Architect Consultant blog

Today I had my SOASchool.com Module 8 exam for the SOA Certified Architect certification. Suggested preparation: You have to follow a course or buy the selfstudy kit Read the chapters of the SOA Design Patterns book Read the reader of the selfstudy kit You really need to understand the Patterns and also the use of the patterns in relation to each other Questions The questions are the same as the other exams Select All That Apply are the difficult ones and there were quite a lot Next is the final Module 9  for me, and this is the Lab. The Certification is valuable, because it shows that you know and understand the terms and challenges you face when working within a Service Oriented Architecture. Or trying to work towards a SOA. The nice thing about this certification is that it is Vendor Neutral. It does not mention a particular platform. It does however address the SOA standards out there and that is a good thing of course. The customers will also recognize this kind of

Introduction This blog item gives a short overview of the Oracle BPM Suite 11g.  If you as an architect, developer or sales person do no want to read all documentation, this can be a good starting point :-) More thorough documentation can be found here . Component Overview The BPM Suite contains the following components. As can be seen, the suite is layered on the Oracle SOA Suite and they share the following components Business Rules Engine Human Workflow Engine Adapter Framework for integration Oracle BPM Studio Tool within JDeveloper to create and simulate business models using BPMN 2.0. Oracle Business Process Composer Web-base application that enables business users to collaborate with developers and designers. A catalog of services, tasks and rules can be created in Studio and this catalog can be included in project templates, which can then be used to create new projects within  Business Process Composer. Here Business Rules can be edited at run time. Oracle Metadata Ser

Today I browsed through some nice sessions  on the Oracle ADF Framework . I heard from the framework but not know what I can expect from the Framework and how it is related to SOA and Fusion Middleware. The Framework is actually quite big and implements the Model-View-Controller  architectural pattern which makes GUI development easier to develop and maintain. Oracle sets it as "next generation" Web User Interfaces for Fusion Applications Middleware components like Enterprise Manager WebCenter Spaces The next picture shows an overview of the components of ADF. So I asked myself how is this Framework to be positioned with Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle BPM Suite and Oracle Service Bus? The next picture shows its place. In my view within a SOA 5-layering architecture: ADF can perfectly be used within the development of the presentation layer. The OSB is generally used as an abstraction between all 5 layers. This means that all Services (Task Services, Entity Services an

Just like the SOA Suite specialization path, Oracle is working on a BPM specialization path for certification. Note: For the links used in this Blog item you need to have an Oracle Partner Account. The following information was already made available for Partners: BPM knowledge zone , in which you can become a member of Oracle Mix which is a Social Network to share ideas and to ask questions. You can become a member of Oracle BPM Suite and Oracle BPA Suite. There is also a BPM Bootcamp , just like the SOA Suite 11g Bootcamp. This is a 4-day bootcamp and as a prerequisite follow 4 webcasts. BPM Sales Guidebook which can be used by the sales persons and contains some management summaries. The implementation Certification is not ready yet but there are some assessments available for PreSales Consultant  and  Sales . You can test your knowledge after the BPM bootcamp here  with an online assessment.

I find it interesting to note that there are a lot of Social Media Tools out there. If you google on "social media tool" you get 2.650.000 hits.  When you do the same for "bpm tool" you get 14.600 hits. You can say that there are of course a lot of small social media tools and that a BPM tool is a lot complexer. Would it be wrong to ask myself if we could help business with (mostly free) social media tools instead of a (mostly more expensive) BPM tools? Some arguments in favor of social media tools, i can think of: Mostly for free There are a lot Mostly simple Fun to work with There are also some disadvantages i can think of: How long will the tool exist? How secure is it? Can it handle a lot of users? Can it handle the performance that is sometimes required? What is the support? Integration with other tools? So probably the disadvantages will block CIOs from using them in business critical business processes, but maybe they can be very valuable in u

Introduction Oracle has introduced the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud system, but what is it and what can you do with it? This blog item is a small excerpt of the full article that can be found here . The management summary The Exalogic is:  "the first system specifically designed to provide enterprises with a foundation for secure, mission-critical private cloud capable of virtually unlimited scale, unbeatable performance, and previously unimagined management simplicity". In other words the first private cloud supermachine and datacenter of the 21rst century. It can run all kinds of applications of Linux and Solaris and is optimized for Enterprise Java , Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle's Fusion Applications . Overview The next figure shows the hard- and software stack. Hardware The InfiniBand  I/O forms the hart of the horizontal scaling capabilities of the system. Fast connection to Exadata Database Machines . There is a small, medium or full rack config

Introduction This blog item highlights some points of Oracle for 2011 that will be be important for 2011. Cloud in a box As Larry Ellison stressed out: The new competitive battleground in corporate IT will be centered on optimizing the performance of hardware-plus-software systems that have been specifically engineered for superior performance, speed of installation, and minimum of integration. He wants to fight IBM for the #1 position on the high end computing servers. Its about the  Exadata , Exalogic , and Sparc Superclusters machines . For me as a Fusion Middleware guy I am curious in the Exalogic proposition and when I can first use it and develop on it here in the Netherlands. Fusion Middleware Suite Oracle has made a great step forward with the Middleware Fusion 11g stack, which is better integrated. The new 12c (c=Cloud) is on its way too ! The product is more integrated with fault management framework and security policy framework. It also contains the Event Delivery Network,