SOA Cloud Service in a Nutshell by Arturo Viveros, Robert van Molken, and Rolando Carrasco

Introduction

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has been present in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Stack for many years now. With varied and powerful options such as Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) Process Manager, Service Bus, Mediator, Business Rules, Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) and others all running on WebLogic Server (WLS) since version 11g, SOA Suite has established itself as the solution of choice for achieving all kinds of on-premises integrations, as well as a comprehensive toolset for enabling the adoption and implementation of Service Orientation design principles.

Furthermore, and looking beyond the tools, SOA itself has evolved into a modern and dynamic architectural style, aligned with business and industry trends and widely regarded as an enabler for technological innovation and digital disruption.

Long gone are the days when SOA adoption was perceived as an almost esoteric ultimate goal, as are the proclamations that left it for dead. After its first generation, SOA reinvented itself and took hold in the IT mainstream. In this regard, SOA Suite has maintained its relevance, despite Oracle’s transformation into a Cloud-first company; so much so that, within a single year, we witnessed first the emergence of a 12c version, an Integration Cloud Service (ICS) built on top of it, and now the delivery of a full-fledged SOA Suite Cloud Service.

In this article we discuss this new offering in detail, together with its implications, possible use cases and scenarios. Along the way, we’ll also attempt to clarify some potentially confusing elements and draw some first-hand conclusions on the present and future of the product.

SOA Cloud Service Overview

First, Oracle has categorized this new offering as an Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) alternative, and rightly so. Let’s look at Gartner’s definition for iPaaS:

“…a suite of cloud services enabling development, execution and governance of integration flows connecting any combination of on premises and cloud-based processes, services, applications and data within individual or across multiple organizations”

This is a very broad definition for a cloud-based solution, where Oracle has positioned a lightweight and simplified option in ICS; nevertheless, the need for integration within the cloud increases by the day, which definitely leaves room for much more.

So, this is where SOA Cloud Service comes in, as a ready-made platform for running not only the bona fide functionalities of SOA-Infra and Service Bus, but also API Manager; a recent and very valuable addition to the Fusion Middleware stack (we’ll come back to this later).

Let’s take a look at the components available in this first release: Read the complete article here.