This isn’t the first time I’ve written about the Oracle Cloud SDK (check here), but it seems rather fitting, as some of the utilities I’ve been working on are open to the community, and #JoelKallmanDay is all about community. If you’d like to know more about #JoelKallmanDay then checkout Tim Hall’s blog here.
Oracle have provided a very rich API and then overlaid it with a number of SDKs in Python, Java etc. The SDKs immediately remove the work of creating connections and correct payloads. Taking the Python SDK for example, all I need to do is create a standard configuration file with all the necessary connection properties to my OCI instance. Then it’s simply a case of creating the correct Python object for the correct group of services wanted. Then it’s down to populating the object attributes. This is the illustration of exactly what a good SDK does. I can lean on my IDE to use the correct set and get operators. The code for establishing a connection is done for me.
What I’ve found most striking is the level of consistency in the methods provided by the SDK regardless of the service. This makes it very easy to develop functionality without needing to check every API before I can write any code. it would be easy to say, so what. But when you look at the breadth of the OCI services it becomes more impressive.
The convenience doesn’t end there. Rather than having to run your utilities from a local command line (Python means we’re pretty much OS agnostic), the Oracle Cloud shell is preconfigured with Python, OCI SDK, GitHub and FTP server and basic Linux text editors. The all amounts to the fact that you can use your scripts/tools from within the web UI of OCI. Edit your credentials file locally, push and pull any changes to the scripts from the shell and any Git repo such as GitHub.
With this insight, we just need to build that catalogue of accelerator tools to make those repetitive processes just a little easier. For example ensuring that when you tear down your manually created services all interlinked entities are deleted first (which can be troublesome with policies, groups, compartments and so on).
A periodic conversation I get involved is the the relationship between Oracle’s SOA Suite and Integration Cloud. We’ve long held a view based on our conversations with Oracle product management.
There is a formal statement of direction for SOA Suite available ….
SOA Suite isn’t going to be scrapped and customers will not be forced onto Integration Cloud.
Future changes are going to be on making transitions easier to the cloud, and a customer decision to adopt OIC.
Releases will focus on keeping things up to date and aligned with the underlying technologies from Java 8 to Java 11 as a long term release of Java. WebLogic version updates.
We’ll see mechanisms to cloud deliver integrations as the primary focus.
While there is a deserved amount of publicity around the introduction of ARM compute onto OCI with the ARM Ampere CPU offering, and the amazing level of always free compute being provided (24GB of memory and 4 cores which can be used in any combination of servers). There have been some interesting announcements that perhaps haven’t drawn as much attention that they deserve. This includes OCI support for GitHub Actions, plus several new DevOps services and an Artifact Registry. We’ll comeback to the new services in another post. Today, let’s look at GitHub Actions.
Last night saw the final chapter of Logging in Action with Fluentd go back to my editor. The next step is that Chapter (and others I hope) will go to MEAP, so early readers not only get the final chapter, but also the raft of improvements we’ve made. Along with that, the manuscript goes for a full peers review. Once that’s back, its time for a round of edits as I address the feedback then into copy editing and Manning sign off review.
As you might have guessed, we’ve kept busy with an article in the 25th edition of OraWorld. This follows Part 1 talking about GraphQL with a look at considerations for API Security.
In addition to that we’re working on a piece around automation of OCI management activities such as setting up developers, allowing them a level of freedom to experiment without accidentally burning through all your credits by spinning up Exadata servers or 500 node Kubernetes clusters.
We might even have some time to write more about APIs and integration.
Opening of the blog post on blogs.oracle.commy Author Profile on blogs.oracle.com
World Festival Conference
We’ve also scored another success, this time we’ve been invited to speak at WorldFestival in August, this is an online conference organized by the same team behind DeveloperWeek. This is the first time outside of an Oracle linked event where I’ve been amongst the first few named speakers, so proud of that. The conference looks really interesting as it looks beyond just core developer themes with conference tracks on Space & Transportation, Smart Cities, Robotics, Digital Health to name a few of the 12 streams. Worth checking out.
I’ve not posted about the developer meetups for a little while, perhaps because with everything being virtual these days things blur together too much. But its time to put that right (at least a little). So over the last couple of month’s we’ve been fortunate enough to have a couple of Oracle’s guru’s from the A-Team covering some pretty interesting topics.
November saw Chris Peytier exploring the process management side of Integration Cloud and how process management and more traditional integration can come together to offer a very effective solution with example use cases such as the idea of when conditions are not valid for an integration to be executed Chris’ slides are here.
Then this week we had Angelo Santagata complete with Santa hat talking about Serverless as a means to enable SaaS extensions and integrations through the use of Oracle Functions (the cloud-deployed version of Project Fn). You can get the presentation here.
If the slides aren’t enough then you can catch the presentations as videos, Angelo’s is here and I’m sure we’ll see Chris’ made available as well.
2021
I’m excited to say that we have a coyuple of presentations lined up for 2021 already so keep an eye on the London Oracle Developer Meetup. So watch out for the updates in the new year.
OKit is a tremendous tool for the visual design and development for your Oracle Cloud environment. Visualizing your networks, positioning of service gateways and so on makes it a lot easier than filling in web forms or writing Terraform files as you can see the relationships between the different parts far more easily. For the same reason really that a lot of people use Visio and other tools for this work. The real beauty is that OKit can generate the Terraform and Ansible scripting that can then be used to deliver the implementation.
Okit for visual design of Oracle Cloud
The tool isn’t currently an official Oracle product, but something built by the Oracle A-Team (a small team of gurus who have a role blending developer advocacy, architect supporting customers for the special edge cases and providing thought leadership). But we can hope that someone brings it into the fold and perhaps even incorporates it securely into the cloud dashboard. In the mean time, the code in its entirety is available on GitHub.
Oracle’s data integration product landscape outside of GoldenGate has with the arrival of Oracle Cloud been confusing at times. This has meant finding the right product documentation can be challenging, and knowing which product to use in your own technology road-map can be harder to formulate. I believe the landscape is starting to settle now. But to understand the position, let’s look at the causes of disturbance and the changes that have occurred.
Why the complexity?
This has come from I think a couple of key factors. The organizational challenges triggered by Thomas Kurian’s departure which has resulted in rather than the product organization being essentially in three parts aligning roughly to Infrastructure, Platform and Applications to being two Infrastructure and Apps. Add to this Oracle’s cloud has gone through two revolutions. Generation 1 now called Classic was essentially a recognition that they needed an answer to Microsoft, Google and AWS quickly (Oracle are now migrating customers off classic). Then came Generation 2, which is a more considered strategy which is leveraging not just the lowest level stack of virtualization (network and compute), but driving changes all the way through the internals of applications by having them leverage common technologies such as microservices along with a raft of software services such as monitoring, logging, metering, events, notifications, FaaS and so on. Essentially all the services they offer are also integral to their own offerings. The nice thing about Gen2 is you can see a strong alignment to CNCF (Cloud Native Compute Foundation) along with other open public standards (formal or de-facto such as Microprofile with Helidon and Apache). As a result despite the perceptions of Oracle, modern apps are standard a better chance of portability.
Impact on ODI
Oracle’s Data Integration capabilities, cloud or otherwise have been best known as Oracle Data Integrator or ODI. The original ODI was the data equivelent of SOA Suite implementing Extract Load Transform (ELT) rather than ETL as it meant the Oracle DB was fully leveraged. This was built on the WebLogic server.
Along Came Cloud
Oracle cloud came along, and there is a natural need for ODI capabilities. Like SOA Suite, the first evolution was to provide ODI Cloud Service just like SOA Suite had SOA Cloud Service. Both are essentially the same on-premises product with UIs to manage deployment and configuration.
ODI’s cloud transformation for the cloud lead ODI CS evolving into DIPC (Data Integration Platform Cloud). Very much an evolution, but with a more web centered experience for designing the integrations. However, DIPC is no longer available (except possible to customers already using it).
Whilst DIPC had been evolving the requirement to continue with on-premises ODI capabilities is needed. Whilst we don’t know for sure, we can speculate that there was divergent development happening creating overhead as ODI as an on-prem solution remained. We then saw the arrival of ODI Marketplace, this provides an easier transition, including taking into account licensing considerations. DIPC has been superseded by ODI Marketplace.
Marketplace
Oracle has developed a Marketplace just like the other major players so that 3rd party vendors could offer their technologies on the Oracle cloud, just as you can with Azure and AWS. But Oracle have also exploited it to offer their traditional products normally associated with on-premise deployments in the cloud. As a result we saw ODI Marketplace. A smart move as it offers the possibility of exploiting on-prem licensing into the cloud along with portability.
So far the ODI capabilities in its different forms continued to leverage its WebLogic foundations. But by this time the Gen2 Oracle Cloud and the organizational structures behind it has been well established, and working up the value stack. Those products in the middleware space have been impacted by both the technology strategies and organization. As a result API for example have been aligned to the OCI native space, but Integration Cloud has been moved towards the Apps space. in many respects this reflects a low code vs code native model.
OCI ODI
Earlier this year (2020) Oracle launched a brand new ODI product, to use its full name Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Data Integration. This is an OCI native (i.e. Gen2 solution leveraging microservices technologies).
This new product appears to be a very much ground up build as it exploits Apache Spark and Function as a Service (FaaS) as foundational elements. As a ground up build, it doesn’t inherit all the adapters the original ODI can offer. This does mean as a solution today it is very focused on some specific needs around supporting the data movement between the various Oracle Cloud storage and Database as a Service solutions rather than general ingestion and extraction processes.
Conclusion
Products are evolving, but the direction of travel appears to be resolving. But we are still in that period where there are capability gaps between the Gen2 native solution and the traditional ODI via Marketplace solution. As a result the question becomes less which product, but when and if I have to invest in using ODI Marketplace how to migrate when the native product catches up.
Earlier this month as part of the Virtual Oracle Developer Meetups, we were very fortunate to have Oracle Ace, Martien van den Akker present on the subject of the magic of correlations in SOA, BPM, and Oracle Integration Cloud. Martien not only presents to the Oracle community but also is very active on the Oracle community sites (community.oracle.com and Cloud Customer Connect) sharing his wealth of knowledge. When it comes to the tough questions about Oracle middleware tech on these platforms, you stand a good chance that Martien will be the one answering your question.
This insightful presentation not only addressed the traditional Oracle Integration approach using SOA and BPM but also contrasted the capabilities as provided by Oracle Cloud. Martien was generous enough to allow us to record the presentation and share it (below), along with the demo resources from:
Phil (aka MP3Monster)'s Blog 
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