deltalounge

One of the things on my To Do list was to move my local SOA Suite 11g R1 to The Cloud. It seemed a good idea to save my laptop some resources (to spare some for JDeveloper) with only a limited investment. Besides that it can be a good way to demo applications, and work together with my colleagues on these demos.


During the last months I noticed that there are several good blogpost on the subject. In this post I’ll show you the ones I used and provide some additions to them.

Setting up Amazon Web Services (EC2 and S3)

This arcticle on OTN guided me while signing up for:

• Amazon AWS
• Amazon S3 – Simple Storage Service
• Amazon EC2 – Elastic Compute Cloud

and to setup PuTTY. The only hick-up here was that I’m using the PortableApps version of PuTTY that doesn’t come with the puttygen – Key Generator.

Provisioning a SOA Server on Amazon EC2

This blogpost guided me in the provisioning of the AMI (Amazon Machine Image).

• AMIs are per region: The Amazon Machine Instance (AMI) for SOA Suite (id = ami-acb557c5) is only available in the US East (Northern Virginia) Region.
• Don’t bother to setup the Elastic Block Store (EBS) Volume. It is scripted in the latest version of the AMI, as described in step 5 of “SSH to your image and accept license”. The EBS Volume is seeded using a snapshot (id = snap-dd980db4) that is provided. This volume will be used to persist your data across sessions and AMI start/stop.
• When launching the image (during the Configure Firewall step) set the SecurityGroup to accept HTTP traffic on port 7001 in case you want to use the SOA Suite from outside the Image.

Yesterday Clemens Utschig posted a list of SOA Suite 11gR1 Patchset 2 ~ 11.1.1.3.0 (SOA) features. He says it is a non-exhaustive list. It contains features like:

• Full and complete support for BPEL 2.0 (designtime and runtime)
• Reintroduction of “BPEL domains” – that are called Partitions because there are already WebLogic Domains
• Enhancements to BPEL’s transactional behavior and audit-trail
• Full BPMN 2.0 support – part of BPM 11g which runs on top of 11g PS2 SOA core

Update: for the Java developer

In an additional post the features for the Java developer were announced. These include:

• Support for interface.java as a first class citizen next to interface.wsdl
• Full support for Spring as component implementation
• Support for EJB bindings (binding.ejb)
• Invocation of a composite service

The webcast of the SOA and Integration strategy was a few days later available as the overall strategy. You can find the entire webcast here.

SOA Platform

The combined Oracle Sun solution focus boils down to the following bullets:

• Oracle SOA Suite continues as the strategic product.
• Sun JCAPS continues to be supported and maintained
• GlassFish ESB continues as an open source project
• A bridging technology is planned to support collaboration between JCAPS and Oracle SOA Suite.
• Key functions from the Sun SOA products will be incorporated in the Oracle SOA products.

Portal technologies

Oracle WebCenter stays the strategic portal offering. Support for both GlassFish Web Space Server and Sun Portal Server will be continued. An upgrade path to WebCenter is planned for both. The IP (Intellectual Property) for Sun’s Web Space Server will be released into the Liferay open source community.

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

Application Server

Glassfish and WebLogic will coexist and share logic/components.

SOA products

Oh, and WebCenter will be the strategic portal offering.

Previous post on the subject:

• Integration perspective
• Oracle gets MySQL for free

This year Oracle organized their first OTN Virtual Developer Day . A virtual hands-on training in Java and Rich Enterprise Applications. The screencasts and “Hands-On Labs” are still available. The latter require an AWS (Amazon Web Services) account and charges can apply. The following sessions are interesting from an Application Server point of view:

Oracle WebLogic Server: Introduction and Roadmap

This session provides an overview of Oracle WebLogic Server concepts, and discusses the road map for the Oracle Fusion Middleware Application Server infrastructure, explaining Oracle’s current offerings post-BEA-acquisition and where the product is headed. The screencast can be viewed: Part 1 Part 2
or downloaded:

• WebLogic Server Introduction – Part 1
• WebLogic Server Introduction – Part 2

Top 10 Productivity Tools for Java Developers on Oracle WebLogic Server 10gR3

This session highlights the top 10 capabilities that will improve a Java developers working on WebLogic Server include features such as deep Spring framework integration and support, fast Java class swapping, deployment plans, HTTP pub-sub capabilities for Web 2.0 development, sophisticated debugging and end-to-end updates for Java EE 5.0 development. Learn what’s new and see it in action in this demonstration centric session. View the screencast: Part 1 Part 2
or download it:

• Top 10 Tips for developers on WLS – Part 1
• Top 10 Tips for developers on WLS – Part 2