Oracle SOA Suite Best Practices

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Oracle SOA Suite

Best Practices

AN INTEGRATION/SOA WHITE PAPER APRIL 2012

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2 Oracle SOA Suite Best Practices

ractices

TheMediatoris an intra-composite mediation component

that is deployed within an application. It is responsible

for brokering communications between components that

make up a composite, enabling transformation, routing,event delivery and payload validation inside the composite.

The Oracle Service Busprovides standalone service bus

capabilities, enabling separation of concerns between

application developers and target systems or services.

While Oracle Service Bus provides enterprise service re-use and

management, the Mediator component provides certain localized

mediation capabilities with the Business Service Layer. Thus,

the lifecycle of a Mediator component is tightly coupled with that of

the SOA composite application that provides the application logic.

Mediator provides the following capabilities within the context of a

single composite application:

Connectivity abstraction from a business process

Inline data transformation / mapping

Message ltering

Oracle Service Bus enables eective de-coupling of systems and

lifecycles within enterprise architecture. Mediator provides any

abstraction that the Business Process needs within the context of a

single composite. The key considerations for using Mediator include:

The functionality is available within the context of a single

SOA composite application. e.g., Mediator can be used to

expose a BPEL process to multiple services dened on the

same composite.

Mediator does not focus on key capabilities required for the

SOA Infrastructure category such as trac shaping and end-

point management.

Mediator should not be used to share services at an

enterprise-wide level.

Abstract

This paper is intended to provide guidance around best practices for

Oracle Fusion SOA Suite Middleware development and is intended

for enterprise architects, middleware design architects and SOA

developers. The scope of Oracle Fusion design best practices is vastand its not possible to discuss all design aspects of Oracle Fusion

middleware in a paper of this scope. However, eorts have been

made to cover those aspects which are immediately relevant for

making design decisions with Oracle Fusion SOA Suite Middleware.

The Oracle SOA Suite is a key component of the Oracle Fusion

Middleware product stack. With the 11g version Oracle introduced

many of key improvements into the Oracle SOA Suite stack such as:

11g SOA Suite runs on leading WebLogic Application Server

Industry SOA standard Service Component Architecture

(SCA) based SOA Suite

Unied Development and management interface

Coherence-based in-memory caching solutions

Introduction of Oracle Service Bus (OSB)

The Oracle SOA Suite is rich in products with powerful capabilities.

This can sometimes lead to a very complex design and confusion

regarding which product to choose to implement a particular design.

In absence of best practices and guidance from experts it will be

dicult to realize the full potential of SOA Suite. This document

will help you to jump start with some of the important SOA suite

implementation decisions. However, a detailed current state analysis,

a good enterprise architecture vision and SOA maturity analysis is

required to lay the foundation for SOA Suite implementation.

Oracle Service Bus (OSB) vs. SOA

Composite-Based Mediator

There is always a dilemma whether to use OSB or Mediator for

service mediation. The term mediator is very confusing and often

makes one think its used for service meditation. Oracles guidance

in this matter comes in the form of a Statement of Direction when

they released the new version of Fusion in the form of 11g:

Author

Kulin Desai is a Technical Architect with Percient. He has 14 years of consulting experience helping clients with setting

up integration & SOA Centers of Excellence, SOA architecture assessments, SOA technical architecture design and

implementation, and delivery of a wide range of solutions in the area of Oracle Fusion Middleware, TIBCO J2EE, WebSphere

MQ and IBM mainframe-based legacy integration solutions. During his career Kulin has led several SOA and integration

engagements ranging from one-person teams to large teams with work spanning across multiple years, helping the client to

realize their SOA vision.


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Oracle SOA Suite Best Practices 3

Creating a Service in Java vs. SOA Suite

Oracle 11g SOA Suite recognizes that there are existing assets in

the IT landscape and does not force these to be replaced, preferring

instead to encapsulate and later extend these resources. Its often

easy to lean towards creating a new service in SOA Suite using

a JDeveloper drag-and-drop feature and easy conguration. But

the primary goal of the SOA Suite should be to create composite

services or to extend existing services. The Service Component

Architectureis a standard that should be used as a guiding

principle to dene composite services within SOA Suite. Keeping

pure services in Java or other similar platforms helps to reduce the

migration impact in the event of moving from Oracle-based SOA

Suite to other SOA Suites.

Other Considerations for Selection

Characteristic Mediator OSB Remarks

Routing + ++ Better routing capability with OSB in the form of Split join

Transformation: XSLT

++ +

OSB provides runtime support for XSLT whereas Mediator provides

both design time and runtime support for XSLT

Transformation: XQuery

+

OSB provides runtime support for XQuery whereas Mediator does

not provide support for XQuery

Technology Adapters Design

Time ++ + Composite provides easy JDeveloper-based adapter conguration

Message Validation ++ + Composite provides richer Shematron-based message validation

Error Handling + ++ OSB: Much richer error handling

Re-submittance of Failed

messages + OSB: Is stateless

Instance Monitoring ++ + OSB: Stateless: No concept of an instance

Performance Tuning + ++ OSB: Throttling

Performance

+ ++

The Oracle Service Bus is designed to provide better performance

as compared to Mediator when it comes to handling message load,

Routing and Transformation.

Oracle Service Bus provides the ability to set service level agree-

ments (SLAs) on business and proxy services. These SLAs dene

the precise level and quality of service expected from business and

proxy services.

Sequencing or Message

Order Support +

Oracle Mediator can re-sequence the incoming messages in a user-

specied order.

Support for Attachments

+ ++

In the current release of the Oracle Mediator when you call a SOAP

Web Service with attachments you will not be able to perform apayload manipulation using the Assign or Transform functions. It fails

with an exception because SOAP with attachments is not supported

in Oracle Mediator if you use the Assign or Transform functions.

So when calling a SOAP Web Service with attachments use Oracle

Service Bus instead of Oracle mediator.

JCA Support

++ +

OSB 11.1.1.5 version has known issues with some of the JCA-based

adapters

10g to 11g ESB Migration

++ +

Legacy 10g Oracle ESB ows are automatically migrated to 11g

Mediator based composites using Jdeveloper. However, Legacy 10g

ESB to OSB migration is manual.

Transaction Support

++ ++

SOA composite supports compensating transactions. OSB supports

propagating transactions.

+ Feature Available ++ Advanced Feature/Better Support Available


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ractices

such as the location and network used to invoke the service.

Keep in mind that IT security is designed and implemented by

dierent people with dierent skills and expertise than those

actually responsible for implementing processes and services.

2. Layered Security IT Security should be layered involving

measures on multiple levels such as awareness, logical

access control, network security, and so on.

3. Classify Your Services Using a security classication

results in just the right amount of security to be applied while

saving money. A best practice is to dene a limited set of

security classication and corresponding measures.

Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Design

Oracle SOA Suite SCA-based design can help to facilitate both

top-down and bottom-up application design and development. An

architect can, for example, build out the high-level ow of the SCAapplication and relate part of the implementation to developers

Securing Services Using Oracle Web

Services Manager (OWSM)

Using SOA Suite and Oracle Service Bus in conjunction with

Oracle Web Services Manager (OWSM) provides a scalable,

standards-based, centrally managed approach to securing your

SOA environment with WS-Security policies while leveraging your

existing security providers. Oracle Web Services Manager provides

a runtime framework for security policy creation, management, and

governance. You create policies, attach them to services in Oracle

Service Bus, and enforce those policies at various points in the

messaging life cycle with Oracle Web Service Manager agents.

Best Practices When Implementing Security

Using OWSM

1.`Externalize Security It is a good design practice to

externalize security from service and process implementation.

There may be dierent security requirements for the same

service based on type of service consumer and related aspects

Role SOA Suite 10g SOA Suite 11g

Java EE Container OC4J WebLogic

Management Consoles BPEL Console, OESB Console, OWSM

Console, Enterprise Manager (OC4J), BAM

Management

Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware

Control, WebLogic Console, BAM Console

Orchestration Oracle BPEL Process Manager BPEL Process Service Component

Human Interaction Human Workow Engine Human Workow Service Component

Externalize Logic Oracle Business Rules Business Rules Service Component

Transformation, Routing, Fan-out, etc. Oracle ESB Inside an application/composite: Oracle

Mediator Service Component. Enterprise

wide: Oracle Service Bus

Apps and Systems Connectivity JCA Adapters JCA Adapters

Business Dashboards Oracle BAM (.NET-based) Oracle BAM (JEE-based)

Security OWSM (proxy and gateway modes) OWSM (proxy), OEG (gateway)

Sharing of Common Artifacts Slide Oracle MDS, Oracle OER

Cross Referencing DVM DVM

Clustering & Load Balancing jGroups WebLogic supports unicast and multicast

for clustering along with Coherence support

for web sessions

Deployment Property Replacements Tokens and Property le Cong Plans and Customization plans

IDE JDeveloper JDeveloper, OSB Console, Eclipse (with

OEPE)

Fault Handling Error Hospital Policy-based fault handling framework

10G to 11G SOA Suite Product and Feature Mapping


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Oracle SOA Suite Best Practices 5

Error & Exception Handling

One of the new features of 11g SOA Suite is that it provides a

framework for error handling within BPEL processes, Adapter

and Mediator components. The fault management framework

allows us to dene policies for handling faults in a loosely coupledmanner. It externalizes the fault-handling mechanism from process

implementation. A policy consists of two basic components,

namely, the faults that you wish to catch and the actions you wish

to take once the faults are caught. Once a policy is dened, one

can then attach (or bind) it to a SOA composite, a BPEL, a Mediator

service component, or an external reference. This provides a

exible mechanism for attaching dierent policies to dierent

components within a composite. Although BPEL processes and

Mediator leverage the same fault management framework, the

application of the framework is slightly dierent for each.

Logging

Attaching the Log Policy

One of the standard WSM policies is a logging policy. By applying

this policy, one can extend the logging with exact entries with

the contents of the messages coming in to and owing out of the

composites and components.

Setting the Name of a Composite Instance

Composite instances all look the same in the console. The only way

really to distinguish one from the other is based on the timestamp,

which can be very cumbersome, especially when you have no

idea of the time of the message. There are several ways to make

it easier to discern between instances. One way is by dynamically

assigning a meaningful name to an instance of a composite.

Composite Sensors

Composite sensors make tracing easy by allowing you to expose

information from within composite instances. These sensors are

typically used to expose the data enable search of the instances.

Legacy 10g to 11G Migration Best

Practices and Steps

Plan upgrade and dene rollout strategy and timeframe

Design reference architecture to accommodate new and

upgraded features

Dene deployment topology Install 11g products

Identify initial POC projects to migrate

Migrate SOA application, BAM components and WSM

policies using a combination of automated and

manual steps

Create new deployment ANT and WLST-based scripts

Congure JMS adapter, DB adapters, data sources,

JNDI, and connections pools using WebLogic consoles

who have particular strengths in particular areas. The bottom-up

approach allows SCA to be the glue that binds together lower-level

components into a higher level of abstraction within a number of

applications.

Composition vs. OrchestrationOracle SOA Suite SCA-based architecture is all about composition

of components together into an integrated circuit that might well

be part of a bigger application. Orchestration concerns the control

of a process across multiple systems and people. That control

involves branching, state management and human task ows. One

should use SOA composite for composition and BPEL for process

orchestration.

Business Rules as a Service

With OFM SOA 11g Oracle is moving towards a standardized

approach for creating distributed SOA applications. There are

various approaches available to call business rules from distributed

SOA applications (Java + Composite). But at the same time, Oracle

wants enterprises to standardize the way they invoke business

rules. Here are few recommended approaches:

Using SOA

OFM allows rules as services using decision services

Create a proxy rules service

Pros: Provides even non-Java-based applications to use business

rules in a standardized way and while also achieving loose coupling.

This also increases rule reusability.

Using Standardized API Use Java JSR-94 rules API to connect to repo repository

Pros: This provides a standardized Java way to connect distributed

rules engine, where you can port from one rule engine to another.

Cons: Unknown performance benchmarks and unknown total

compatibility with Oracle rules features.

Sharing and Reusing Common

Artifacts with MDS and OER

All shared SOA artifacts (such as XSD, XSLT, WSDL) should be

stored in a central repository that can be accessed at design

time and at runtime from deployed SOA composite applications.

This central store is known as Oracle Meta Data Storage (MDS)

repository. This MDS repository, along with the metadata services

on top of it, helps the organization to reuse SOA application

artifacts such as canonical data model denitions. However the

MDS repository is an intrinsic part of the SOA suite and should

not be viewed as enterprise-wide repository. The Oracle enterprise

repository provides enterprise-wide central repository of metadata.


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ractices

Additional Resources

Here are additional resources that you may nd useful to read in conjunction with this white paper:

OSB Statement of Direction

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/oracle-service-bus-sod-128083.pdf

Maximize the Benets of Oracle SOA Suite 11g with Oracle Service Bus (Oracle white paper)

http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/soa/maximizing-benets-oracle-soa-150680.pdf

Oracle SOA Suite 11g R1 Developers Guideby Matt Wright and Antony Reynolds

Service Component Architecture -Assembly Model

http://www.oasis-opencsa.org/sca

Oracle SCA Power of Composite

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/entarch/whatsnew/oracle-sca-the-power-of-the-composi-134500.pdf

Oracle Enterprise Deployment Guide for SOA Suite

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/core.1111/e12036.pdf

Oracle Fusion Performance Tuning Guide

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/core.1111/e10108.pdf

Create JMS modules, queues, topics, MDS repository,

notications, fault handlers and fault handling policies

Dene fault handling framework

Recompile and deploy SOA application and BAM

components

Unit testing, regression testing and E2E testing

Measure and compare performance and

performance tuning

Roll out initial POC projects to production

Review process, rene migration steps and create

migration checklist

Implement the migration plan

Documents

Oracle SOA Suite Best Practices