On January 27th Larry Ellison and other Oracle executives outlined the Oracle Sun strategy in a live event. The webcast and sheets are available online. There is also a FAQ overview available.
Besides that there is the Oracle + Sun Product Strategy Webcast Series. If you are into Java or Middleware developement, I think the message boils down to these few sheets:
Development Tools
Development Tools Strategy
Application Server
Glassfish and WebLogic will coexist and share logic/components.
AS strategy
SOA products
Oh, and WebCenter will be the strategic portal offering.
SOA product strategy
Previous post on the subject:
Categories: JDeveloper, Oracle, Release, SOA Suite, WLS
Tags: AS, Fusion Middleware, JDeveloper, Oracle, Release, SOA Suite, Sun, WebLogic, WLS
First a short note on both BPMN and BPEL. BPMN is a modeling notation for business processes. OMG on it’s BPMN pages puts it:
The primary goal of BPMN is to provide a notation that is readily understandable by all business users, from the business analysts that create the initial drafts of the processes, to the technical developers responsible for implementing the technology that will perform those processes, and finally, to the business people who will manage and monitor those processes.
BPEL is an execution language. There is for example no standard graphical notation in the BPEL standard. The main focus is not on readability, it is on execution.
So BPMN and BPEL aim for different goals. It should come as no surprise that there is gap. There are several resources that describe the mapping, provide translation, or transforming BPMN to BPEL.
Guidelines
Here are some guidelines that help you bridge the BPMN to BPEL gap:
- Be as specific as possible in BPMN diagrams (In Oracle Business Process Analysis Suite you can use e.g. automated activity, notification , and human tasks.).
- Add additional information in BPMN activities. Sure this doesn’t enable automatic transformation, but it does reduce the need for additional design documentation. This will improve documentation consistency, and reduce the required governance.
- Use templates in your BPMN activities. Structure and check completeness of your descriptions.
- Use a Service repository. This will enable both designers and developer to communicate about “the same thing”
- Use a GUI components reposity, for the same reasons as you use a Service repository
This evening while playing with WinDirStat (using the Portable Apps version) I took the following screenshot:
JDeveloper Stats
It shows the growth of
Oracle JDeveloper in size, number of files, and subdirectories. The most recent version is more than twice as big as 10.1.3.3. Also notice the difference between a 11.1.1.0 with and without the
SOA Suite extension (marked with FMW).
SQL Developer also shows some growth. A large part of this is because the JDK has been expanded.
To some of us it came as a surprise that SOA Suite design time stuff was no longer an integral part of the Oracle IDE. To use BPEL, Mediator, Human Task, and Adapters the soa-jdev-extension is required.
The SOA extension can be acquired using the menu Help | Check for updates, clicking Next, and selecting Oracle Fusion Middleware Products. Select Oracle SOA Composite Editor and click next to start the download. Since the extension is over 200 MB this could take a few minutes depending on the speed of your internet connection. When the download has finished, the version number details are shown and you’ll click finish to start using it.
Install from local file
Update wizard
If the download described above is not working for you, try the install from local file option.
Go to the
Fusion Middleware Products Update Center to select the correct version of the Oracle SOA Composite Editor to go with your version of JDeveloper 11g. If you’re using JDeveloper 11g R2 you’ll find it
here. The file is called
soa-jdev-extension.zip.
Download the extension, and instead of selecting the Search Update Centers option during step 2 of the upgrade you choose the Install From Local File option and the appropriate file. This is displayed in the screenshot. From here on it is a Next - Next - Finish operation.
Other JDeveloper extensions
Other extensions like the AIA Composite Application Framework, PHP extension, and the SQL Developer extension can be found in the update center.
