European Space Agency
www.esa.int/esaCP
Oracle Products& services:
 |
Oracle BPEL Process Manager |
|
The European Space Agency (ESA)
The European Space Agency (ESA) has 15 and soon 17 Member States and is Europe's gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe's space capability and ensure that investments in space continue to deliver benefits to European citizens. ESA projects are designed to research the Earth and the space environment, to develop satellite-based technologies and facilities, and to promote European industries and services.
The Challenge
ESA was tasked with creating an Internet environment to support services based on Earth Observation data. Within this environment, services from numerous partners, even with complex schemas and open GIS outputs, can be chained, in order to support the extraction, preparation, and provision of the information necessary to other service providers or to end users. The technical challenge of the solution consists of chaining and overlaying extremely large data sets (~30 MBs) with complex schemas from numerous partners. These partners communicate via synchronous as well as long-running asynchronous web services. By combining data from over 30 geospatial resources, the service correlates previously disconnected data sources to provide its customers with a greater understanding and improved ability to analyze satellite-images. In cooperation with its system integrator, Spacebel s.a. and its subcontractors GIM and Intecs, ESA embarked on building the Service Support Environment (SSE) Portal.
|
|
Create an Internet environment to support services based on Earth Observation data satellite-imaging service |
|
Data is distributed across many geospatial resources and partners |
|
Large data sets with complex schemas open geographic systems (GIS) |
|
The Solution
The SSE uses Struts and orchestrates synchronous and asynchronous web services (WS Addressing using Apache Axis) using Oracle BPEL Process Manager. ESA is in a Linux environment using Oracle databases and WebLogics and JBoss applications servers. Oracle BPEL Process Manager is used to construct the standards-compliant integration and workflow backbone among the partners and data sources, facilitating service publication and chaining and delivery of information. ESA considered using BEA’s WebLogics Integration, but it is proprietary and lacked the necessary functionality.
The end result is a fully distributed and highly scalable system, based on open standards, including J2EE, XML, SOAP, and WSDL, that allows for the integration of several data sources and services while providing a workflow engine that organizes their interactions and facilitates the distribution of the resulting aggregated information.
|
|
Orchestrates synchronous and asynchronous web services using Oracle |
|
Workflow engine is exposed as a web service |
|
Portal front-end using Struts, Oracle database for production, and JBoss application server |
|
Fully distributed, highly scalable, and reusable system |
|
Why Oracle
ESA chose Oracle BPEL Process Manager because it is BPEL complaint and offers feature-rich functionality allowing any partner to rapidly introduce a new offering. Furthermore, the Oracle BPEL Process Manager eases the management of a complicated process involving numerous back-end systems and partners. Coupled with the flexibility and agility offered by Oracle BPEL Process Manager, ESA provides a high quality environment that can change with evolving needs and that is available to service providers, space agencies, European institutions, etc., to foster the synergies among simple or complex services using standard web service interfaces and Oracle BPEL Process Manager.
|
|
Native BPEL, 100% standards compliant |
|
Feature rich, easy-to-use functionality |
|
Responsive support and engineering organization |
|
Depth and breadth of IT infrastructure products |
|
|
|
