PSFT etc�. these can be
tailored by customers to fit their applications infrastructure.

7. Extend your Business Intelligence Portfolio

a) Adopt Oracle�s enterprise reporting, publishing & business
intelligence tool (comes with each of our Applications). All
applications have been certified with Fusion BI known as
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition or OBI EE,
which includes XML Publisher (also known as BI Publisher)
b) Start converting your reports to XMLP.Your users will love it! c) Leverage OBI EE as well as XMLP to improve and enhance
your enterprise reporting & analytics today. You will be a
head of the game - these are part of the Fusion Technology.

8. Secure your Global Enterprise by Consolidating

a) Review your custom and legacy applications. You may be
at risk not only to data fragmentations but also to security
fragmentation which could increase your security
vulnerability and security risks.
b) Start consolidating security functions by centralizing
access control (by implementing LDAP and SSO), ensuring
data privacy and enabling compliance for the entire
enterprise.
c) Externalize security functions from the applications (where
it was built by the traditional applications) to a centralized
and professionally managed security infrastructure).
d) Get ahead of the curve by using Oracle�s Fusion Security
(known as the Oracle Identity Management), knowing it is
the security infrastructure for Fusion Applications.

9. Consider Grid Computing

a) Think �Grid� at all levels before going to Fusion. Especially
in a SOA-world where services are independent, well-
defined encapsulations of software functionality that can be
invoked over a network using heterogeneous platforms and
execution environments.
i. Grid computing is about resource allocation,
information sharing & high availability at lower cost.
ii. Resource allocation ensures that all who need or
request resources are getting what they need, that
resources are not standing idle while requests are
going unserviced.
iii. Information sharing makes sure that the users and
applications need is always available.
iv. High availability features guarantee all the data and
computation is always there, just like a utility
company always provides electric power.

10. Centralize your Lifecycle Management

a) Minimize hardware, software and system management
costs by moving to Oracle�s Grid Control, also known as
the Oracle Enterprise Manager - that is the centralized
management tools that help you manage your applications,
database, middleware, operating system, storage and the
network � all from one console.
i. Oracle Enterprise Manager works with most of
Oracle�s applications, using the Applications
Management Packs. These packs reduce efforts to
manage multiple environments, allow faster discovery
and diagnosis of incidents and provide rapid
provisioning and scaling.
b) What is great about the console is that it is the very same
console that will also manage the Fusion Applications.
c) Start with Grid Control today. You will be able to plug in
your first Fusion pilot along side your EBS, PSFT or SEBL
applications as if it were just another application in your
enterprise.
d) Grid Control will be the hub of Oracle Applications Lifecycle
Management.

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Is Oracle Fusion really Con-Fusion

If you ask yourself,what is Oracle Fusion then everybody will be having there own opinion. :)
I would like to hear from you all in your words ( via comments on this post ) about what you think is Oracle Fusion.
Most common confusion over fusion among most of guys i discuss/met is thinking Oracle fusion middleware and Oracle fusion applications are same...EVEN Earlier i thought the same thing, i mean i was confused of both terms.
In actual Oracle Fusion Middleware will be used in providing/building Oracle Fusion Applications using Existing Oracle Applications (Oracle E-Business Suite, Siebel, PeopleSoft, JD Eward).


Oracle Fusion Midleware is collection of Oracle Midleware products i.e.
--Oracle Application Server (Portal, Wireless, Forms, Reports, discoverer, Webcache, OC4J)
-- Oracle Identity management (OID, SSO,Web Access Manager, CA, Identity Federation)
--Oracle SOA Suite (Service Oriented Suite)
--Oracle Collaboration Suite (RTC, Mail Server, Discussion, Content, Calendar)
--Oracle DW & BI (BI Beans, OWB, OLAP, Express Server, OSA, OFA, DATAMART)
--Oracle development Tools (Designer, developer, SCM,forms, reports)
-- Oracle Data hubs

and
Oracle Fusion Applications will be collection of Oracle Applications i.e.
--Oracle E-Business Suite / CRM
--Oracle Peoplesoft enterprise
--Oracle Siebel CRM.
--Oracle JD Edward Enterprise

These fusion applications will use Fusion Middleware mentioned above....



So in conclusion!

Oracle Fusion is the sum of already existing app development tools, re-badged and re-bunched so they look like a new product.

Oracle Fusion Applications will be the current spread, re-developed using Fusion tools.

The keyword of course is "will".

Or: nothing has changed. Therefore: no conFusion.
Pun intended.


It remains to be seen how well the j2ee-inspired development tools will cope with 8000 tables and 20000 indexes.

I'd love to see how long it would take the j2ee bean container to start up.

but roll-on the powerpoint!
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Oracle Fusion Development Tools

The roadmap for Oracle Fusion strategy is becoming clearer, thanks to most recent article by Steven Chan. So the question is, what will be the development skills required by Oracle Fusion Developer?

In order to answer this, lets have a look at current skillsets required for Oracle Apps, and then map those to Oracle Fusion.

Oracle Apps : SQL
Oracle Fusion : Future is bright for SQL.


Oracle Apps : PL/SQL
Oracle Fusion : Oracle's current stance is that pl/sql will be integrated part of their Fusion Product.


Oracle Apps : XML Gateway
In Oracle Apps, you can post XML Documents to XML gateway using protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, JMS & SMTP. For example Payables Invoices can be posted to XML Gateway by your trading partners. XML Gateway can also be used for outbound XML messages, by extracting data from Views/Tables.
Oracle Fusion : BPEL
BPEL supports all the above protocols. Hence I see no reason why BPEL will nor replace XML Gateway Product.


Oracle Apps : Oracle Forms
In Oracle Apps most of the Core data entry screens and many of the inquiry screens were built using D2k Forms. Oracle Forms can't run in the browser directly, hence this limitation was overcome by developing Applet called JInitiator.
Oracle Fusion : ADF with Faces[JSF] appears to be winning the race. Have a look at http://www.jsfcentral.com

Oracle Apps : Oracle Reports
Thousands of reports have been written using Oracle Reports uptill Release 12.
Not a single one of these will be carried forward to Oracle Fusion.
Oracle Fusion : XMLP
Yes, no surprises here. It is indeed XML Publisher.
Oracle Report is proprietry tool that works just with Oracle Database. Also, Oracle would like their reporting tools to converge into a single reporting tool for Peoplesoft, JD Edwards & Oracle Apps.
XML Publisher will hopefully become as powerfull as Oracle Reports by the time Oracle Fusion is released.


Oracle Apps : OA Framework
Oracle Fusion : The answer is same as that for Oracle Forms above. However one must continue to learn OA Framework, as its concepts like Personalizations, Extensions will be carried forward to ADF. Both are MVC based topologies.


Oracle Apps : Oracle Discoverer
Oracle Fusion : I think this will remain, as Discoverer is a part of Oracle Fusion Middleware. At the end of the day, XMLP is not a business intelligence tool.


Oracle Apps : Oracle Web ADI
Oracle Fusion : XMLP. I wonder why Web ADI will be needed, as letter can be printed off using XML Publisher itself.


Oracle Apps : Oracle Workflows
Oracle Fusion : This will certainly be replaced by BPEL too.



Clearly the future is :-
Web Services with BPEL
Java/J2EE
XML/CSS/XSL/JavaScript/ADF
SQL & PL/SQL




1. When Fusion?
-->Sometime in 2008, but I don't think Fusion will be fully ready by 2008. By 2008 you will have some part of its functionality ready.


2. J2EE & Java in Fusion?
ADF is a MVC design pattern. In response to the usage of Oracle Forms, I did accept that future of ADF in Fusion is uncertain, as they might build a new framework based on peopletools UI(DHTML based).
Java will also be used to develop new webservices, although PL/SQL now has similar capabilities too.

3. IDE?
It has to be jDeveloper if they go for ADF Faces.
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Oracle Fusion Middleware


Oracle Fusion Middleware is a portfolio of standards-based software products, produced by Oracle, that spans multiple services, including J2EE and developer tools, integration services, business intelligence, collaboration, and content management. Many of the products included under the Oracle Fusion Middleware banner are not themselves middleware products, Fusion Middleware essentially being a rebranding of many of Oracle's products outside of their core database and applications software offerings. According to Oracle, 30,000 organizations are current Fusion Middleware customers.

Oracle Fusion Middleware is designed to support development, deployment, and management of Service-Oriented Architecture. It includes what Oracle calls "Hot-Pluggable" architecture, which allows users to leverage existing investments in applications and systems from other software vendors such as IBM, Microsoft, and SAP AG.



Oracle Fusion Middleware Components

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