Anne Truitt Zelenka

Next week, I introduce Anne 2.0 Pro edition, when I begin a consulting gig. This will be the first money I’ve earned as a technologist since I received a $1000 patent bonus shortly after leaving Oracle in September of 2000. The money itself is less important than the standing it gives me in my household, where I’ll now be able to say “I’m going to go work” without somebody making finger quotes in the air.

In this new job, I’ll be working with Oracle database technology though not with Oracle Applications, which was my professional home there. To refresh my Oracle knowledge in preparation, I spent the morning listening to podcasts. Some of the most useful were those produced by Oracle Applications, because you can learn a ton about new database and middleware features by listening to how Oracle itself takes advantage of them. Of course, I’m also just curious to know what progress has been made in Oracle Applications development since I left.

Things I learned:

• BPEL is not prounounced “bee-pee-ee-ell.” It’s pronounced “bipple” or “beeple.” I’m sure the enterprisey among you already knew that. I’m glad to learn its correct pronunciation before making a dork of myself in conversation.
• Oracle sees verticals as the source of growth for applications–note acquisitions Retek (retail), i-flex (banking), and Portal Software (communications and media). Horizontal apps (your basic HR or financials packages, for example) are considered a mature market; one Oracle exec mentioned that CEOs rarely get involved in such purchases anymore. This is a big change from six years ago, when horizontal apps got all the attention at Oracle and vertical ones were something of a backwater.
• Oracle Fusion Middleware is just a name for a bunch of different products, including the application server, SOA support, and my baby, the customer data hub. It’s cool that the customer model migrated from applications into the middleware, where it’s available for even more people to use.
• You can use a third-party identity management product with Oracle Apps by bridging through Oracle 10gR2’s identity management capability. This can tie Oracle Apps into an existing single sign-on capability.
• Oracle Apps front ends will converge on HTML instead of Java UIs. When I was there, the idea was to offer Java-based forms front ends for professional users and HTML for casual, self-service users. Now, advances in HTML capabilities (Ajaxy kind of stuff) make it possible to offer the same powerful features that you used to have to use Java for. Oracle Apps is using the UIX framework for its application UIs. UIX is J2EE based.
• Oracle uses the word “fusion” to name too many things: Project Fusion (the project to bring Oracle Apps together with acquisitions like PeopleSoft and JD Edwards), Fusion Architecture (the blueprint for making that happen, basically an SOA version of the apps plus grid computing support), and Fusion Middleware (the portfolio of middleware tools for doing it). It’s confusing and the word “fusion” sounds too sticky to me, not loosely-coupled enough if they’re really doing SOA.

Hmmm, here’s a thought: if Oracle does a good job of SOA-izing their apps, then they’ve removed one of their main claims about why customers should buy full suites of apps instead of just one or two. And they give customers an easy way to migrate away from Oracle Apps. Although is there ever an easy migration when it comes to enterprise apps?

If you’re interested in hearing about actual implementations of SOA, check out Oracle’s SOA Best Practices Roundtable, available on the Oracle TechCasts page. The roundtable includes IT architects from various companies that have used Oracle tools to implement SOA projects. I’ve only listened to the first so far, which just introduces the participants. But it sounded like it could have some meaty info.