Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack Utilities and ...

ORACLE DATA SHEET

ORACLE APPLICATION INTEGRATION ARCHITECTURE FOUNDATION PACK UTILITIES TOOLS KEY BENEFITS

• Jumpstart projects and

encourages reuse by using existing mapping information. • Enhance productivity and

improves the quality of your developments • Assist with PIP upgrades by

identifying custom extensions.

Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA) Foundation Pack enables you to simplify cross-application business process integrations using a standards-based, prebuilt integration solution. Designed to promote rapid deployment, re-usability, and configurability of business processes, AIA Foundation Pack saves significant time, effort and cost, compared to building integrations from the ground up and helps you realize the value of a Service

• Effective design-time SOA

governance • Better implementation based

on AIA best practices

Oriented Architecture (SOA) at an accelerated pace. Utilities take AIA Foundation Pack to the next level providing tools to enhance productivity, to facilitate content and technical governance and templates helping you to follow our AIA guidelines.

Creating a Sustainable Competitive Advantage With companies relying on upwards of hundreds to thousands of different application systems to manage mission critical business functions, application landscapes today are complex and rigid infrastructures often connected by fragile hard-coded integrations that are costly, difficult and risky to change. In order for IT to become a strategic partner to the business—helping to drive transformation, growth and competitive advantage—high performance companies are focusing now more than ever on business process improvements that will support continuous innovation enabling IT to evolve with the business.

Oracle Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA) Foundation Pack is a holistic approach to orchestrating agile, user-centric business processes in support of business requirements that span your enterprise applications. With AIA Foundation Pack, you get a complete, open and prebuilt integration solution that allows you to integrate and consolidate your applications and middleware technologies on a standardized integration backbone. No matter what applications you have in your portfolio, AIA Foundation Pack enables you to derive more value out of your application investments by creating composite business processes, consolidate systems to simplify your IT environment, and modernize your infrastructure following a consistent, standardized approach across your enterprise.

1

ORACLE DATA SHEET

AIA Foundation Pack is comprised of the following components proven by Oracle’s own experience implementing SOA: •

Business Process Models – documented application independent business process models that act as a blueprint for driving top-down business process mappings from roles, tasks and activity levels down to the system level

•

Enterprise Business Objects and Services – reusable, standards-based building blocks that form the basis for a common vocabulary across your applications

•

SOA Governance and Lifecycle Management Tools – business process change control tools that help you manage, maintain and optimize your integration from design- to run-time

•

Predefined Reference Architecture and Methodology - Oracle’s documented approach to implementing a proven service-oriented architecture (SOA)

Developer Tools Oracle AIA Developer Tools are provided to enhance the productivity of PIP developers, QA engineers, and architects. AIA Developer Tools arm them to effectively and efficiently develop PIPs that are in compliance with open standards and Oracle AIA recommended best design and coding practices. Governance—whether it is financial, business, legal, or IT—is about getting people to do the right thing at the right time. In other words, it is about encouraging the behavior that will achieve your business goals. The foundation of a SOA implementation is good SOA governance and these tools assist in establishing SOA Governance as a service so that one can reap all the benefits of good SOA governance process. These tools expose mapping information that exist in cryptic XSLT files; provide validation levels for PIPs per TOGAF standards and show PIP artifacts reuse matrix. These tools are used by Oracle PIP teams, partners and customers alike. The set of tools provided with AIA Foundation Pack include an AIA Artifacts Generator to jumpstart for ABCS development; XSL Mapping Analyzer (XMAN) for Content level governance; and PIP Auditor for Technical level governance. These tools enable you to be more efficient in your development. For PIP specific reports, the developer tools need to identify the artifact inventory for each PIP, including all the services, XREF, DVM and any other related artifacts. This information is already being collected in an XML format as input for another productivity utility, so all the utilities here expect the same input XML file, hereby referred to as the inputMetaFile. Hence to produce PIP specific reports, please make sure you create GenerateScriptInput.xml file, see Appendix for details about this file.

December 2009

2

ORACLE DATA SHEET

AIA Artifacts Generator The Artifacts Generator is a development tool that can help jumpstart your Oracle AIA development by autogenerating much of the common code needed to create Oracle AIA application business connector (ABC) service implementations. This can free up developers to focus on scenario-specific value-added design and development.

It’ll help to enforce architectural governance policies helping adhering to programming models and to naming conventions / rules and to enforce programming consistencies across projects Artifacts Generator provides the following capabilities: •

Automatic Interface (WSDL) creation for ABCS (requestor as well as provider)

•

Code Generation for Inbound & Outbound Service interaction related tasks

•

•

o

Invocation of Enterprise Business Services

o

Invocation of Application Services

o

Error Handling Code snippet

Code generation for plumbing tasks o

CAVS Enabling

o

Extension Enabling – induction of injection points

o

EBM Header Population

o

Namespace declarations

Automatic code generation for runtime discovery of end points (multiple instances support)

• •

Configuration Settings based on Design Patterns EBM Header transformation scripts and transformation for the root Business Message element

•

Configuration file properties for the ABCS

•

Error handling fault policy file

The Artifacts Generator is an Apache Ant-based tool that uses the FreeMarker template engine to generate all of the necessary artifacts for an ABC service using a parameter input file.

December 2009

3

ORACLE DATA SHEET

The Artifacts Generator generates the following artifacts to create Oracle AIA ABC service implementations in BPEL: •

Projects

•

ABC service interfaces

•

ABC service implementations using BPEL

•

EBS and application service invocations

•

Message exchange patterns

•

Logging, error handling, and fault policies

•

Composite Application Validation System (CAVS) enablement and dynamic endpoint locations

•

Naming conventions

•

Transformations with root element and header population

•

ABC service properties for the Oracle AIA configuration properties file

•

Best-practice settings

Content level governance – the key to Interoperability and Reusability with XSL Mapping Analyzer (XMAN) One of the challenges in SOA implementation is visibility of SOA artifact inventory. A limitation in visibility will limit service reuse. To promote visibility of SOA artifacts i.e. Foundation Pack (FP) and Process Integration Pack (PIP) artifacts, AIA provides Business Service Repository (BSR). BSR allows you to search for services and other artifacts from a top down perspective. However, in many instances a top-down approach may not solve the problem and you may want to adopt bottoms-up approach. One of the principles of SOA Governance is reuse of artifacts and effective information sharing. To aid PIP developers and analysts alike, AIA provides another tool which is called as XSL Mapping Analyzer (XMAN). XMAN analyzes and shows mapping information that exists in cryptic XSLT files in an ABCS (Application Business Connector Service) in a more readable manner so that existing connector mappings can be considered for reuse. It becomes imperative to comprehend the mappings between an ABM (Application Business Message) and an EBM (Enterprise Business Message) when developing a connector based on existing connectors. True interoperability can be only be achieved by adopting a consistent mapping practice, usage of appropriate DVM, XREF and translation functions; which this tool encourages. It also helps customers in viewing their customized mappings so that upgrades to the Oracle supplied mappings can be compared and any changes that need to be done are evaluated before the upgrade. Some of the benefits are:

December 2009

•

Functional interoperability between PIPs.

•

Jumpstart projects and encourages reuse by using existing mapping information.

•

Enhances productivity by helping populate design time EBO mapping spreadsheets.

•

Assist with PIP upgrades by identifying custom extensions.

4

ORACLE DATA SHEET

XMAN can be configured to run against a PIP, an Application folder or a specific XSL file and allows you to introspect the mapping structure in complex XSL transformation. The output is produced in XML format and can be further rendered in user friendly report in HTML and CSV format. It generates mapping reports highlighting custom extensions, indexed by EBO, Application, Service or Process Integration Pack (PIP). This empowers the functional and technical analysis of the code to resolve technical governance issues of consistency in attribute mappings and XREF/DVM usage. If a particular mapping is too complex to analyze or not constructed as per standard guidelines, an error messages is shown or the output is highlighted to inform the developer that the mapping is a best effort and more detailed analysis may be required. In case of code bugs, developers can fix the XSL and rerun the tool to produce more meaningful reports. Developers can add annotations for complex xsl constructs to display a more meaningful report The reports are indexed and categorized in various approaches e.g. by EBO or by Application , so that it can satisfy many governance and documentation use cases. Viewing “by EBO” reports can help to identify the mappings as they exist in a given connector. Executing “by Application” provides an insight on the kind of mappings that exist for a given application e.g. E-Business Suite. Viewing by EBO Consolidation can help jump start your mapping by using flattened EBO/EBM structure represented in X-path and indented formats in a csv file.

Sample report of XMAN showing ABM (Application Business Message) X-path , DVM (Domain Value Map), XREF (Cross-Reference) and EBM (Enterprise Business Message) X-path.

December 2009

5

ORACLE DATA SHEET

Viewing the HTML report is useful for viewing one service at a time; however there are times when we need to see the attribute mappings across connectors to ensure semantic consistency or to ensure all related connectors are using same XREF and DVM. For this purpose, AIA allows to download the consolidated report in CSV format to import it in MS Excel. Now you may go about creating pivot tables and analyze DVM and XREF usage. One example to show the number of a particular XREF table usage in any service for a given application would be to create a pivot table and; select Service & Operation as "Report Filter", select Application as "Column Labels", select XREF as "Row Labels" and select ABM as "Values". Similarly, you may analyze a specific attribute usage or DVM usage.

XSL Mapping Analyzer (XMAN) Sample in Excel

December 2009

6

ORACLE DATA SHEET

Technical level governance – the key to Extensibility and Reusability with PIP Auditor One of the main components in SOA Governance is adherence to open standards and enforcement of good coding practices. With an ever-growing asset inventory of design patterns and programming guidelines, manual checking for compliance to the AIA Integration Developers Guides standards checklist can get a little tedious. PIP Auditor is a tool designed to enhance productivity and improve the quality of the services by checking your AIA services for compliance to programming best practices and patterns found in the AIA Integration Developers Guide, as well as other industry best practices as appropriate. PIP Auditor checks the adherence of a PIP’s design and development to Oracle AIA guidelines. It assists in performing technical validation of partner developed solutions, customer integrations and Oracle Process Integration Packs (PIPs). It contains a number of tests, written to check various PIP design and development standards mandated or recommended by Oracle AIA. The PIP Auditor generates a detailed XML report and a high-level HTML report that flag any violations of Oracle AIA standards and guidelines. Some of the benefits are: •

White box/code level quality assurance, providing line/column level drill down.

•

Enhance productivity by checking for thousands of potential violations.

•

Effective design-time SOA governance, for patterns, security, extensibility etc.

The tool’s reports can be useful in detecting and enforcing coding issues, such as redundant calls, which affect performance, and ignorance of Oracle AIA standards, which cover naming conventions, WSDL design practices, process property configurations, and so forth. The reports categorize violations based on various parameters, such as priority, category, audit profile, and so forth, and provide code fix suggestions for the identified violations. The report output is categorized per TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) standards and a compliance “score” is presented. It checks for good coding practices in a PIP and qualifies the PIP as Compliant, Conformant and Fully Conformant as per TOGAF standard guidelines based on the pass criteria of the highest priority rules. Developers can drill down into the problem areas and identify the areas to fix in order to achieve compliance. This tool uses pre-defined set of rules that are based on AIA Integration Developer guidelines to check PIP Design and Code for design consistency and good coding and documentation practices. The results of the test are displayed detailing the level of compliance, pass and failure percentages and a graphical bar chart that groups results by Category, Priority and Test Suites. The results also include Top 10 violating projects and suggestion as to how to fix the violation. The Overall TOGAF compliance score for a PIP is shown in the header section of the report.

December 2009

7

ORACLE DATA SHEET

PIP Auditor Report Sample

Violations can be drilled down into right down to the file level and where relevant, even down to the line/column number e.g. in the case of naming convention violations.

PIP Auditor Report Sample: detailed page

The design of the tool is flexible enough to allow for incremental patching of new rules (XML based rules) – more than 100 rules have already been implemented.

December 2009

8

ORACLE DATA SHEET

PIP Auditor Rules List Sample

PIP Shared Artifact Analyzer This tool produces a report that processes a list of PIPs and displays the artifacts that are shared (reused) between each possible combination of two PIPs. It produces a matrix style report displaying the number of overlapping artifacts for each PIP combination along with an indicator of whether that PIP combination can be co-deployed to a single SOA service instance. During design time, this information can be useful in identifying potential areas to review for technical standards compliance to remove any potential issues in co-deploying this PIP combination in a single SOA server instance. Like the earlier tools, this tool also uses the GenerateScriptInput.xml input files to get an inventory of the Services, DVMs and XRefs that each PIP uses. By default, the tool will automatically look for all GenerateScriptInput.xml files in the input source directory. Alternatively, a list of one or more specific GenerateScriptInput.xml files can be used as input via a properties file. Some of the benefits are:

December 2009

•

Identifies co-deployment potential

•

Assists with impact analysis use cases

9

ORACLE DATA SHEET

PIP Shared Artifact Analyzer Report Sample

Integration Templates The purpose of these tools is to provide various templates that are useful in developing and implementing an AIA integration. These templates are part of the AIA Integration Toolkit.

Some of the templates are: •

Background and governance approach taken within AIA for EBO mappings.

•

Spreadsheet template for mapping one or more application interfaces to an EBO.

•

Spreadsheet designed to help develop estimates for integration projects that utilize AIA.

•

Template for describing or presenting a high- to mid-level overview of an integration project. The template contains pages for integration overview, assumptions, business processes, integration flows summary, flow details, and reviews.

•

Technical Design Document template used within AIA for integration projects.

•

Checklist of architectural design and implementation standards recommended by AIA. This checklist should be used in combination with the AIA Compliance Reporting tool (aka "PIPAuditor") to ensure compliance with AIA standards.

•

Template for defining and maintaining a test case repository for an integration project, as well as tracking test case results.

December 2009

10

ORACLE DATA SHEET

Built on Fusion Middleware Oracle Fusion Middleware is the world's fastest growing family of middleware solutions, spanning from SOA, portals, and process management, to application infrastructure, identity management, content management, and business intelligence. Oracle Fusion Middleware’s SOA Suite and BPM products, provide the tools and technology to apply Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack to your infrastructure. Oracle AIA Foundation Pack is certified on both Oracle Application Server and Oracle WebLogic Server. Bottom Line Use AIA Foundation Pack to create reliable and reusable composite business processes across your Oracle and non-Oracle applications at reduced risk and lower TCO. With Oracle Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack you can: •

Deliver right-sized composite business processes that more precisely meet the needs of the business,

•

Jump start your SOA initiative to create an infrastructure designed for innovation and change,

•

Evolve your process integrations over time while ensuring the integrity of those processes for greater business stability.

Oracle Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack Utilities Tools are available in My Oracle Support/Metalink Notes: •

Implementation Tools: Note 782351.1

•

Integration Templates: Note 879480.1

For more technical information about Oracle Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack, please refer to: •

Oracle Blogs: http://blogs.oracle.com/aia/

•

Oracle Forums: http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=577

•

Oracle OTN: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/applications/aia/index.html

•

Oracle Wiki: http://wiki.oracle.com/page/Application+Integration+Architecture

For more information about Oracle Application Integration Architecture, visit www.oracle.com/aia

Copyright © 2009, Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is provided for information purposes only, and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor is it subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document, and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

December 2009

11