Oracle ICS & Oracle SOA

Hello Everyone,

I came up with few blog over Oracle ICS and after reading those blog, I reached on a point that Oracle ICS is nothing just oracle child version of Oracle SOA BPEL, where you design BPEL orchestration for different type of orchestration and adapter implementation.

Oracle ICS is more brode in terms of adapter support as compare to oracle SOA, but it's light weight and have few limitation.

Lets first discuss about few difference between oracle ICS and oracle SOA:

• What is oracle ICS and how it's differ from Oracle SOA:
• ICS is equivalent of Oracle Service Bus on Cloud with few functionalities added whereas  SOA/SOA CS is a full blown functionality of Service orchestration
• On permises integration support:
• Integration Cloud Service has two agents:
• Connectivity agent manages connectivity of on premise applications to ICS on Cloud.
• Execution Agent which can be downloaded and configured on premise which is an ICS instance on premise (few adapters are restricted with ICS on premise).
• When to go for ICS and when to go for SOA/SOACS ?
• If the existing application foot print is more on Cloud then ICS is best suited for integrations.
• In case of pure one premise integration, Go with SOA.
• If the integrations are too complex and would require Human interventions in the form of approvals etc., event processing, Single Sign on support.
• If the amount of data transfer involved is large as ICS restriction of messages per    connection is 100000/day.(Note that ICS connection will not reject a message after 100000).

Now let us talk more about oracle ICS:

Oracle Integration Cloud Service simplifies how you build integrations in the cloud, letting you connect securely to applications and services both in the cloud and on-premises.

Oracle Integration Cloud Service (ICS) is a new Oracle Cloud Service that allows for easy integration between cloud or on-premise systems. The various pre-built adapters allow for easy endpoint configuration so that the integration developer can focus on the integration logic. Custom adapters can be built for non-standard integration endpoints.

ICS can be accessed from the URL below, where identity domain is how Oracle groups the various cloud services purchased in the subscription. 

(https://integration-identity_domain.integration.us2.oraclecloud.com/ics/faces/global)

So what's all implementation(Integrations)provide by oracle ICS and when to choose correct one:

Integrations are the main ingredient of Oracle Integration Cloud Service. An integration includes at the least a trigger (source) connection (for requests sent to Oracle Integration Cloud Service) and invoke (target) connection (for requests sent from Oracle Integration Cloud Service to the target) and the field mapping between those two connections.

ICS has four integration pattern:

1.  Map my Data (Point to Point mapping between two service)
2. Orchestration (Condition based activity orchestrating different systems)
3. Basic Publish to ICS
4. Basic Subscribe to ICS

Let us talk about all of them in detail:

1. Orchestration: Create a synchronous, asynchronous, or fire-and-forget orchestrated integration in Oracle Integration Cloud Service that uses Oracle BPEL Process Manager capabilities. Orchestration integration features include the following:
1. Switch activities to create multiple routing expressions.
2. For-each activities for looping over repeating elements.
3. Assign activities for assigning values to scalar variables.
4. Ad-hoc mappings on switch branches.
5. Callback activities (to end a process and respond back to the sender) and end activities (to end a process without responding back to the sender) in asynchronous integrations.
6. Schedule-based integrations
2. Map Data: Create an integration with a blank trigger and invoke in which to add your own adapters. You can also create a single routing expression and request and response enrichments, as needed. You cannot create multiple routing expressions. If your integration requires this feature, create an orchestrated integration.
3. Publish to ICS: Create an integration in which you add a trigger adapter to publish messages to Oracle Integration Cloud Service through a predefined Oracle Integration Cloud Service Messaging invoke. No configuration of the invoke subscriber is required.The publisher and subscribers participating in this integration pattern can be activated and deactivated independently of each other.
4. Subscribe to ICS: Create an integration in which you add an invoke adapter to subscribe to messages from Oracle Integration Cloud Servicethrough an Oracle Integration Cloud Service Messaging trigger. You are prompted to select the publisher to which to subscribe. You must have already created a publisher to which to subscribe. The publisher does not need to be active, but must already be completely configured.
   Any business identifiers defined on fields in the published integration are copied to the subscriber. Any changes made to the published integration’s business identifiers after copying are not reflected in the subscriber. The publisher and subscribers participating in this integration pattern can be activated and deactivated independently of each other.

How to use an ICS integration: ICS integration is a Web Service which can be called by any application with capability to call web service (like JCS, Java Application, SOA etc.). ICS Integration can be scheduled to do an    activity at a specific point of time in case of File Transfer integrations.

Here are few nice articles about Oracle ICS Publish to ICS and Subscribe to ICS:
http://blog.rubiconred.com/oracle-ics-and-twilio-publish-subscribe-integration-pattern/
https://cloud.oracle.com/opc/paas/ebooks/Oracle_Integration_Cloud_Service.pdf