Preface

This document describes the Oracle Integration Server and its applications to your integration solution.

This preface contains:

• Objectives of the Oracle Integration Server

• Scope

• Intended Audience

• Structure of the Document

• Related Documents

• Conventions

Objectives of the Oracle Integration Server

Enterprise or e-business integration means streamlining business processes by enabling applications to communicate with each other. Enterprise integration is driven by the need to synchronize data between different systems, to automate a business process, or to isolate packaged applications from each other. e-Business and particularly B2B commerce is both accelerating the demand for traditional enterprise integration and creating demand for fundamentally new kinds of integration.

Oracle Integration Server facilitates the integration of technologies within e-businesses. It works both within Oracle products and with third-party products.

The OIS enables to:

• Synchronize data among systems using advanced replication and gateways

• Enable applications to communicate with each other synchronously and asynchronously using:
  • Message storage and management

  • Message routing and propagation

  • Data and message transformation services

  • Business process and workflow services

Scope

This book provides an overview of the technological requirements for enterprise integration and discusses various components within Oracle Integrations Server that meet these requirements.

Part III describes several advanced topics in integration such as interoperability between OIS and various third-party integration solutions.

Note that the objective of this document is to introduce you to various conceptual elements of integrations and to discuss how Oracle Integration Server can meet these requirements. It also illustrates the specific components of OIS you should use with a particular integration scenario. However, it does not describe the specific details of each component, but links you to the product-specific documentation on how to use the product, how to develop applications using it, and how to deploy and manage it.

Intended Audience

The primary audience for this document are the architects and designers who define, develop, and implement message-based integration solutions with OIS. Database administrators who manage OIS installations and developers who build predefined components of the integrations solution will also find this document useful.

We assume that you have a basic understanding of the complexities and issues of application integration. Knowledge of transaction processing and Oracle8i concepts will prove useful.

Structure of the Document

This document is structured in three parts, each introducing you to a specific aspect of e-business integration and the Oracle integration offering.

Part I provides an overview of e-business integration and discusses the business drivers for integration, specific technical challenges that must be addressed, and the key integration concepts of Oracle Integration Server.

• Chapter 1, "Overview of E-Business Integration"

• Chapter 2, "Methodology and Solutions"

• Chapter 3, "Overview of Oracle Integration Server"

• Chapter 4, "Key Integration Concepts"

Part II provides a brief overview of each of the product components of OIS and links you to the product-specific documentation for more information.

• Chapter 5, "Synchronous Application Integration"

• Chapter 6, "Data Replication and Gateways"

• Chapter 7, "Oracle Advanced Queuing and JMS"

• Chapter 8, "Oracle Message Broker and JMS"

• Chapter 9, "Directory Services (LDAP)"

• Chapter 10, "Workflow"

Part III describes several advanced topics in integration such as interoperability between OIS and various third-party integration solutions.

Related Documents

The following documents have more information about the components within OIS.

Oracle8i Server Documentation

• Oracle8i Application Developer's Guide - Advanced Queuing

• Oracle8i CORBA Developer's Guide and Reference

• Oracle8i Replication

• Oracle8i Distributed Database Systems

• Oracle Internet Directory Application Developer's Guide

• Oracle Enterprise Manager Administrator's Guide

Component Product Documentation

• Oracle8i Workflow User Guide Release 2.5.2

• Oracle8i Message Broker Administrator's Guide 2.0.1.0

• Oracle8i Supplied PL/SQL Packages Reference

• Oracle8i Supplied Java Packages Reference

• Oracle8i Online Help for Oracle Objects for OLE Release 3 (8.1.7)

• Oracle8i XML Reference

• Oracle8i Applications InterConnect 3.1.3

Conventions

This section describes the conventions used in the text and code examples of the Oracle8i documentation set. It describes:

• Conventions in Text

• Conventions in Code Examples

Conventions in Text

We use various conventions in text to help you more quickly identify special terms. The following table describes those conventions and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
Bold	Bold typeface indicates terms that are defined in the text or terms that appear in a glossary, or both.	... the C datatypes such as ub4, sword, or OCINumber ... When you specify this clause, you create an index-organized table ...
Italics	Italic typeface indicates book titles, syntax clauses, or placeholders.	Oracle8i Concepts You can specify the parallel_clause ... Run Uold_release.SQL where old_release refers to the release you installed prior to upgrading.
UPPERCASE monospace (fixed-width font)	Uppercase monospace typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. Such elements include executables, parameters, privileges, datatypes, SQL keywords, SQL*Plus or utility commands, packages and methods, as well as system-supplied column names, database objects and structures, user names, and roles.	You can specify this clause only for a NUMBER column. You can change this value in an ALTER TABLE statement. ... grouped by the DEPTNO column ... Specify the ROLLBACK_SEGMENTS parameter ... ... the DBMS_STATS.GENERATE_STATS procedure ...
lowercase monospace (fixed-width font)	Lowercase monospace typeface indicates sample user-supplied elements. Such elements include computer and database names, net service names, and connect identifiers, as well as user-supplied database objects and structures, column names, packages and classes, user names and roles, program units, and parameter values.	The deptno, dname, and loc columns are in the scott.dept table. Set the QUERY_REWRITE_ENABLED initialization parameter to true if ... Connect to the sales@sf.acme.com database. Connect as oe user.

Conventions in Code Examples

Code examples illustrate SQL, PL/SQL, SQL*Plus, or other command-line statements. They are displayed in a fixed-width font and separated from normal text as shown in this example:

SELECT username FROM dba_users WHERE username = 'MIGRATE';

The following table describes typographic conventions used in code examples and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
[ ]	Brackets enclose one or more optional items. Do not enter the brackets.	DECIMAL (digits [ , precision ])
{ }	Braces enclose two or more items, one of which is required. Do not enter the braces.	{ENABLE | DISABLE}
|	A vertical bar represents a choice of two or more options within brackets or braces. Enter one of the options. Do not enter the vertical bar.	{ENABLE | DISABLE} [COMPRESS | NOCOMPRESS]
...	Horizontal ellipsis points indicate either: That we have omitted parts of the code that are not directly related to the example That you can repeat a portion of the code	CREATE TABLE ... AS subquery; SELECT col1, col2, ... , coln FROM emp;
. . .	Vertical ellipsis points indicate that we have omitted several lines of code not directly related to the example.
Other punctuation	You must enter punctuation other than brackets, braces, vertical bars, and ellipsis points as it is shown.
Italics	Italicized text indicates variables for which you must supply particular values.	STARTUP PFILE=initsid.ora In this example, the entire string initsid.ora is a placeholder for a parameter file that must contain your particular instance ID or SID.
UPPERCASE	Uppercase typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. We show these terms in uppercase in order to distinguish them from terms you define. Unless terms appear in brackets, enter them in the order and with the spelling shown. However, because these terms are not case sensitive, you can enter them in lowercase.	SELECT ename, empno FROM emp; SQLPLUS username/password INTO TABLENAME 'table'
lowercase	Lowercase typeface indicates programmatic elements that you supply. For example, lowercase indicates names of tables, columns, or files.	SELECT ename, empno FROM emp; SQLPLUS scott/tiger