This post has been contributed by Ankesh who is a reader of this blog.  He wants to share his views about Oracle Fusion.

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Before we start with what oracle fusion really is and the magic it does let’s familiarize ourselves with the basic terminologies which we may have come across.

Oracle Fusion

An integration of oracle applications such as Business Suite, People soft, JD Edwards, Siebel, Retek, Stellent etc into a set of next generation application based on an open industry standards having based on Service Oriented Architecture is known as Oracle Fusion.

Oracle Fusion Middleware

The technical platform used to build the Oracle Fusion application is termed as Oracle Fusion Technical platform which together forms the Oracle Fusion Middleware.

Oracle Fusion Architecture

The blue print which holds the Oracle Application, middleware platform and grid technology as one entity describes the architecture of Oracle Fusion

The Below outline sketch describes in brief some left out details of Oracle fusion

The abbreviated coined firms are better knows as:

• OLM: Object Relational Mappers
• SOA: Service Oriented Architecture
• XML: eXtensible Markup Language
• SAML: Security Assertion Markup Language
• BPEL: Business Process Execution Language
• JFDP: Java Frameworks and Design Parameters

Let’s have a view of Products which are comprised in Oracle Fusion.

• JD Developer Top Link & ADF
• BPEL Process manger, SOA Suite, e-Business Suite
• Identity Management Suite
• BI Suite, Web Centre and Oracle Protocol
• Single Sign ON
• Grid Control

From the above points, we come across the different aspects of Oracle Fusion both technical and product wise. The whole laying of foundation stone for Oracle fusion has been done on the basis of Industry Standards working across the globe thus defining oracle technical foundation in a way so that Oracle customers understand the skill sets which their team will be supporting in current as well as in the times to come.

Oracle Fusion Components

The following are high level definitions of key technical components of Oracle Fusion.

Oracle JDeveloper - This Integrated Development Environment is the base development platform used by Oracle developers to build Oracle Fusion applications. JDeveloper contains interfaces for development with J2EE, SQL, PL/SQL, HTML, Web Services, SOA, JSF, ADF, etc. This IDE should be looked at as a development environment for developing database and Internet applications.

Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) – J2EE is an industry standard for developing enterprise multi-tiered applications. J2EE is an architecture and framework for enterprise wide applications. J2EE applications include JSPs, JSFs, ADF Faces, EJBs, etc.

Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) – ADF is a J2EE development framework that is based upon best practice design patterns for building Web applications. ADF is based upon the Model-View-Controller that separates User Interface, Business and Data logic. J2EE frameworks can be complex and it can be difficult to determine how to organize different components. ADF helps organize J2EE components into a well organized Web application. ADF Faces provides a Web user interface similar to the Oracle Forms and Reports interfaces.

Top Link - Top Link is an Object Relational mapper that manages the communication between Java (object-oriented) applications and the Oracle database (relational).

XML - XML has become the universal language for transmitting data structures independent of the environment. J2EE, Web Services, SOA and BPEL use XML.

Web Services - Web (software) Services uses XML standards and transport

Communication protocols to exchange data between applications. Web services allow different types of applications to communicate. Web services are standards that define the semantics for how software communicates.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) -SOA is an architecture that defines how loosely coupled software services communicate with each other. SOA increases reusability that allows different software services to identify and communicate with each other.

Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) – BPEL is a standard for organizing reusable web services into more than one type of process flow.

Identity Management - Identity Management provides enterprise management of user identities across resources inside and outside the firewall.

Single Sign-On (SSO) – SSO provides unified authentication allowing a user to logon once and SSO will manage single sign-on capability across applications.

Grid Control – Oracle Enterprise Manager provides administration across the database and all middle tiers. Grid Control provides monitoring of databases, application servers, web services and applications.

This article will be continued in the next post….