Introduction to Adapter for Oracle Applications

This chapter covers the following topics:

Overview of Adapter for Oracle Applications
New Features in This Release

Overview of Adapter for Oracle Applications

Oracle Applications is a set of integrated business applications that runs entirely on the Internet. Oracle Applications offers you the following:

Reduced costs
Increased value across front-office and back-office functions
Access to current, accurate, and consistent data

Oracle Applications are built on a unified information architecture that consolidates data from Oracle and non-Oracle applications and enables a consistent definition of customers, suppliers, partners, and employees across the entire enterprise. This results in a suite of applications that can give you information, such as current performance metrics, financial ratios, profit and loss summaries. To connect Oracle Applications to non-Oracle applications, you use Oracle Fusion Middleware Adapter for Oracle Applications.

Adapter for Oracle Applications not only provides comprehensive, bidirectional, multimodal, synchronous, and asynchronous connectivity to Oracle Applications, but also supports for all modules of Oracle Applications in Release 12, Release 11.5.10, and Release 11.5.9 including custom integration interfaces in various versions of Oracle E-Business Suite.

Important: Please note that Adapter for Oracle Applications is also informally known as Oracle E-Business Suite Adapter.

The support for various versions of Oracle E-Business Suite has the following conditions:

Adapter for Oracle Applications supports Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11.5.9, as well as Release 12.0 and above.
Adapter for Oracle Applications supports Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11.5.10 which works with OWF.G.Rollup 7 applied.
To enable the native Oracle E-Business Suite connectivity using J2EE data sources feature, the minimum requirement for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i is 11i.ATG_PF.H.Delta.6 (RUP6), and for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 is Release 12.0.4.

See "Oracle Fusion Middleware Adapter for Oracle Applications, Release 11g", My Oracle Support (formerly OracleMetaLink) Knowledge Document 787637.1 for details.

Major Features

Adapter for Oracle Applications provides the following features:

It leverages the Integration Repository to provide the information from the source of truth on integration.
It supports the widest range of integration interface types. They are PL/SQL APIs, Business Events, Open Interface Tables, Concurrent Programs, XML Gateway Interfaces, e-Commerce Gateway Interface, and Interface Views.
It generates adapter metadata as WSDL files with JCA extension.

Note: For more information, see Oracle Fusion Middleware User's Guide for Technology Adapters.
It works under the securely configured connection between Oracle Applications and Oracle Fusion Middleware using just the FND User name and password for authentication.
It leverages and supports Oracle User Management function security feature to allow only authorized users to access and execute APIs that they are exposed as Web services to update Oracle Applications.
It implicitly takes care of applications context without bothering about the complexities of initiating the same explicitly.
It supports multiple languages and multiple organization access control (MOAC) setup.
It uses a JDeveloper based design-time tool for dynamically browsing the Oracle Applications interfaces and configuring the adapter metadata. The design-time tasks are wizard driven, user-friendly, and intuitive providing superior user experiences.
It provides the global transaction control support implementing two-phase commit by leveraging the underlying JCA standards compliant framework.
It supports multiple versions of Oracle E-Business Suite from the same instance of Adapter at design time as well as run time.

Architecture

Adapter for Oracle Applications is based on JCA 1.5 standards and deployed as a resource adapter within the Oracle WebLogic Server container. The architecture of Adapter for Oracle Applications is similar to the architecture of technology adapters.

Adapter for Oracle Applications Architecture

the picture is described in the document text

For more information on technology adapters, see Oracle Fusion Middleware User's Guide for Technology Adapters.

Installing Adapter for Oracle Applications

Adapter for Oracle Applications and Oracle JCA Adapters are available as part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware install. In addition, these adapters support both Oracle WebLogic Server and middle tier deployments.

For more information, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Guide for Oracle SOA Suite.

Integration with Oracle Fusion Middleware

Adapter for Oracle Applications integrates with the JCA Binding Component of the Oracle Fusion Middleware platform; therefore, it integrates with service engines, such as Oracle BPEL Process Manager (Oracle BPEL PM) and Oracle Mediator.

Adapter for Oracle Applications can easily expose public integration interface within Oracle E-Business Suite as standard Web services. These services can be created and configured in the Oracle JDeveloper at design time while integrating with Oracle BPEL PM and Oracle Mediator. At run time, Oracle E-Business Suite integration flows are deployed in the Oracle WebLogic Server for execution of the services to complete the integration.

Oracle BPEL Process Manager

Based on the service-oriented architecture (SOA), Oracle BPEL Process Manager (BPEL PM) provides a comprehensive solution for creating, deploying, and managing Oracle BPEL Process Manager business processes.
Oracle Mediator

Oracle Mediator provides a lightweight framework to route data from service providers to external partners. In addition, it can subscribe to and publish business events, as well as transform data using XSL Transformations.

For example, a Mediator can accept data contained in a text file from an application or service, transform it to a format appropriate for updating a database that serves as a customer repository, and then route and deliver the data to that database.

Design Time

While integrating with Oracle BPEL PM and Oracle Mediator, Adapter for Oracle Applications uses Oracle JDeveloper as the design-time tool to create SOA Composite applications and generate WSDL and JCA files for the Web services.

When you create a partner link in Oracle JDeveloper BPEL Designer, the Adapter Configuration Wizard starts and allows you to select and configure the Adapters for Oracle Applications or other adapters. With proper database and service connection setups, you are presented with a functionally organized list of inbound and outbound interfaces available in your Oracle E-Business Suite instance for which you select the one that fulfill your requirements. When configuration is complete, the wizard generates a WSDL file corresponding to the XML schema for the partner link.

Additional process activities are added to the BPEL process if necessary to assign parameters and invoke the service.

Run Time

Adapter for Oracle Applications is based on the JCA 1.5 specification. A Composite application including the BPEL processes, Mediator services, and partner link definitions generated at design time is deployed to the Oracle WebLogic Server. A JCA Binding Component acts as the glue layer that integrates the standard JCA 1.5 resource adapter with the Oracle BPEL Process Manager during run time. The JCA Binding Component acts as a pseudo JCA 1.5 container.

Note: Only the JCA 1.5 integration allows the BPEL PM to receive inbound events (from EIS to J2EE/BPEL PM). The Oracle BPEL Process Manager acts as a pseudo JCA 1.5 container and implements the JCA 1.5-specific System Contracts. The JCA 1.5 resource adapter and the BPEL PM instance must be deployed in the same Oracle WebLogic Server container.

The Web service invocation launched by the BPEL Invoke activity contained in the SOA Composite is converted to a JCA CCI (Common Client Interface) outbound interaction, and the JCA response is converted back to a Web service response. This end-to-end invocation is synchronous.

Testing the SOA Composite Application at Run Time

After deploying the SOA Composite application, you should validate the design by testing the BPEL process contained in the deployed SOA Composite application to test the interface integration.

For detailed design-time and run-time tasks for each integration interface, see the individual interface chapter explained later in this book.

Integration with Oracle WebLogic Server

Oracle WebLogic Server is a scalable, enterprise-ready Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) application server. Its infrastructure enables enterprises to deploy mission-critical applications in a robust, secure, highly available, and scalable environment and is an ideal foundation for building applications based on service-oriented architectures (SOA). SOA is a design methodology aimed at maximizing the reuse of application services.

In addition, Oracle WebLogic Server consists of a JCA container for hosting JCA resource adapters. JCA defines standard Java interfaces for simplifying the integration of a J2EE server with various back-end applications. All client applications run within the Oracle WebLogic Server environment.

Design Time

Oracle JDeveloper is used to create Web services represented in WSDL files and XML Schema Definition (XSD) files for the adapter request-response service.

The Oracle WebLogic Server clients use these XSD files during run time for calling the JCA outbound interaction.

Run Time

Oracle Adapter for Oracle Applications is based on the JCA 1.5 specification and is deployed as resource adapter within the Oracle WebLogic Server container. The JCA 1.5 specification addresses the life-cycle management, message-inflow (for Adapter Event publish), and work management contracts.

For more information about using Oracle WebLogic Server with Oracle JDeveloper, see the Using WebLogic Server with Oracle JDeveloper section, Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Guide for Oracle JDeveloper.

New Features in This Release

This section describes the new features that have been added in Oracle Fusion Middleware Adapter for Oracle Applications 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.6.0).

Support for Business Event Groups

A business event group is a type of event containing a set of individual business events. To provide full support in integration scenarios for business events, Oracle Adapter for Oracle Applications now extends the functionality to include the support for multiple business events when handled as a group.

This feature lets you create a single partner link for different business events belonging to an event group. A service created for an event group would be able to dequeue payloads corresponding to any of the events within the group.

Once an event group is defined, a subscription that is registered for an event group will be executed when any of the individual events within it is triggered.

This enhancement applies to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 and Release 11.5.10.

For more information about business event groups, see Business Event Groups.

Automatic FND Logging for PL/SQL APIs and Concurrent Programs

In this release, logging can be automatically controlled or enabled for PL/SQL APIs and Concurrent Programs by using log level set for the runtime logger oracle.soa.adapter in Oracle SOA Suite. There is no need to enable the FND logging framework on the Oracle E-Business Suite side separately.

Previously, while invoking PL/SQL APIs and Concurrent Programs, Adapter for Oracle Applications had no control whether the logs in Oracle E-Business Suite leveraging from FND logging framework were generated or not. With this release, FND logging can be automatically enabled for PL/SQL APIs and Concurrent Programs using oracle.soa.adapter runtime logger.

This feature is available for Oracle E-Business Suite Releases 12.1.3 and above only.

For more information about this feature, see Automatic FND Logging for PL/SQL APIs and Concurrent Programs Using oracle.soa.adapter Runtime Logger.

Enhanced Error and Exception Handling

Oracle Adapter for Oracle Applications now throws more user-friendly, descriptive exceptions and error messages, which might occur during invocation of the interfaces - PL/SQL APIs and Concurrent Programs. These messages would help in identifying the root cause of the exceptions or errors more easily. Apart from providing descriptive error messages during adapter preprocessing and the run-time execution by Database Adapter and AQ Adapter, it also provides a way to retrieve the functional errors thrown by PL/SQL APIs at run time, without the need for an extra invocation to retrieve them.

For examples, the following exceptions would be thrown at run time for issues mentioned below:

AppsContextValidationException during adapter preprocessing due to issues around applications context setting.
FunctionSecurityValidationException for issues around Function Security authorization checks for the interface that is invoked.

This enhancement applies to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, Release 11.5.10, and Release 11.5.9.

For more information on error and exception handling, see Enhanced Error and Exception Handling.