SOA@Oracle SCA, BPEL, BPM & Service Bus: Getting started with Oracle SCA, SOA, BPEL, OSB, AIA

(updated: 2 july 2009)
As I do SOA projects for a few years, many users are just entering this service oriented architecture world. For me the technology is common sense and I expect often that Service Oriented Arcitecture (SOA), Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is well known. But off-course this is not the case. When I started working with SOA/BPEL/ESB it was, and still is, a steep learning curve. The Oracle developers world comes from a traditional approach; thinking in functions and entities and since Java came to us, we are even thinking about objects and inherited them.

With SOA it is different, you have to think about processes; functional and technical. The gap between the functional people and technical people is reduced. Processes are part of the business, otherwise they do not have any reason for existence. While processes are running, the can fail, wait on other process, they finish, started, run in parallel etc. So SOA is a mind shift from the traditional development approach point of view.

In July 2009 the major milestone was reached, release 11g is out. This release has technically a new foundation; the Oracle WebLogic server; running on Java 1.6; new enterprise manager console for all FMW components and last but not least the service component architecture (SCA)
In 2008 Oracle announced the Oracle Application Integration Architecture. This is an add-on on the Oracle SOA Suite, which defines an abstract message layer that can be used to interface various systems; Siebel / SAP / Protal BRM / Cordys via a centralized system (Oracle SOA + AIA). This messages layers are created specific for different industries, for example the telecommunication market.

To start with Oracle SOA here are some of useful links:

Oracle SOA Suite general