Upgrading Applications Leveraging SOA
An executive update on Oracle’s industry strategy
November 2008
OAUG board member Basheer Khan uses an Oracle white paper titled Application Upgrades and SOA to discuss the concept of leveraging Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) while upgrading Oracle Applications. Upgrades are especially painful if they involve customizations that were incorporated to address critical missing functionality or to integrate with other applications. According to industry experts, 57 percent of ERP users are not on current release because of the prohibitive cost of upgrading customizations. Upgrades typically require 20 percent or more of the initial implementation cost, and with testing efforts, sometimes it is easier and cheaper to just re-implement. If you relate to the above, then this article and white papers referenced below are a must-read for you.
Oracle has introduced several innovations for upgrading the existing Applications Unlimited (E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards or Siebel): enhanced patch management, cloning automation and tools to report and compare setup data. Oracle`'s future upgrade path to Fusion Applications promises a technology evolution with automated data upgrades, guides, best practices and tools for assessing and upgrading customization. The good news is that you do not have to wait for Fusion Applications to benefit from this technology evolution. Oracle Applications are now "service enabled" and certified to work with Oracle Fusion Middleware, enabling you to leverage its components during upgrades.
So why should SOA be part of an upgrade? The answer is quite simple — SOA is a software architectural concept that defines the use of services to support business requirements. These self-describing, reusable building blocks can be leveraged to develop loosely coupled, standards-based customizations. So, instead of re-applying customizations using code and tools that are native to the application, you can introduce SOA-based components that are language, platform and application agnostic.
Specifically, Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), Application Development Framework (ADF), BI Publisher, Business Activity Monitor (BAM) and Web Center are some of the components you can leverage today. These are the same components that are being used to develop Fusion Applications!
This table illustrates a few use cases:
| Custom Functionality |
Conventional approach |
SOA-based approach |
| Screens |
Build screens using native tools |
Develop new screens using Oracle ADF or Oracle Application Express. Use BPEL to interact with application using native APIs |
| Reports |
Develop reports using native tools |
Build and render reports using BI Publisher |
| Business Processes or Workflow |
Develop custom code to enable business process or workflow |
Leverage BPEL and Oracle Business Rules to build business processes or workflow |
| Integration |
Develop interfaces using native tools |
Use BPEL to enable standards-based integration |
| Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) |
Establish using EDI/XML Gateway and third party translators |
Leverage BPEL and Integration B2B for business integration using EDI, RosettaNet or ebXML |
| Portal or Dashboards |
Develop using embedded native portal framework |
Leverage Web Center Suite and BAM to build dashboards |
The following Oracle white papers further describe how SOA-enablement will help you reduce cost and risk of Application upgrades:
In conclusion, I hope this article helps you rethink your customizations approach for your next upgrade. Investing in SOA technology now will not only reduce risk and upgrade costs but also pave the path to an easier Fusion upgrade and reduced maintenance costs in the future.
OAUG board member Basheer Khan, CEO and founder of Irvine, California-based Innowave Technology, is an Oracle ACE Director, Oracle Magazine's Integration Architect of the Year 2006 and Oracle Application Users Group (OAUG) Member of the Year 2003. Basheer has served on the OAUG board of directors since January 2007.
