Category: Definitive Tips

Short tips on ICS. Covering things that have been added to ICS since the book was publisahed or couldn’t be fitted in.

In the last few years Oracle’s iPaaS offerings have progressed significantly from one or two solutions such as Mobile Cloud Service to in excess of 35 offerings. This makes it challenging to decide which product(s) to use. The means for selection depends upon a range of factors including:

Most suitable licensing model (ICS provides a lower cost of entry than SOA CS as you’re paying by message volumes)
Development skills and desire to resilience or invest in people (SOA on-premises to SOA CS is easier than a technology change such as ICS)
The amount of control you have in an environment – JCS offers more control than ACCS for example

Using iCal in Scheduling – ICS Definitive Tip #3

By Phil Wilkins

On February 23, 2017

In Definitive Tips

In ICS Definitive Guide #2 we looked at the scheduling of integrations and mentioned the possibility of using iCal. In this tip we shall explore advanced iCal facility for defining schedules within ICS.

The iCal format is probably best known for sharing meeting events in tools such as outlook. The format is actually a standard defined by the IETF originally in 1998 (https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt) and updated several times the latest being 2015 (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7529). The goal of the definition has been for the purpose of driving standardisation across PIM tools (Personal Information Management) tools which includes Outlook and Thunderbird etc. It is a substantial standard the original document ran to 150 pages, but the section supported by the schweduler’s advanced option purely relates to the reoccurence definition covered by section 4.3.10 of the original RFC, and only takes five pages. If you want to know lots about iCal and the varying revisions then you may find https://icalendar.org/ helpful.

It is worth mentioning that today ICS under the hood exploits Oracle’s Enterprise Scheduler Service (ESS). ESS documentation identifies that it works to the 2445 version of the specification (see here). ESS became a 1st class citizen component with the start of the 12c middleware product stack. As a result, if you see any errors processing an iCal configuration the error codes will reference ESS does.

Using Integration Versioning – ICS Definitive Tip #2

By Phil Wilkins

On February 9, 2017

In Definitive Tips

In this Definitive Tip, we are going to look at the ability to use Versioning on Integrations to seamlessly deploy update integrations is an important requirement of any enterprise integration platform.

ICS supports the model of semantic versioning, perhaps better recognised as versioning as Major, Minor and patch. Which is best described at http://semver.org/.

This post will demo a minor and then a major version change. So we can see how change as the behaviours change between the two. A major change indicates an likely change in definition and minor one reflects logical change.

Seeing Versioning in Action

To demonstrate versioning we need an integration that is currently active. Ideally, you will have some sort of data feed or test framework, such as SoapUI or even a simple cURL script regularly triggering the integration. We need this script running to demonstrate the impact of the cutover.

Designer Content Filters – ICS Definitive Tip #1

By Phil Wilkins

On February 1, 2017

In Definitive Tips

Definitive Tips, like our Definitive Guide posts address features could not be incorporated into the book, either simply because the feature is new or simply down to the fact the new feature arrived since the book has been published. Unlike the Definitive Guide entries, the tips will always remain very short. The first tip will address content filters in the designer.

Designer Content Filters

Release 16.4.5 introduced a new filter feature to help improve the location of Integrations, Connections and other designer elements. If you visit the Integrations parts of the designer for example, you will now see additional options included in the banner as highlighted in the following screenshot:

Category: Definitive Tips

Selecting which iPaaS Product(s) to use – ICS Definitive Tip #4

Using iCal in Scheduling – ICS Definitive Tip #3

Using Integration Versioning – ICS Definitive Tip #2

Seeing Versioning in Action

Designer Content Filters – ICS Definitive Tip #1