Process Cloud Service (PCS) Integration Options

Process is ubiquitous - be it SaaS process extensions, automation of a manual process, gain visibility into a process or just eliminating human errors.

With fully visual, browser based, no IDE platform that runs on the cloud, Process Cloud Service lends itself as a simple yet powerful tool to citizen developers and LOB users alike, to raidly automate their business processes with little to no dependency on IT/DevOps. Cloud platform (PaaS) offerings such as Process Cloud Service and Integration Cloud Service enable modern enterprises leveraging a range of SaaS applications to extend, automate and integrate back with on-prem systems.

Outside of its own instance data, business processes also need data from external data sources. Process Cloud Service offers 3 options to seamlessly integrate with external systems / services;

1) SOAP
2) REST
3) ICS (Integration Cloud Service)

To invoke or call external services using a Service Activity within a business process, we must first create a connector - available under the Integrations section in your process composer.

Out of the box, Process Cloud Service allows connectivity to external services through SOAP / REST protocols. For any other type of integration - for eg., Database, File, Oracle/3rd party apps, you have 2 options;

1) Expose them as SOAP/REST APIs either through a middle tier or using natively available options (eg., APEX ORDS for Database) and call them directly from PCS
2) Use Integration Cloud Service (ICS) to quickly interface your target data source as SOAP/REST using a range of technology, application and SaaS adapters

1) SOAP

With this integration option, you can connect to any SOAP web service that is accessible over internet. You have options to either upload a WSDL definition or use a SOAP URL directly.
If you are using URL, notice that all the referenced schema (XSD) files are also imported automatically.

You also have an option to configure the "Read Timeout", "Connection Timeout" and WS-Security parameters for the service.

2) REST

Process Cloud Service offers extensive support to integrate and connect to REST APIs. Intuitive wizard guides through configuration of REST based services including various HTTP verbs, resources and request-response payloads.

3) ICS Integration

Process Cloud Service (PCS) provides tight-integration to Integration Cloud Service (ICS) among other PaaS / IaaS services such as Documents Cloud Service, Business Intelligence Cloud Service, Storage Cloud and Notification Service.

All it requires is a one-time configuration in PCS workspace and while modeling a process, the service connector display all ICS integrations to choose from.

With all these different integration options, Process Cloud Service not only delivers rapid process automation but also offers extensive connectivity to external systems and services.

Oracle MFT - The Managed File Transfer

With the 12c release for Fusion Middleware, Oracle released the long-awaited, feature-rich managed file transfer solution titled Oracle MFT. At the outset, some key value propositions of this product are;

1. Extremely Simple to use, build & configure
2. End-to-End visibility on file transfers
3. As with any other Oracle FMW stack of products, seamless integration options
4. High Availability MFT (leveraging WebLogic capabilities)
5. Highly Secure (Leverage WLS OPSS instead of typical FTP OS layer security)
6. OOTB embedded FTP & sFTP servers (Those of you looking to consolidate on ever increasing FTP & sFTP servers in your enterprise...)
7. Automate File Transfers using the built-in Enterprise Scheduler Service (ESS)
8. Transfer very large files (pass-by-reference) - limited only by disk space and network speed
9. Fan-out, chaining and custom callouts

Having worked with quite a few customers on this new Oracle technology, I can certainly tell that these features have generated a huge interest. Prior to Oracle MFT, it was really hard to find a product that could achieve all of the above requirements...

Let's delve little deep into these points...

Extreme Simplicity

No IDE to design/configure transfers.
Business user friendly unified web-based, highly intuitive graphical interface for design, monitoring & administration of all your file transfers.
Zero learning curve.

To create a transfer -> Just create your source and target - drag & drop them in the transfer canvas. You are good to go !! Incredibly, it's that simple...

Free-up developers: really? Yes.
How many times have you configured the cumbersome back-end scheduler jobs?
How many technical resources you hired/trained on various scripting languages just to manage and handle file transfers?

End-to-End Visibility

MFT console offers out-of-the-box monitoring dashboards with drill-down capabilities. Users can monitor overall file transfer metrics such as;

• Most Active Transfers
• Average, Min & Max Payload size, Transfer Speeds & Transfer Time
• Recent Errors/Failure Ratio
• Advanced File Search - based on file name, date, user, status etc..

You can also monitor a single file transfer instance graphically with fine grained details on the transfer. Additionally, Oracle MFT provides "Resubmit" option where users can resubmit a file transfer from various stages (Source, Transfer or Target).

Extensibility

Oracle MFT provides OOTB integration with the following source/target types in the current release. Obviously many more are coming in...

• FTP Embedded (Read/Write from/to the embedded FTP server)
• sFTP Embedded (Read/Write from/to the embedded sFTP server)
• FTP Remote (Read/Write from/to a remote FTP server)
• sFTP Remote (Read/Write from/to a remote sFTP server)
• File (Read/Write from/to the shared file storage)
• SOAP (Send/Receive to/from a SOAP based web service)
• SOA (Send/Receive to/from a SOA composite) - SOA 12c provides an MFT adapter. Optionally, you can also connect to a SOA/OSB 11g instance through webservice
• Service Bus (Send/Receive to/from an OSB proxy/business service)
• B2B (Connect to a B2B with MFT as a channel)
• Healthcare (Connect to Healthcare HL7)
• ODI (Connect to Oracle Data Integrator)

High Availability

Oracle MFT runs on Oracle WebLogic 12c and can be clustered. This provides organizations with an HA MFT capability. Oracle MFT also ships with an MFT proxy server that resides outside the firewall to redirect external requests.

Highly Secure

Since MFT runs on WebLogic, it leverages Oracle WebLogic OPSS.
What this means is that: all your FTP/sFTP users in your LDAP can now connect to MFT (obviously the access rights can be managed through the MFT console).

In stark contrasts to traditional FTP/sFTP servers, you don't have to create OS level users & manage access privileges. Optionally, for each transfer, you can configure Oracle MFT to allow access to payload only to specific users/groups.

In additions to these capabilities, users can leverage out-of-the-box compression, decompression, PGP encyption & decryption capabilities of Oracle MFT.

Consolidation

Many customers have very less control on FTP & sFTP server proliferation across their enterprise. More often than not, IT doesn't have full control / visibility on administration & management of the FTP servers. Oracle MFT with its embedded FTP & sFTP server clearly helps with consolidation of FTP/sFTP servers.

This not only reduces TCO tangibly, but also brings down significant costs associated with administration/management efforts.

Automate & Schedule Transfers

How many scheduling software tools do you have in your enterprise?
How difficult is it to integrate your scheduler with file transfers?
How much time & effort does your IT/development spend in configuring/scripting of scheduler services?
How much visibility does it offer?

And,

What if; you have one comprehensive & highly customizable enterprise scheduler service which is tightly integrated with all your file transfers, is extremely easy to configure/schedule through GUI and provides end-to-end visibility through a console?

With Oracle Enterprise Scheduler Service (ESS) now being a first-class citizen & tightly integrated, Oracle MFT just does that.

Large File Transfers

Oracle MFT supports file pass-by-reference. This means that your SOAP services do not have to pass file to your webservice inline if it beyond a certain size - configurable while designing the transfer. Oracle MFT also provides out-of-the-box compression & decompression capabilities. Using custom actions you can also batch/de-batch large files for fast processing.

Fan-out, Chaining & custom callout

Oracle MFT supports fan-out: which means it can send files to multiple targets simultaneously. Also another cool feature if MFT process chaining. You can chain multiple MFT transfers where one MFT transfer can be another MFT's source.

Additionally, Oracle MFT also supports custom callouts. This allows POJOs to be executed at source and target (pre/post process).

Ready for a happy file transfer with Oracle MFT? Let me know your feedback in the comments section :)