In this series of articles, you will learn how to integrate Oracle eBusiness Suite with a SOA Backbone.
This is a very simple example, where a Business Event is raised by Oracle ERP and the message contents[ or call it Payload] is read by a BPEL Process.
By following these tutorials, you will not only understand the steps, but also behind the scenes architecture for such integration.
In the end of this series, debugging tips will be discussed.
You can practice these steps by installing SOA Server on your PC/Laptop, however you will need access to EBS 11.5.10 or R12 database/application.
For ease, this will be explained in following steps/articles.
1. Background [current article]
2. Installation Steps [How you can install SOA Server & relevant jDeveloper on your desktop]
3. Connections and how to[what are the minimal connections that you require] to SOA Server and EBS instance
4. Creating a Business Event
5. Creating a BPEL Process [very simple one, all it does is to read the message from Oracle eBusiness Suite ]
6. Connection factory [for design-time you connect jdev to Oracle EBS, but for runtime environment Oracle EBS DB connection must be registered in SOA Server]
Note:- This step is optional in case you wish to edit AppsAdapter xml file directly
7. Testing this integration
8. What happens behind the scenes [how do all the ends fit together internally]
9. Debugging this integration
What is a business event?
A business event is an activity that occurs when something of Business significance takes place in Oracle ERP.
For example, the "Create Employee PL/SQL API" in HRMS might raise a Business Event like oracle.apps.per.create.Employee.
Now, whether an Employee is created via Form or via Interfaces, this business event will still get raised.
What information does a Business Event transmit?
In the above mentioned case, the business event will contain not just the new Employees person_id, but will also contain additional information like name, date of birth etc.
These additional information details will be what we call Payload and it is in XML format.
The reason not just the ID, but extra information as well is embedded within the Payload is to enable non-Oracle systems read the new joiner details without connecting to person table[per_all_people_f] in Oracle schema.
What exactly happens when Business Event is transmitted.
This message is placed onto a "Workflow Deferred Queue", from where the Subscribing process pick this message.
In this example, it could be a Pension Process, Security Card System that will most likely subscribe to such Business Event.
Note that, Workflow Deferred Queue is a seeded queue that gets installed with Oracle Workflow engine.
You can install as many custom/dedicated queues that you may need.
In fact, a BPEL queue that gets created for this integration is one such example of dedicated queue.
But, the message is on Workflow Deferred Queue. Is the BPEL Server listening to the Workflow Deferred Queue?
We not really. BPEL Server does not listen to the messages on WF Deferred Queue.
BPEL Server listens to such messages on a dedicated BPEL Queue.
In the subsequent parts of this article, I will explain in depth how BPEL Queue is created, and where its messages are held.
OK, the BPEL Queue will somehow exist, but how are messages moved from WF Deferred Queue onto BPEL Queue?
When a BPEL process registers its interest in a Workflow Business Event, then a special subscription gets automatically created for that event.
This subscription gets created into Oracle eBusiness Suite, against that specific event to which BPEL will listen to.
We will see the details later, but for now, you can know that this subscription transfers the message from deferred to BPEL queue.
How does BPEL pickup the messages from Workflows Dedicated BPEL Queue?
Every few seconds SOA Server's Apps Adapter polls the queue by connecting to the Apps Database.
How is the dedicated BPEL Queue & BPEL Subscription against business event actually created?
An on the fly SQL Script is generated by the Apps Adapter in jDeveloper. We will see those details in the following articles.
Apps2Fusion Articles 
Comments
Can you help me out in R12 implementation. I am trying to implement GL R12 in test instance, but the Oracle documentation is not always clear or complete. I was setting up Ledger, I had to define Legal Entity, but could not define it as I was unable to get my territory, but in the GL guide, it never says where to define your territory. Can you get me a detail copy of implementation guide, with all steps clearly define. I would be very much indebted to you if I can get this doc. thanks a lot.
I have a question on Business Event, I want capture new purchase orders created in EBS using BPEL and I followed an article available on OTN and succeeded it.
what I don't understand is that setting up a trading partner in XML Gateway, my question is, is it mandatory to set up a trading partner in XML Gateway in order to capture the event. Is there any other way to capture new purchase order event without setting up a trading partner?
Would appreciate your thoughts.
There is absolutely no need to use XML Gateway/Transpo rt agent for integration SOA with eBusiness Suite.
Integrat ion can be purely driven via a Business Event, or a PL/SQL API or with JMS.
This integration is very simple, hence I decided to exclude all the unwanted steps in this presentation.
I am using Business Event in article series, because this is the best practice, and also unlike JMS, you do not have to define a custom schema when using business events
For non apps integration with SOA, JMS could be the preferred option.
Thanks ,
Anil Passi
First of all thanks a lot for your contribution towards Apps and OAF.
I am not sure about SOA and BPEL.
As for as I know they are Fusion Middleware tools.
What Advantages we get if we go for its integration with 11i apps.// Simply what to know what can be done with SOA and BPEL
Thanks,
S uresh
Your 3rd party systems can post via http or consume the Webservice exposed by XML Gateway
We are currently working on a eBusiness Suite book, one of the chapters is XML Gateway, where a full working example for this will be made available
Tha nks
Anil Passi
There are 2 ways
1.BPELtak es inbound payload,validat es and inserts into in interface tables and EBS runs concurrent program which picks up the data and do re-validation and transact with base tables.
2. BPELtakes inbound payload and inserts the data into staging tables. Now we run other PL/SQL procedure which validates the data and insert the data into interface tables and EBS runs concurrent program which picks up the data and transact with base tables.
We can still have minor variations to above approach
I have to do real time inbound integration from source system to target ebiz system. Please suggest if it is desirable to insert records in the staging table or use custom api via the oracle application adapter.
what are the pros and cos for each approach.
Your valuable thoughts will help me a lot.
Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Shailmala
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