Blockchain Platform Service FAQ
What is Oracle Blockchain Platform?
Oracle Blockchain Platform is a platform that customers and partners can use to create permissioned blockchain networks for private or consortia models. Oracle Blockchain Platform provides the enabling distributed ledger technology and related capabilities for building blockchain applications and business networks.
What is included in an Oracle Blockchain Platform service instance?
Each service instance has all the components necessary to create a member organization with one or more validating (peer) nodes and an ordering service, plus a REST proxy and an operations console. Instances can also be created that don’t include their ordering service in order to join a network that already includes an instance with an ordering service. A blockchain network would include multiple instances, one of which has an ordering service (and is identified as a founder).
Is Oracle creating a business network on its blockchain?
No. Oracle is providing a blockchain cloud platform for customers and partners to build business networks.
Are there tokens/cryptocurrency involved in running transactions?
No. As an enterprise-focused permissioned blockchain platform, Oracle Blockchain Platform doesn't require any tokens or cryptocurrency.
In which regions is Oracle Blockchain Platform available and orderable?
Oracle Blockchain Platform is available in all Oracle Cloud Infrastructure regions, which include Ashburn, Virginia, and Phoenix, Arizona, in the US and London, England, and Frankfurt, Germany, in Europe. Others will be announced when available. Please refer to our comprehensive listing.
Where does this service fit within Oracle Cloud categories?
Oracle Blockchain Platform is a PaaS offering, within the Application Development PaaS category.
What is Hyperledger and how is it related to Blockchain?
Hyperledger is an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. It’s a global collaboration focused on business blockchain frameworks, hosted by The Linux Foundation, including leaders in finance, banking, the Internet of Things, supply chain, manufacturing, and technology.
How is Oracle Blockchain Platform different from Hyperledger Fabric?
Oracle Blockchain Platform is based on Hyperledger Fabric with several enhancements for greater resilience, performance, scalability, security, manageability, enterprise integration, etc. It’s deeply integrated with foundational services in Oracle Cloud and provides additional capabilities, e.g., REST proxy for synchronous transactions and an operations console with several configuration, administration, and monitoring capabilities. It maintains compatibility with Hyperledger Fabric at the protocol and API level.
Does Oracle plan to upgrade to new releases of Hyperledger Fabric?
Yes, we plan to follow Hyperledger Fabric releases and provide new general availability features soon after Hyperledger GA.
Does Oracle plan to use other Hyperledger projects besides Hyperledger Fabric?
We’re continuing to explore other distributed ledger and related blockchain technologies that can add value to our global enterprise customer base, and we’ll be evolving our solution to address customers' needs leveraging both open source and Oracle technology and IP.
What VMs and resources are provisioned when I request an Oracle Blockchain Platform instance?
A single Oracle Blockchain Platform instance includes high availability-configured VMs to run membership service, peer nodes, ordering service, REST proxies, and operations console. Chaincode execution containers are created dynamically when chaincodes are deployed. 2 TBs of local storage is included for the blocks, world state and history databases, and all configuration data.
Are there limits on the number of peer nodes or channels I can use?
In each Oracle Blockchain Platform instance you can have up to 14 peer nodes—either specified at provisioning time or added later through the console user interface. A single channel is created at provisioning time, and you can add more channels without any limit, either through the console user interface or by using the client SDK.
Can I define multiple member organizations in one instance of Oracle Blockchain Platform?
Each instance defines one primary organization. To create a consortium-style network, you can create additional instances and join them to a founder instance. You can also create multiple client organizations using SDK's Fabric-CA APIs.
Can I create instances in different data center regions and join them into a single blockchain network?
Yes, you can.
Can I join external Hyperledger Fabric instances into a blockchain network running Oracle Blockchain Platform instances?
Yes, you can if the external instances are running compatible versions of Fabric.
How is identity management provided in Oracle Blockchain Platform for a permissioned blockchain network?
The Oracle Blockchain Platform membership services provider based on Fabric-CA is integrated with Oracle Identity Cloud Service. When an instance is provisioned, the account is validated with Identity Cloud Service and, if it’s valid and has an appropriate role, an enrollment certificate is issued. This integration is built-in. Please see the “Administering Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service” ebook at docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/paas/blockchain-cloud/administer/index.html for more details.
Where can I download the client SDKs for Oracle Blockchain Platform?
Oracle Blockchain Platform supports standard Hyperledger Fabric SDKs, which you can download from Oracle Blockchain Platform Console under the Developer Tools tab or from github.com/hyperledger.
Where can I find out more about the REST API supported by Oracle Blockchain Platform?
REST API documentation is at docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/paas/blockchain-cloud/rest-api/index.html.