Oracle Fusion Middleware Basics and Concepts

Today I will be writing about the Fusion Middleware concepts

Oracle Fusion Middleware is a comprehensive family of products ranging from application development tools and integration solutions to identity management, collaboration, and business intelligence reporting. Today we will discuss what Oracle Fusion Middleware is.

 

Oracle Home1 can be any fusion middleware product SOA/OSB/IAM etc

 

Business cases where Oracle Fusion components are Used.

FrontEnd UI/View ::  WebCenter/ADF/J2EE Apps/HumanWorkflow(SOA components)/Portal

Business Logic::    SOA components(BPEL/Mediator/HumanWorkFlow)/SDO etc, OSB

Security::  OWSM, Identity  Management Suite, Oracle entitlement server etc

Monitoring ::  EM , Oracle Enterprise manager, BAM ( transaction Monitoring)

Policy Evaluation: : Rules Engine (OBR oracle Business Rules)

Analytics/Reporting ::  OBIEE

Webproxy/Reverse Proxy  ::  Oracle HTTP server

Oracle Fusion Middleware Components

Oracle Fusion Middleware provides the following components:

Ø Oracle WebLogic Server, an enterprise-ready Java application server that supports the deployment of mission-critical applications in a robust, secure, highly available, and scalable environment. Oracle WebLogic Server is an ideal foundation for building applications based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Ø  Oracle SOA Suite, a complete set of service infrastructure components for designing, deploying, and managing composite applications. Oracle SOA Suite e nables services to be created, managed, and orchestrated into composite applications and business processes. Composites enable you to easily assemble multiple technology components into one SOA composite application.

Ø  Oracle WebCenter, an integrated set of components with which you can create social applications, enterprise portals, collaborative communities, and composite applications, built on a standards-based, service-oriented architecture. Oracle WebCenter combines dynamic user interface technologies with which to develop rich internet applications, the flexibility and power of an integrated, multi-channel portal framework, and a set of horizontal Enterprise 2.0 capabilities delivered as services that provide content, collaboration, presence and social networking capabilities.

Ø  Oracle Identity Management, which provides a shared infrastructure for all Oracle applications. It also provides services and interfaces that facilitate third-party enterprise application development. These interfaces are useful for application developers who need to incorporate identity management into their applications.

Ø  Oracle Internet Directory, a general-purpose directory service that enables fast retrieval and centralized management of information about dispersed users and network resources. It combines Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Version 3 with the high performance, scalability, robustness, and availability of Oracle Database.

Ø  Oracle Virtual Directory, an LDAP version 3 enabled service that provides virtualized abstraction of one or more enterprise data sources into a single directory view. Oracle Virtual Directory provides the ability to integrate LDAP-aware applications into diverse directory environments while minimizing or eliminating the need to change either the infrastructure or the applications. It supports a diverse set of clients, such as Web applications and portals, and it can connect to directories, databases, and Web services.

Ø  Oracle Access Management, which provides the following:

        ** Oracle Access Management Access Manager, which provides a full range of Web perimeter security functions that include Web single sign-on, authentication and authorization, policy administration, and auditing. Single sign-on (SSO)

         ** Oracle Access Management Identity Federation, a self-contained federation solution that provides the infrastructure that enables identities and their relevant entitlements to be propagated across security domains—this applies to domains existing within an organization as well as between organizations.

          ** Oracle Access Management Mobile and Social, which acts as an intermediary between a user seeking to access protected resources, and the back-end Access Management and Identity Management services that protect the resources. Mobile and Social provides simplified client libraries that allow developers to quickly add feature-rich authentication, authorization, and Identity capabilities to registered applications.

        ** Oracle Secure Token Service, which provides the foundation to the current security infrastructure to facilitate a consistent and streamlined model for token acquisition, renewal, and cancellation that is protocol and security infrastructure agnostic.

Ø  Oracle Web Services Manager, which provides a way to centrally define and manage policies that govern Web services operations, including access control (authentication and authorization), reliable messaging, Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM), WS-Addressing, and Web services management. Policies can be attached to multiple Web services, requiring no modification to the existing Web services

Ø  Oracle Platform Security Services (OPSS), which provides enterprise product development teams, systems integrators, and independent software vendors (ISVs) with a standards-based, portable, integrated, enterprise-grade security framework for Java Standard Edition (Java SE) and Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) applications.

Ø  Oracle Portal, a Web-based tool for building and deploying e-business portals. It provides a secure, manageable environment for accessing and interacting with enterprise software services and information resources. A portal page makes data from multiple sources accessible from a single location.

Ø  Oracle Business Intelligence, a complete, integrated solution that addresses business intelligence requirements. Oracle Business Intelligence includes Oracle Business Intelligence Reporting and Publishing, Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer, and Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher.

To summarize

 

  

Oracle Fusion Middleware includes the following best-of-breed technologies:

•          Oracle BPEL Process Manager: A native Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) engine for Web service orchestration, enabling you to design, define, and execute business processes

•          Oracle Web Services Manager: A console to secure and manage your Web services

•          Oracle Business Rules Engine: A product to enable agile management of business rules

•          Oracle Enterprise Service Bus: A standards-based product that connects existing IT systems and business partners as a set of services, and supports event-driven architectures

•          Oracle Business Activity Monitoring: A product to report insight into business operations

•          Oracle Services Registry: A UDDI v3–compliant registry

•          Oracle JDeveloper: An integrated development environment for creating and composing applications in a unified toolset for all Oracle Fusion Middleware tools. Not only can you use Oracle JDeveloper to build applications, but Oracle developers use JDeveloper to build the other tools.

Understanding Key Oracle Fusion Middleware Concepts

Oracle Fusion Middleware provides two types of components:

·         A Java component, which is an Oracle Fusion Middleware component that is deployed as one or more Java EE applications and a set of resources. Java components are deployed to an Oracle WebLogic Server domain as part of a domain template. Examples of Java components are the Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle WebCenter Portal components.

·         A system component, which is a manageable process that is not deployed as a Java application. Instead, a system component is managed by Oracle Process Manager and Notification (OPMN). The system components are:

o    Oracle HTTP Server

o    Oracle Web Cache

o    Oracle Internet Directory

o    Oracle Virtual Directory

o    Oracle Forms Services

o    Oracle Reports

o    Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer

o    Oracle Business Intelligence

                  A Java component and a system component are peers.

After you install and configure Oracle Fusion Middleware, your Oracle Fusion Middleware environment contains the following:

@@ An Oracle WebLogic Server domain, which contains one Administration Server and one or more Managed Servers. The Administration Server contains Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console and Fusion Middleware Control. The Managed Servers contain components, such as Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle SOA Suite.

@@ If your environment has system components is nothing but a Oracle Instance, An Oracle instance contains one or more system components, such as Oracle Web Cache, Oracle HTTP Server, or Oracle Internet Directory. The system components in an Oracle instance must reside on the same computer. An Oracle instance directory contains updatable files, such as configuration files, log files, and temporary files.An Oracle instance is a peer of an Oracle WebLogic Server domain. Both contain specific configurations outside of their Oracle homes.The directory structure of an Oracle instance is separate from the directory structure of the Oracle home. It can reside anywhere; it need not be within the Middleware home directory.

@@ A database that is used as a metadata repository, if the components you installed require one. For example, Oracle SOA Suite requires a metadata repository.

Below figure shows Oracle Fusion Middleware environment with an Oracle WebLogic Server domain that contains an Administration Server, two Managed Servers, and an Oracle instance. The environment also includes a metadata repository.

 

Your environment also includes a Middleware home, which consists of the Oracle WebLogic Server home, and, optionally, an Oracle Common home and one or more Oracle homes

An Oracle home contains installed files necessary to host a specific component or software suite. For example, the SOA Oracle home contains a directory that contains binary and library files for Oracle SOA Suite.


Middleware Home
A Middleware home is a container for the Oracle WebLogic Server home, and, optionally, one Oracle Common home and one or more Oracle homes.

WebLogic Server Home
A WebLogic Server home contains installed files necessary to host a WebLogic Server. The WebLogic Server home directory is a peer of Oracle home directories and resides within the directory structure of the Middleware home.

Oracle Home and the Oracle Common Home
An Oracle home resides within the directory structure of the Middleware home. Each Oracle home can be associated with multiple Oracle instances or Oracle WebLogic Server domains. There can be multiple Oracle homes within each Middleware home.
The Oracle Common home contains the binary and library files required for Fusion Middleware Control and Java Required Files (JRF). There can be only one Oracle Common home within each Middleware home.

Oracle Metadata Repository
The Oracle Metadata Repository contains metadata for Oracle Fusion Middleware components, such as Oracle BPEL Process Manager, Oracle B2B, and Oracle Portal. It can also contain metadata about the configuration of Oracle Fusion Middleware and metadata for your applications.
A metadata repository can be database-based or file-based. If it is database-based, you can create it in an existing database using the Repository Creation Utility (RCU).
Oracle Fusion Middleware supports multiple repository types. A repository type represents a specific schema or set of schemas that belong to a specific Oracle Fusion Middleware component (for example, Oracle SOA Suite or Oracle Internet Directory.)
A particular type of repository, the Oracle Metadata Services (MDS) repository, contains metadata for most Oracle Fusion Middleware components, such as Oracle B2B, and for certain types of applications.