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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

Recently, in a press release, Oracle introduced Oracle SOA Governance. This component of Fusion Middleware consist of the following components:

1. Oracle Enterprise Repository – OER
2. Oracle Service Registry
3. SOA Management with Oracle Enterprise Manager (SOA Management Pack)
4. Web Service Manager

According to the press release it is already fully integrated with Oracle Amberpoint:

Oracle SOA Goverance 11g is fully integrated with Oracle AmberPoint, a leader in Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Management. The new solution provides organizations more continuity of closed-loop governance processes across both Oracle and third party applications.

Besides that it is not clear to me what is new. The latest version of the Enterprise Repository was release a month ago. Any ideas? Please leave them in the comments.

After installing JDeveloper 11G successfully, we encountered the following error while starting JDeveloper:

Unable to create an instance on the Java Virtual Machine located on c:\jdeveloper11g\Middleware\jdk160_05\jre\bin\client\jvm.dll

Using Google and Oracle Support showed us that the virtual memory for the PC was not set to level that allowed the JVM to initialise.
The solution is to increase the virtual memory or swap area. To do this on Vista:

My Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings > tab Advanced > Performance - Settings > tab Advanced > Virtual memory - Change

This evening while playing with WinDirStat (using the Portable Apps version) I took the following screenshot:

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

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.

As I recently blogged the book Getting Started With Oracle SOA Suite 11g R1 – A Hands-On Tutorial has my interest. Last week my copy arrived.

In a blogpost Clemens Utschig writes about this book:

Heidi and her team have done a tremendous job to structure the labs and hands-on exercises in a didactic, explanatory way – with solutions all the way through. This way the book serves not just as a tutorial, but also as a reference bible when it comes to implementation of specific features and concepts.

Being familiar with the labs and hands-on for the SOA Suite from the earlier versions up to 11g R1, and having read the first four chapters, I agree with Clemens. It is a good tutorial, and learning path that includes some great tips on how to overcome the pitfalls you could run into.

SOA Suite 11gR1 Book resources

To get an impression of the book you can download a sample chapter here (pdf). There aren’t any errata (yet).

Artifacts for the tutorial part are available for download. An overview of the required software can be found on the Release Downloads for Oracle SOA Suite pages of OTN. These include the link for download.

The Why move to SOA Suite 11g blog post, showed me that one of the important benefits of the OFM 11g release slipped to the back of my head… Pat Shepherd actually throws in a bonus – 11th reason:

BAM has been rewritten entirely in Java offering platform choice and better performance

From the integration point of view it is great that BAM is now available on the J2EE stack (instead of MS ISS). This will lower the costs for companies that want to use BAM besides the SOA Suite. Not only brought this down the requirements for the machine it is running on (I was able to run BAM server besides the rest of the SOA stuff and JDeveloper on my laptop – although it wasn’t the most performant system ever witnessed). Besides that the cost of managing the platform will be lower since there is only one type of application server involved.

MS is still needed for BAM…

For those who want to get rid of MS asap, there is sad news: Microsoft Internet Explorer is still needed in this release. This is due to the fact that al those great graphs that can be created, use ActiveX controls VML (Thanks Sanjay). VML is a Microsoft and Macromedia specific XML language to produce vector graphics. The open standard for vector graphics is SVG (W3C SVG home).

BAM links

The BAM User Guide can be found here. Beside the documentation there are already some interesting blogposts on BAM in 11g Release 1 available.

As a last word I’d like to add that with the 11g release of BAM i’m much more comfortable with putting BAM into play at a customers site.

Searching the web for more information on Fusion Middleware and Oracle SOA Suite 11g, I found that Getting started with Oracle SOA Suite 11g will be released within the coming weeks. This hands-on tutorial covers step-by-step material to train new and experienced SOA developers, in both the basics of SOA Suite, SCA and the more advanced aspects. More details on the book can be found here.
Expect a review of this book on this blog as soon as I get my hands on it.

Gartner has taken a look into the recently released Fusion Middleware 11g R1. They see Oracle refining and reasserting its middleware strategy with this release. The nuance has also been brought in this blog before:

The stated objective for OFM 11g is to be “complete, integrated, hot-pluggable, best-of-breed,” all of which are achieved in OFM 11g to a degree, although each will require additional investment from Oracle over time.

To customers it is important to notice that OFM 11g is the foundation for Oracle Fusion Applications (OFA), Oracle’s next generation of packaged business applications. This leverages the need to create an excellent product for Oracle, because it has to eat it’s own dog food here. One can expect that Oracle will continue investing in this set of products.
The only uncertainty is to what extent the acquisition of Sun Microsystems will impact the large range of products in OFM. This introduces some challenges, resulting in changes in some of the OFM products (no severe cases expected here).

iPod for the enterprise

Oracle refers to a strategy like the recently introduced “database machine” as the iPod for the enterprise. First product in this range is a highly optimized database appliance, with pre-installed, pre-configured RDBMS in a hardware arrangement, including processing and storage capabilities.
This is a new direction for Oracle. With the Sun acquisition Oracle is no longer dependent on partners for the technology, knowledge, skills and hardware. It is expected that a middleware appliance will be available within a year. Here the Sun statement “software is free” could be turned to “hardware is free”. Oracle afterall stays a software company and could provide hardware for their customers convenience.

As in previous releases there is a Human Workflow component in the SOA Suite. Basically this component supports the interaction of humans with the process, like approval, exception management, and other activities to advance the process. The image gives a global impression of the component.

What is new in Human Workflow 11g

The Human Workflow has become more of a separate component compared to the previous SOA Suite release. Where it was more tightly integrated with BPEL. This is considered a good thing, since it can be used from other components than BPEL.

Like with all the new stuff in the 11g R1 release there is now End to end instance tracking through BPEL, mediator, and workflow. Which makes debugging and application management a lot easier. Another step forward is that the engine can be configured, monitored and managed from Enterprise Manager.

There are also serious enhancements in the task routing possibilities. Oracle Business Rules can now be used to define complex task routing scenarios. In previous versions these were custom coded or created in BPEL. On the security side finer-grain access-level policies have been added. This allows you to define who can see and act on different parts of a task.

New worklist application

The most visible enhancement is the new worklist application. In previous releases we would advise customers to not use the worklist application, because it used “old” technology, it was ugly, and it was supposed to be an unsupported demo. Now the interface is up to par.

Judge for yourself with this screenshot that was taken while playing with the purchase order demo / tutorial. Besides that there is now also better support to auto-generate Task Display Forms. If yoy want to learn more visit the Developer Guide or play around with the samples for Human Workflow .