| May 2021 Edition Oracle Integration & Process Partner Community Newsletter |
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| Grow the Oracle Cloud business and connect, extend & innovate Oracle SaaS solutions. |
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| Dear PaaS Partner Community |
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It is time for the May quarterly update to Oracle Integration. With Spring in the air, we are excited to share all our exciting new features and improvements. Thanks to Simone, Antony, Michael and Niall for the blog post series:
Visual Builder Cloud Service is the user interface tool for many SaaS services. This SaaS solutions can be connected with Oracle integration and extended with custom process. Consultants can use the same VBCs and OIC services like Oracle SaaS team. Jan posted an article on complex gateways article in the process & innovation section. |
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| For a short summary of our monthly key information watch the PaaS Partner Updates on YouTube. The May edition highlights an on-demand training to become a chatbot expert and Artie a digital assistant. |
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In this month’s community webcast Martin Jarvis and Martijn de Grunt will present hot to accelerate a chatbot project with Oracle Digital Assistant Templates . Please join the Partner Community Webcast May 18th 2021. On-demand webcast recordings are available at the Oracle Video Hub.
Want to publish your best practice article & news in the next community newsletter? Please feel free to send it via Twitter @soaCommunity #PaaSCommunity.
Keep safe!
Jürgen Kress |
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| Accelerate your chatbot projects with Oracle Digital Assistant |
| May 18th, 16:30 - 17:30 CET (Berlin time) |
Digital Assistant Templates provide you with a solid foundation on which to deliver awesome conversational experiences.
• Fast track your first release
• Solid foundation to extend more
• Learn from best practice examples
• Simple to tailor to your needs |
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Templates are available for: Oracle HCM, Oracle ERP – Project Management, Oracle Transport Management / ERP, Oracle TALEO, Oracle PeopleSoft, Oracle OBDX (Financial Services GBU), Oracle Field Service, Oracle EPM, CX Service, Frequently Asked Questions and IT Helpdesk.
Join this webcast to learn more about the templates available and see live demos of them in action.
Speaker: Martin Jarvis and Martijn de Grunt
Schedule: Tuesday May 18th, 16:30 – 17:30 CET (Berlin time) |
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| Free on-demand PaaS Partner Community Webcasts |
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Thanks for attending our monthly community webcasts. Every month a speaker from the Oracle product management teams presents the latest updates on the Oracle Cloud Platform. In case you missed one of them, take the opportunity to watch our community webcasts on-demand:
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| PaaS Partner YouTube Update |
| May 2021 |
The May video includes three topics:
- On-demand chatbot hands-on training
- Artie a digital assistant
- Chatbot templates webcast
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| Integrate SaaS hands-on Bootcamps Webtraining |
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Do you want to find out why Gartner named Oracle as a Leader in Magic Quadrant for three years in a row? Are you able to innovate quickly in the new digital world? Are you looking for ways to integrate systems and data faster using a modern cloud integration platform? Attend the Oracle Integration Bootcamp, a three days hands-on training for Oracle partners!
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| Oracle Implementation Certifications |
| Enablement and certification is key to cloud succe |
At the Oracle Competence Center and Online Learning Library partners can attend free on-line classes and certifications. Free vouchers for the implementation exam (USD 245) are part of your OPN benefits. To request them please contact your Oracle partner manager.
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| Permanent service for Partners free of charge! Want to try, test and get trained on Oracle Integration? Use our OIC playground - a shared permanent environment. |
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It’s a shared instance for Oracle Integration Partners community members only, so:
- use your business email address as your user id (not yahoo or gmail)
- don’t delete anything you didn’t create
- do not store any customer data
- do not give anybody external direct access to this instance
- when you create any Integration artifacts e.g. connections, integration flows etc. put your initials in the name and your email address in the description. Once registered go here to access the instance. If asked for Cloud Tenant, then enter “bots4saas”.
Remember to use the documentation, tutorials and learning material at https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/paas/integration-cloud/index.html. Any issues, questions or feedback please use the Slack workspace |
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May 2021 Oracle Integration Update by Antony Reynolds
It is time for the May quarterly update to Oracle Integration. With Spring in the air we are excited to share all our exciting new features and improvements. Note that testing is still underway for these features and, although unlikely, it is possible that some will not meet our quality standard and be deferred to a later release.
Announcements & Update Windows
Currently tenant administrators get notified of OIC Gen 2 updates via notifications in the OCI console. OIC Gen 2 administrators can also see the same update notice in the OIC console, so watch out for the date of your update.
Remember, you can also mark your Gen 2 instance for update in either the first or second update window, as explained in Choose Your Update Window. If you previously tagged your instance, then there is no need to tag it again. If it is not yet tagged for window 1, then the deadline for tagging for May is 14 April. Tags added after this date will take effect for the August release.
Developer Productivity Enhancements
We are making the following improvements for developers:
• Configurator Enhancement
o Allow replacing a connection within a package if connection is used by one of more inactive Integrations
• Move Integration Test UI from swagger to OpenAPI
o OpenAPI allows us to improve the test UI experience as it provides more information about the integration to be called.
May 2021 Oracle Integration Pre-built Recipes by Michael Meiner
What is a Recipe?
When cooking a meal, you often use a recipe. You don't need to start from scratch. The recipe gives you the ingredients and amounts to cook your meal. Similarly, when using OIC recipes, we give you the "ingredients". You start with one of more pre-assembled solutions that bundle all the resources required by the integrations, such as the connections and lookups, into one package. Use a recipe to quickly get started cooking your meal (or in our case, building your integration).
We continue to add pre-built recipes to our repository. In the May 2021 release, here are some of the recipes we are adding:
• Retrieve and place files to/from NetSuite File cabinet
• Create, Update and Delete ServiceNow Incidents
• Get feeds or posts from Facebook
• Create channels and push notifications to Slack
• Send a Docusign envelope and get status
So How Do I Use A Recipe?
Well, I'm glad you asked. It's actually quite simple. Just log into your OIC console and on the Home Page you will see the recipes. (Note: this Home Page is for Oracle Integration Generation 2 instances).
May 2021 Technology Improvements in Adapters by Michael Meiner
In the May 2021 release, we are making the following updates to our Database adapters and connectivity agent:
1. MS SQL adapter: support for Azure SQL
2. My SQL adapter: support for MySQL version 8
3. Connectivity agent: support for JDK 11
Microsoft SQL on Azure
Many of our customers need to integrate with Microsoft Azure SQL. In this release, you can leverage the same SQL Server adapter that is available in OIC, and connect to Azure SQL. You will set up a connectivity agent, and then use the connections page to fill in the Azure SQL host and port, database name and the credentials.
Once you configure the connection, you can use this connection in an integration flow in exactly the same way as SQL Server on-premise. Note that SQL on Azure can be installed in a private network, where the ports are not open to the internet. For such a setup, the OIC connectivity agent needs to be installed on an Azure VM in the same subnet. This is so the agent will be able to reach the Azure SQL instance. If SQL on Azure is configured with open ports, then the connectivity agent can be installed anywhere (including on Oracle Cloud). We will be adding more options for security policies in an upcoming release.
May 2021 Third-Party application adapters update by Michael Meiner
Oracle integration has a rich portfolio of adapters for connectivity with 3rd party applications. Lilly our official mascot is happy to announce enhancements to our 3rd party adapters!! These enhancements are intendend to meet critical usecases required by our customers.
In this release, we are providing the following enhancements to our 3rd party adapters.
• (new) Jira Adapter
• Shopify adapter support for multiple domains (i.e., stores)
• Salesforce Commerce Cloud Adapter: Shop APIs Support
• Workday adapter: support for additional operations
Jira Adapter
The Jira Adapter is the newest addition in the Social/Productivity segment of adapters. With the May release, the Jira Adapter will enable you to connect with the Jira application. Jira is a powerful work management software and it is used for project management, bug tracking, and issue tracking.
Example usecases with the Jira adapter include:
• Incident created in Incident tracking system auto creates Issue in Jira
• Case created/updated in CRM system will create/update issue in Jira
• Sync new/updated issue from Jira to customer ticketing system
The Jira Adapter connection page needs hostname, username, and password for establishing the connection with the Jira application. On the Connection page, an API token is used (instead of your account password) as a password whenever you programmatically authenticate with basic authentication.
May 2021 Enhanced Security in Adapters by Michael Meiner
Oracle Integration enables our customers to connect applications and technologies in a secure manner. We are thrilled to share that we continue to enhance Oracle Integration to provide additional security settings and functionality. In the May 2021 release, Oracle Integration offers new security-related functionality as described below. This further extends OIC security options and capabilities; see February 2021 OIC Security Adapters blog and November 2020 OIC Security Adapters blog.
With our May release, we are adding support in the REST adapter for SHA-256 signature method for OAuth 1.0a authentication scheme
We are introducing an option in the REST adapter connections page. By default, SHA1 is used. But you now have the option to select SHA-256.
OIC May 21 Release - B2B support for UN EDIFACT Part 1 by Niall Commiskey
The May 21 release of OIC brings lots of new features to B2B. This post will focus on the new UN EDIFACT support, but will also detail our new auto-generation of - send/receive pre-processor integrations - feature.
The usual caveat from me at the outset - I am not an EDI/EDIFACT expert - many folks tasked with creating such integrations are also not, so this is for you! Version 1 of B2B in OIC supported X12, now we are also providing UN EDIFACT support. So what is the difference between the 2, apart from the fact that the latter is mainly used in Europe? Apparently X12 has made inroads into the healthcare market (HIPAA), whereas UN EDIFACT has not. Both standards are used in areas such as supply chain, government etc.
This post begins with an introduction to the format of an order in UN EDIFACT, it is rather pedestrian, if fact probably boring for most of you, who are at home in EDI. I go through the order document line for line, this I am mainly doing for my own benefit, so that I actually understand the values being sent.
The post continues with a short introduction to the transport protocol I will use, AS2. Finally, we get to the section that covers the implementation of a simple UN EDIFACT orders based B2B transaction in OIC.
OIC May 21 Release - B2B support for UN EDIFACT Part 2 by Niall Commiskey
This post covers the creation of the "missing" backend integration from the previous post.
I discussed the auto-generation of the send/receive integrations in the previous post. What I now need to do is create a backend integration for processing my EDFACT Order. That integration will create a Sales Order in Netsuite. It will then be called from the scope below.
Create the Backend Integration
To recap, the "receive" integration has done the formal AS2 and EDIFACT checks - nothing else. The backend integration will do the actual fetch/translate of the document so that OIC can process it further. The basic backend integration flow is as follows.
Five key Oracle Integration lessons from handling billions of messages monthly by Amit Saxena
Automating end-to-end enterprise business processes involves connecting multiple software-as-a-service (SaaS), on-premises, and custom applications.
One of the most innovative things you can do with your enterprise applications is to integrate them into end-to-end business processes, such as recruit-to-retire, requisition-to-receipt, and lead-to-invoice. When automating processes across multiple event-based services and data sources, you want the ability to adjust and evolve those interactions on the fly.
Many, varied integration patterns pose a complex challenge to traditional integration strategies. To keep pace, our customers need to enable self-service, capitalize on existing APIs, and implement a hybrid integration platform. Watch Oracle Integration Architecture Principles to see for yourself how we can help your connected business strategy support modern integration and automation best practices.
Modernize end-to-end business processes with low-code, polyglot development for Oracle Digital Assistant and BlockChain across SaaS and on-premises applications. Read the complete article here.
Announcing Improved Navigation for the OCI Console by Simone Geib
We’re excited to announce that the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Console navigation menu is undergoing a major upgrade this month.
As OCI continues to grow, adding new services and expanding our current services, our customers need a more efficient way to navigate the Console. In this change, we’re better organizing the rapidly growing set of OCI services into logical top-level categories and reducing the scrolling and manual searching that customers have to do today.
For more information about key features and how to get started, please go here: Announcing Improved Navigation for the OCI Console.
In the new menu, Oracle Integration (OIC) can be found under "Developer Services -> Application Integration -> Integration".
Practical Guide to use HCM Data Loader with Oracle Integration by Harris Qureshi
There are many good resources & blogs available that demonstrate how to use Oracle Integration (OIC) to import data into HCM using HDL Import Job. So if you wish to learn how to use the OIC Adapter and create an integration, please refer to the following examples plus there are others available too.
A Simple Guide to Oracle HCM Data Loader (HDL) Job Support in Oracle HCM Cloud Adapter
Import Business Objects with the HCM Data Loader (HDL)
This blog will try to address some key practical steps and pre-requisites needed to make this all work. Some of these are mentioned in these blogs but I feel it demands its own write-up to help guide the new integration developers and this will try to address some overall steps.
How to Generate Business Object Mapping File in HCM
One of the key requirements to load data using OIC for HDL is that you need the integration mapping file (nxsd file) of the relevant business object along with a sample .dat file.
Now if you go to the HCM environment and View Business Objects, the default setting only provides you the sample template file (.dat file) but it does not give you the relevant integration mapping file i.e. nxsd file.
Using an Event Based Pattern with Oracle Integration by Michael Meiner
Something happens in your enterprise application. Let's say a new item is added to your catalog in your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. We will call this an event. Perhaps you want to find out about this event so you can take some action. Perhaps you need to add this item to your customer-facing web store.
One way to accomplish this is to continually poll the application. The problem with this solution is that you need to expend resources to keep polling, and then you will likely not find out about the event immediately. This is akin to sending a package and then calling the recipient every few minutes to find out whether they received the package. This of course is inefficient (not to mention the annoyance to the recipient!). A much better option is to have the recipient notify you when the package arrives.
Oracle Integration can help satisfy processing such events by using an event-driven architecture. Your integration does not need to poll the application. Rather, your integration can register for an event, sit back and relax -- and wait to be notified. As businesses adopt and embrace Digital Transformation, one critical step in this journey is moving to event-driven architectures to replace older, more cumbersome integration methods.
To illustrate this, we using Oracle ERP and Shopify. Oracle ERP will be our system of record for products in our catalog. New products get added to our Oracle ERP system. Whenever a new product is added to Oracle ERP, the product will be added to Shopify so that our customers can begin ordering the product. The process of adding the product to Shopify will be handled by Oracle Integration, via an event-based pattern. Let's now build the integration.
Modelling Transport Integrations with Trading Partner Management by Arvind Venugopal, and Sunil Apte
With the May release of Oracle Integration, we have introduced the ability to setup Transport Integrations within the Trading Partner Management design time experience. With this enhancement, we have also automated the creation of the base B2B integration.
This setup enables a B2B user to onboard Trading Partners on the Cloud platform without requiring to configure the Trading Partner setup via Integrations. In this blog, we will see how to achieve this.
First, we will review a couple of the prerequisites to help enable this.
• First, the backend Application Integration will have to be created for the transactions you want to process in and out from the respective app you are using. You will be able use the supported Application or technical adapters to create the connection to the app and then create the integration that houses the business logic as well as the mapping. You can find more information on the supported adapters here.
• Second, before going to the Trading Partner screens you can create the Transport Connection for AS2 or FTP via the connections page as well as the document that you want to process via the Documents screen. Optionally, you can customize your schema as well to be used within the Documents.
Using UN/EDIFACT for B2B Transactions by Arvind Venugopal, and Sunil Apte
With the May release, we have added support for EDIFACT data format for B2B with Oracle Integration. UN/EDIFACT is a standard and format for electronic business communications. It is controlled and maintained by a committee called, UNECE, that is a body formed by the United Nations.
Now you will be able to design and run EDIFACT transactions with the Cloud Platform. Here are the key steps that allow you to do this:
• First step is that you will now be able to design EDIFACT formatted schemas from within the B2B Design time experience in 'B2B Schemas'
• Once the schema is created you will be able to personalize and customize the named instance of this schema to adhere to the trading partner specifications.
• Once you have the schemas created you will be able to use them to create B2B documents. Now, you don't need a custom schema for B2B documents in case you are using standard schemas. In which case, you can go directly to create the B2B document.
OSB 12c SOAP webservice for temperature conversion i.e. Celsius to Fahrenheit and vice versa by Pranav Davar
This tutorial is intended for the audience who are completely new to OSB and want to try a simple hello world kind of application. Instead of sending and receiving Hello World!. We will be using simple temperature conversion i.e. from Celsius to Fahrenheit and vice versa. We will be using simple Xquery to do all conversion and logic.
High Level:
In this case, our OSB component will contain 2 parts proxy service and pipeline. Proxy service will expose SOAP endpoint to the client application and pipeline will perform various operations on input payload. Since this is just a Hello World application, we will not be using business services. XQuery will be used to implement mathematical logic and conditional logic. Service will take temperature as input and will perform either Fahrenheit to Celsius (FtoC) or Celsius to Fahrenheit (CtoF) temperature conversion. If the conversion type is invalid, then the service will return a failure status.
Mathematical Calculations:
Let temperature in Fahrenheit be X℉ and temperature in Celsius be Y℃.
DevOps and Release Automation for Oracle Integration Cloud – Webcast May 13th 2021
As you may know, the FlexDeploy DevOps platform can improve your enterprise software development, operations, and release processes. You can achieve high quality software faster with less cost and risk, increase visibility into your pipeline, and eliminate manual activities and scripting.
In this technical webinar, take a deep-dive into FlexDeploy’s out-of-the-box support for Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) with a FlexDeploy expert.
You will learn:
• Continuous delivery release pipelines, dashboards, and reports
• Automated deployment of integrations and configuration
• Manage connection property replacement
• Incorporate continuous integration (CI) and automated testing
Details:
When: May 13th at 11am-12pm EDT / 8am-9am PDT
Where: Virtually, via WebEx
Who: Those interested in exploring DevOps, CI/CD, and Release Orchestration for Oracle Integration Cloud |
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| Business Process Management & Innovation Section |
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OIC: Working Around not Having Complex Gateway by Jan Kettenis
In this article I describe how you can work around not having the Complex Gateway in OIC Structured Process. I will end with what I believe to be the best work around with respect to support for refactoring.
The Complex Gateway in BPMN 2.0 is one of the least used features of BPMN. However, when you find a use case for it also may find that there is no alternative way to model it, or not an easy one. The challenge being that in case of parallel flows (be it via Parallel or Inclusive Gateway) the token must move to the merge gateway for each individual flow before it can move further.
One typical use case that I have ran into a couple of times is the one where at a specific point in the process there is more than one way to do something, and either one of them might happen after which the process can move on to the next activity. In case there are only two ways, most of the times you can model this by adding an interrupting Boundary Message or Timer Catch event to the activities.
Invoking Process Applications with Anonymous Users from VB Apps with Oracle Integration by Arvind Venugopal, Shay Shmeltzer, and Nathan Angstadt
In this blog, we will setup a Visual Builder Application with Oracle Integration and use Process behind the scenes. For this particular use case, we will show how to build VB Applications that allow access by Anonymous users to initiate Process Applications. A common use case would be where the Web App is used by many external users where you don’t want to setup secure identities for each user, however you still want to secure the Process Apps.
Let’s explore some options for this use case.
A couple of steps to complete before exploring the various security options:
• First, setup a Process Application with a Message Start event. A simple example is provided below.
• Then, In VB have a form with an action that connects to the Process (you will need to setup the VB app to work with the Process App as well). Example using Process Action is shown below. For the options mentioned below, you will need to use the REST action instead.
Process Automation with Process Cloud Service (PCS) – Part 4 (Testing) by Daniel Teixeira
Testing is without doubts the ugly duckling of application development, but it is really a necessary evil Testing in itself is a whole separate discipline where one can have several types of Testing ->Unit, Integrated, Performance, Load, Regression, E2E.
The idea here is to focus only on the testing capabilities that are part of the PCS platform, and how to use them to improve the development stage.
Option 1
The easy way to test the development efforts is straight from the canvas. By pressing the play button the workflow will start and we are given the choice about the user that is playing a role in the execution. Think of this as a sort of Unit Test! You can select who initiates the process and who approves it and act as those users. In this process the start is via a Form.
Extend Process Automation UI Components to JET-Based Applications by Arvind Venugopal, Rameshkumar
With the May release, Process UI snippets are now available as Oracle JET (JavaScript Extension Toolkit) composite components for embedding in self-service applications, services, or portals. A JET composite component, similar to a standard web component, allows you to define and use custom DOM (Document Object Model) elements.
Using these components, you can easily incorporate standalone Process UI modules into multiple JET-based applications. Let’s look at how you can extend the Process UI, employing composite components, in the following scenarios.
• Import a Process Composite Component into Visual Builder
• Embed a Process Composite Component in a Web Application
Import a Process Composite Component into Visual Builder
You can make Process UI composite components available in Oracle Visual Builder and use these components, along with other Visual Builder components, to create custom enterprise, web, or mobile applications.
Use the procedure detailed here to make a Process composite component available in Oracle Visual Builder. In this example, we’ll add the Task List component into Visual Builder. |
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| Additional New Material for PaaS Community |
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- Speed sailing Fifty-foot racing catamarans are fitted with arrays of sensors and Oracle Cloud technologies to improve performance and build fan excitement, as the SailGP racing championship kicks off Saturday in Bermuda.
- Modernizing monoliths Legacy Java applications need to be modernized for the cloud, but enterprises can’t risk breaking those vital applications. Learn how vFunction can help by refactoring legacy applications into microservices and deploying them on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
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| Training Calendar |
For the latest trainings please visit our Training Wiki.
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| Join the Oracle Developer Meetup groups |
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Want to learn more about developing Enterprise-grade Cloud Native applications on the Oracle Cloud Platform, covering topics like Microservices Architecture, developing in Node, Python and PHP, using Low Code development tools to build Mobile apps, and much more?
Join the Oracle Developer Meetup groups if you want to follow Oracle’s solutions in this area, or participate in the events and hands-on labs we organize:
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| My private Corner – 20 years! |
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| May 1st 2001 I joined Oracle. In my first role I supported partners in Germany, from large system integrators, hardware partners, resellers to outsourcing companies. Driven by the middleware success we created the EMEA SOA and WebLogic Partner Communities. |
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| Oracle evolved from a database company to a full stack provider. Numerous acquisitions like Sun, BEA Peoplesoft accelerated the expansion in the hardware, middleware and applications business. With the raise of Cloud Computing the industry changes. In my global product management role we support you to adopt the Oracle Cloud Platform. Oracle Integration is a key accelerator to connect SaaS and Oracle Digital Assistant to innovate SaaS. What’s your Oracle journey, how did you participate in our communities? Let us know, send us a tweet at #PaaSCommunity! |
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| Invite your colleagues to join the Integration & Process Partner Community |
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| For regular information on integration and process solutions please join our Cloud Platform Partner Community. As a community member, you get access to free hands-on training, documentation, sales & Marketing kits including customer presentations and our monthly newsletter & webcast. |
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