| February 2021 Edition Oracle Integration & Process Partner Community Newsletter |
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| Grow the Oracle Cloud business and connect, extend & innovate Oracle SaaS solutions. |
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| Dear Partner Community, |
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The quarterly Oracle Integration upgrade is released in February. New functionality include API lead integration. SaaS consultants use pre-build adapters to connect while Developers integrate custom build applications via APIs. Now it’s easier to combine OIC with API gateway. The OIC release also includes productivity enhancements and connectivity enhancements. Antony published the release details here, and join the webcast with him on February 23rd 2021.
In the process & innovation section Mani published an article about unified task lists for Oracle applications and Niall about process archiving. Want to know what’s coming for Enterprise Blockchain? Read the 2021 vision from Mark. |
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| For a short summary of our monthly key information watch the PaaS Partner Updates on YouTube. The February edition highlights the OIC February Update and the Oracle Video Hub. |
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| On-demand Integration Platform Partner Advisory Council 2020 |
| Attend the free on-demand workshops |
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| Extreme Scalability and Enhanced Resilience for OIC Webcast |
| February 23, 16:30 - 17:30 CET (Berlin time) |
| Learn how Oracle Integration can scale to support the most demanding applications and discover what the future holds for performance and scalability in OIC. We will discuss a customer who reached 1m messages an hour and talk about how future enhancements will allow even higher throughput. |
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We will also discuss how to meet business continuance requirements by using a customer managed DR solution and talk about existing high availability in OIC.
Speaker: Antony Reynolds
Schedule: Tuesday February 23rd, 16:30 – 17:30 CET (Berlin time) |
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| Free on-demand PaaS Partner Community Webcasts |
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Thanks for attending our monthly community webcasts. Every month a speaker from the Oracle product management teams presents the latest updates on the Oracle Cloud Platform. In case you missed one of them, take the opportunity to watch our community webcasts on-demand:
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| PaaS Partner YouTube Update |
| January 2021 |
The January video includes three topics:
• Top blog posts 2021
• Social media
• SOA Modernization
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| Integrate SaaS hands-on Bootcamps Webtraining |
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Do you want to find out why Gartner named Oracle as a Leader in Magic Quadrant for three years in a row? Are you able to innovate quickly in the new digital world? Are you looking for ways to integrate systems and data faster using a modern cloud integration platform? Attend the Oracle Integration Bootcamp, a three days hands-on training for Oracle partners!
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| Oracle Implementation Certifications |
| Enablement and certification is key to cloud succe |
At the Oracle Competence Center and Online Learning Library partners can attend free on-line classes and certifications. Free vouchers for the implementation exam (USD 245) are part of your OPN benefits. To request them please contact your Oracle partner manager.
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| Permanent service for Partners free of charge! Want to try, test and get trained on Oracle Integration? Use our OIC playground - a shared permanent environment. |
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It’s a shared instance for Oracle Integration Partners community members only, so:
- use your business email address as your user id (not yahoo or gmail)
- don’t delete anything you didn’t create
- do not store any customer data
- do not give anybody external direct access to this instance
- when you create any Integration artifacts e.g. connections, integration flows etc. put your initials in the name and your email address in the description. Once registered go here to access the instance. If asked for Cloud Tenant, then enter “bots4saas”.
Remember to use the documentation, tutorials and learning material at https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/paas/integration-cloud/index.html. Any issues, questions or feedback please use the Slack workspace |
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February 2021 Oracle Integration Update by Antony Reynolds
It is time for the February quarterly update to Oracle Integration. Lilly, the Oracle integration mascot, has lots of exciting new features and improvements to share with you. Note that testing is still underway for these features and, although unlikely, it is possible that some will not meet our quality standard and be deferred to a later release.
Announcements & Update Windows
Currently tenant administrators get notified of OIC Gen 2 updates via notifications in the OCI console. OIC Gen 2 administrators can also see the same upgrade notice in the OIC console, so watch out for the date of your upgrade.
Remember, you can also mark your Gen 2 instance for update in either the first or second upgrade window, as explained in Choose Your Update Window. If you previously tagged your instance, then there is no need to tag it again. If it is not yet tagged for window 1, then the deadline for tagging for February is 14 January. Tags added after this date will take effect for the May release.
Explore and Design Patterns and Best Practices
We continue to add new videos to our Training page in the Oracle Help Center. The latest video for your enjoyment is Use the Switch Action in Oracle Integration.
Integrate and Modernize Applications to Rapidly Advance your Business on-demand webinar
Remote working, new business processes, new consumer behaviors require extending your applications with Intelligent Automation, Machine Learning, Conversational AI, Robotic Process Automation, Blockchain, IoT and Modern Application Development. Watch this webinar as Oracle experts will explore the potential of application integration combined with emerging technologies to adapt your business with data in the cloud. In this webinar, you will:
Learn about the solutions that will help you adapt your business to the new normal
• Look at the changing world of how customers/employees/partners engage with applications
• Understand how Intelligent Automation, Machine Learning, Conversational AI (Digital Assistants) are changing the landscape for your customers
OIC and Oracle Hospitality (OHIP) by Niall Commiskey
Back in the pre-Covid days, Micros/Oracle Hospitality was probably the Oracle App with which I had the most interactions, albeit vicariously through hotel staff checking me in and out.
So I was delighted when Luis Weir introduced me to the latest release of the Oracle Hospitality Integration Platform - OHIP. At Oracle, we love our acronyms. So let's have a look at OIC leveraging OHIP.
Introduction to OHIP
So what is OHIP? I'll let Luis answer that - OHIP is our next-generation integration solution, which centralizes, consolidates, and streamlines all our interface capabilities and related processes into a single and unified platform. It will allow users an unprecedented self-service experience, from discovering our rich set of Hospitality REST APIs to adopting them in customer or partner applications to publishing their usage in our cloud marketplace. The benefits for all are quite clear: We are making it simpler, quicker, and less expensive to integrate with Oracle Hospitality Cloud applications. Check out the page here Net, net - just think of 3000+ Oracle Hospitality api capabilities, made available to you via an API Gateway developer portal. Both images above courtesy of Luis Weir.
API Gateway Integration: Quick and Easy by Varinder Kaur
This blog is for a new feature coming out in Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) February 2021 release.
If you struggle with API Gateway Integration, then read this blog as it covers the steps needed to seamlessly integrate with API Gateway.
The API Gateway service enables you to publish APIs with private endpoints that are accessible from within your network, and which you can expose with public IP addresses if you want them to accept internet traffic. Now you can create an Oracle OCI API Gateway Deployment from a OIC Rest based Integration. The API deployment will be created with routing rules pointing to the activated integration.
Assumption: OIC user has already created API Gateway or access to API Gateway.
Creating a Deployment from OIC :
• Configure in API Management settings with OCI Signature V1 Policy : Configure the properties - tenancy OCID, user OCID, fingerprint, private key and passphrase(if present). These properties can be found under your profile menu, tenancy and user settings. Click on Save button after configuring the values, it will validate the credentials and save API gateway settings.
Protecting your OIC apis with OCI API Gateway by Niall Commiskey
Introduction
OCI Services add a lot of value add to OIC. I have discussed OCI Functions Service and the OCI Streaming Service in previous posts. Today - my first working day of 2021 - it's the turn of OCI API Gateway.
I'm sure you are all conversant with what API Gateway gives you. If not, check out the overview here
The Gateway setup was very simple and quick - I just followed the instructions here
This blog post covers the following -
1. Virtualizing a publicly available REST api using API Gateway
2. Virtualizing an OIC API
B2B Trading Partner Management by Niall Commiskey
Here we are talking about the concept of a host and her remote trading partners. This brings organization to B2B document exchange, essentially defining who can exchange what documents with me and whether the trading partner's role is that of sender or receiver. This is all covered by a B2B agreement.
B2B documents contain specific fields for sender and receiver ids. The first line of the EDI X12 850 PO doc includes this information - ISA stands for Interchange Control Header. OIC B2B now supports enforcement of Trading Partners/Agreements; let's look at how this is implemented. Let's begin with ourselves, identified as the Host - Here I click on Host Profile and enter an identifier - this will be used in B2B document exchanges; such documents will contain fields that identify the sender and receiver of the B2B document.
Automatic reactivation of Integration after a connection update by Shubham Agrawal
This blog is for a new feature coming out in Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) February 2021 release. This blog covers the issue of applying the changed connection properties to the active integrations.
A connection can be used by multiple integration. If connection is updated then Active integrations don't reflect until they are re-activated. After updating the connection, user currently has to manually go to each integration and re-activate to reflect the updated connection. As an Oracle Integration Cloud user after connection update, user should be able to reactivate all the active integration which are using the same connection.
What does it cover
Users can reactivate the associated integrations for the connection they are trying to update. User only need to reactivate the integrations if they change connection properties, it does not apply if only primary info is changed, as that would not impact the running integrations.
Invoke BI Report in OIC by Kabir Yadav
In this article we will see the steps to invoke a BI Report in an Integration and then the steps to read its base64 encoded output. We will do the development by breaking it into 2 parts :
PART 1 : Steps to invoke a BI Report
PART 2 : Steps to read the base64 encoded report output.
Lets start the development : ~ PART 1 : Steps to invoke a BI Report : Lets develop one schedule integration where we will configure a soap adapter connection to call the BI Report using runReport Operation and then do the mappings. First we will create the connection and then create the integration. Create Connection :
Here we will configure " ExternalReprtWSSService WSDL URL " which can be used to run a report. The same connection we will use in below steps while developing integration. Navigate to connection window and select SOAP adapter, give any meaningful name for connection. Read the complete article here.
Read BI Report base64 encoded response by Kabir Yadav
In the previous post we have seen the PART 1 of BI Report Invocation. If you don't have seen that requesting you to first check that out by clicking here.
In this article we will develop the left part (PART 2) i.e. convert the base64 encoded run report operation response and then read it in proper XML format using stage activity.
PART 2 : Steps to read the base64 encoded report output.
o Add Assign activity to decode the run report base64 encoded output
o Enter a meaning full name and then click Create
Embedding Oracle Integration Insight dashboards : Quickly and Easily by Sandhya Lakshmi Gopalan
Integration Insight in Oracle Integration empowers business users by providing a real-time view into their business processes. In addition to viewing Insight dashboards within the Oracle Integration console, Insight offers the capability to embed business dashboards in other applications.
For example:
• If your business involves order management and you already have your business users using Oracle Cloud ERP to manage your orders, you can embed Insight dashboards for the order process in Cloud ERP. This provides business users with a single consolidated view within Cloud ERP, without needing to sign into Oracle Integration to view the Insight dashboards.
• If you have a financial business process, with a front-end application that is used by business users, Insight dashboards can be embedded in the front-end application to show real-time business process metrics that can assist in making business decisions.
Integration Insight provides two ways to embed dashboards in other applications:
• A URL builder for embedding dashboards in an iFrame.
• Oracle JET Composite Component Architecture (CCA) components for embedding dashboards as HTML elements.
Replace Trigger in Orchestration by Vijay Kendai
This blog is for a new feature coming out in Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) February 2021 release.
Currently in Orchestration, after a trigger has been added, the user does not have the ability to replace it with another trigger. The user essentially has to re-create the integration to achieve this. With this feature, users will be provided with the ability to replace a trigger with minimal impact and without having the need to re-construct various actions in the canvas. After conversion, users will be provided with appropriate warnings and errors to take any corrective action needed, to bring the integration to a configured state.
What is covered ?
In the first phase, only scheduled orchestrations will be addressed.
• Schedule trigger will be allowed for replacement only with a REST trigger.
What is not covered ?
• Replacing schedule in Scheduled orchestrations with REST trigger having multiple verbs
• Replacing trigger in App driven orchestrations
Unlock new patterns of integration by controlling the HTTP Response status in OIC REST based integrations by Anuj Kaushal
Integration flows with a REST based trigger can be called using any HTTP client. In this blog post we illustrate how an integration developer can control the HTTP response code from within the integration flow and how doing so can unlock interesting patterns of integration.
By default, REST based integration flows return the following HTTP response status:
- HTTP 200 (OK) in case of success
- HTTP 202 (Accepted) in case of Asynchronous flows.
Simple Fusion ERP - OIC Demo by Niall Commiskey
Here is a very simple demo to show the value add of OIC in respect of creating suppliers in Fusion ERP. Should take you about an hour to create this. It covers the OIC components - Integration, Process and Insight. It also includes embedding the Insight Dashboard in Fusion ERP.
Creating a Supplier in Fusion ERP
The above details the minimum number of fields required to create a supplier. JSON format -
{ "supplierName" : "NiallCSupplier",
Identity Propagation - VBCS > IC > Fusion Apps by Greg Mally
This blog was a collaborative effort between Greg Mally and Mike Muller of the A-Team. There is an effort under way to provide example assets for this blog and when those assets are available, this blog will be updated with details on how to get to them.
One of the big challenges that Oracle Integration Cloud developers face is any outbound REST calls from Integration Cloud (IC) to Fusion Applications (FA) APIs require a user’s identity. On the surface this seems pretty trivial because the IC REST connections allow for configuring the connection with basic authentication or OAuth 2 JSON Web Token (JWT). However, this configuration is tied to a single user and many use cases/flows require the identity of the person making the FA REST call due to access restrictions, security, auditing, etc. This blog will present a pattern that has been implemented to accomplish identity propagation from a client application, through IC, and to FA.
Problem Statement
How can an Oracle Integration Cloud developer ensure that the invoking user’s identity gets passed along to a Fusion Application call?
JSON Obfuscation by Niall Commiskey
This is my first guest post and it couldn't come from a more competent source - so take it away Chris Peytier -
With Oracle Integration Cloud, the need to handle incoming JSON requests is rather common,
However, OIC will attempt to process these request, and will hence not maintain the original JSON format. What if we want to handle the request "as is", preserving its original structure? For example if we want to pass it down to, say, an ADW database instance, so that it can be processed there as JSON document? How can we avoid OIC to interpret and "de-structure" the JSON formatting? We can do this by using an "obfuscated" mode, In order to preserve the JSON structure of an incoming request. For this, we will write & read the file with 2 stage file actions in sequence.
Here are the steps that need to be performed:
a) Write your incoming JSON request into a file, via a Stage File action: You can choose the name of the directory, etc. as you wish.
b) Create a file on your laptop , of type .xsd, for example opaqueSchema.xsd, and enter the following lines in that file: Read the complete article here.
FTP Polling using FTP JCA adapter in OSB 12c by Pranav Davar
We can poll files at regular intervals from a remote ftp/sftp server location using Oracle JCA adapter for FTP, with help of GET operation. We can integrate oracle JCA FTP adapter with BPEL, mediator, or OSB 12c. In this article, we will be creating one OSB project that will demonstrate polling of files from remote FTP location using FTP adapter and writing the files to our local server location
Note: Using JDeveloper 12c (12.2.1.4).
Pre-requisites:
• Connection factory configured in Weblogic server.
• User, configured in connection factory has the access to read and write files to target/from ftp location
Steps:
Let's start by creating a new project with the name "FTP_Polling".
Get away with that paper using SOA Suite and E-Post/Docuguide by Johannes Michler
A customer recently told me they would like to get away from having to print, envelope and post mark thousands of invoices manually every month. Even though we have changed their invoicing process to an electronic one for most of their customers years ago by sending out emails through Oracle SOA Suite, they still had a considerable amount of customers insisting on printed invoices delivered by post.
Let’s have a look at how we managed to get away with that paper.
Starting Point
The customer was producing his invoices using the Oracle ERP System Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) running on OCI. For electronic invoices, EBS has for a long time passed on the invoice and eventually some more additional attachments further detailing the invoices to Oracle SOA Suite 12.2.1.4. Then an integration layer running on SOA Suite delivered the invoices to the customer by sending (in most cases) an email with one or multiple (PDF) attachments.
Cut the Clutter: SOA Upgrade from 12.2.1.x to 12.2.1.4 by Arpit Narula
Introduction: Oracle SOA Suite 12.2.1.4 was released on Sep 27, 2019, and is the latest SOA release in the market. The complete upgrade process is listed in Oracle SOA Upgrade Documentation, however, it is too exhaustive and a bit hard to follow.
Hence, to simplify the upgrade exercise, I have divided it into several activities that are explained in detail below. And have also listed several issues that you might encounter during the upgrade and their corresponding action plans.
Here is the list of activities we need to complete for the upgrade task.
1. Obtain the 12.2.1.4 Installer
2. Capture the Current Versions |
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| Business Process Management & Innovation Section |
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The Micro Process Feature Making Life Easier by Jan Kettenis
In this article I discuss the Micro Process feature in the Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC). With some price I can take credit for being the name giver of this feature, which makes applying the Microprocess Architecture in OIC a bit simpler. But even when you are not applying that architecture, it still is a feature worth being aware of.
A few releases ago the Micro Process feature has been introduced in the Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC). Simply put, it provides a convenience for calling a Structured Process from a different process application.
"What a great feature that sounds, why did you not write about it before?", I can hear you thinking. Well, there were a few issues with it which mostly have been fixed since OIC release (20.2.3.0.0 (200705.0200.36413)). That's why.
"What is this "Microprocess Architecture?", I hear some others thinking. In short, the Microprocess Architecture is about constructing a process application by having (typically but not necessarily) 1 main process that orchestrates / choreographs activities of which each of them is implemented as separate, decoupled process applications. It is not the same but inspired by many of the solid principles behind the Microservices Architecture, hence the name.
When applied to the Oracle Integration Cloud, every activity in the main process is implemented by an (asynchronous) Structured Process called a "Delegator" that does nothing but start some other Structured Process using a Send activity and then wait for the outcome in a Receive activity. There are a few deviations, but basically that's it and what the "Use Micro Process" feature supports.
Consolidate tasks from Oracle applications cloud and other applications into a single list of tasks by Mani Krishnan
In today’s enterprise, users must expect to multitask in order to achieve higher productivity. Thus, tasks and lists of tasks become necessary features of most enterprise applications-such as ERP, HCM or CRM--for improving user productivity. Tasks can range from simple to-dos that remind the assignee about activities outside the application to approvals for HR, finance or sales transactions.
Enterprise users commonly must deal with multiple task lists from applications from various vendors and from homegrown applications. For a single user to access multiple web sites to look up tasks on a daily basis defeats the purpose that tasks lists are meant to serve.
For example, Oracle provides a common list of tasks for integrated cloud applications, such as HCM, ERP, Supply chain and Sales. Additionally, customers might want to extend the approval capabilities with PaaS, by using business process management (BPM) products such as Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC)-process. In such scenarios, the users would be required to check two lists of tasks.
A list of tasks that consolidates tasks from multiple applications can significantly improve productivity of enterprise users by eliminating the need to check multiple lists for any pending activity and take action.
Process Archiving by Niall Commiskey
One may need to archive process instances for compliance purposes and what better place to store those completed instances than OCI Object Storage.
Here is the OCI bucket -
The password entered in Configuring Services above is NOT your oracle cloud password.
Rather - I approve 9 human tasks, completing 9 simple process instances - just that I've something to archive. Simple so far - now to defining the archiving schedule - Only 6 minutes to go, so let's wait for the magic to happen... Back in object storage land...
What’s Coming for Enterprise Blockchain in 2021 by Mark Rakhmilevich
As pandemic swept the world this year, many companies saw a significant drop in their business, and anticipating a prolonged economic contraction focused on cost savings and optimizations. Unsurprisingly, enterprise IT spending overall and emerging technology spending in particular has re-focused on generating near-term savings, risk reduction, and business optimizations. The organizations are looking at blockchain initiatives that can deliver these, for example, B2B reconciliations using a distributed ledger and smart contracts, which can reduce the time and costs of manual exception handling, speed up time to settle, and automate variety of B2B transactions based on single source of truth provided by transparent access to a distributed ledger and pre-agreed smart contracts. |
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| Additional New Material for PaaS Community |
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| Training Calendar |
For the latest trainings please visit our Training Wiki.
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| Join the Oracle Developer Meetup groups |
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Want to learn more about developing Enterprise-grade Cloud Native applications on the Oracle Cloud Platform, covering topics like Microservices Architecture, developing in Node, Python and PHP, using Low Code development tools to build Mobile apps, and much more?
Join the Oracle Developer Meetup groups if you want to follow Oracle’s solutions in this area, or participate in the events and hands-on labs we organize:
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| My private Corner – workspace |
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| Yes I crashed the workspace once! Oracle migrated the Beehive collaboration suite to a cloud based solution. With this change the community workspace will become obsolete. Please download any data like SOA Suite or BPM Suite or OIC hands-on training material asap! We are working on plans to launch a new website build in Oracle Content and Experience Cloud. What should be included? Let us know via twitter at #PaaSCommunity! |
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| Invite your colleagues to join the Integration & Process Partner Community |
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| For regular information on integration and process solutions please join our Cloud Platform Partner Community. As a community member, you get access to free hands-on training, documentation, sales & Marketing kits including customer presentations and our monthly newsletter & webcast. |
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