Understanding Integration Cloud and how to get the most out of your implementation

Category: General Integration Page 2 of 3

July 22 – New OIC Articles

July’s big news is the connectivity between OCI and Azure for Oracle to streamline Azure users accessing Oracle databases (here), and more importantly, for OIC users is the addition of new Sovereign nation regions (here). For OIC users this means the possibility of handling data that is more sensitive to where the data resides.

Article / LinkAuthorSubject MatterConnecting
Extending Opera Cloud with OICNiall CommiskeyOIC & VBOracle Hospitality (OPERA)
End to End Business Process AutomationNiall CommiskeyOICAI Vision
Jira Adapter – Add Attachments etcNiall CommiskeyOICJIRA
Update Oracle Integration Cloud connection from primary to standby database dynamicallyOmid IzadkhastiOICDB
Git source code management for Oracle Integration Artifacts using VB StudioAshritha MalliOIC. VBS 
Making use of variables, properties and schedule parameters anYan ScorrerOIC 
Invoke OIC Integration from Process application (plus other short posts on OIC)SanddyOICPCS
Create process application with web form (plus other short posts on PCS)SanddyPCS 
OCI API GW & JWT to call OIC with/without Credentials (Part I & Part II)Ankur JainOIC 
Automation and AI – Oracle Process Automation with OCI AI ServicesMilomir VojvodicOICAI

October 21 – New OIC Articles

Article / LinkAuthorSubject MatterConnecting
Field Level Encryption with Oracle Integration and OCI VaultStan TanevOIC, Vault 
Process Excel files with OIC + Oracle FunctionsStan TanevOICExcel
Setup Email Notifications with the Oracle Integration CloudDaniel TeixeiraOICOCI Email
Oracle Integration Cloud – Twilio Adapter for SMS and WhatsAppDaniel TeixeiraOICTwilio
Visual Builder – A Crash Course by Shay ShmelzerShay ShmelzerVBCS 
Configuring OIC NotificationsNiall CommiskeyOICOCI Notifications
Leveraging Grafana for OIC MetricsNiall CommiskeyOIC 
Using OIC Logging Analytics for searching OIC Activity Stream logNiall CommiskeyOICOCI Log Analytics
Surfacing OIC Design Time audit logs in OCI Logging AnalyticsNiall CommiskeyOICOCI Log Analytics
Using OCI Logging for searching OIC Activity Stream LogNiall CommiskeyOICOCI Log Analytics
OIC docs link for restricting access to OIC instancesNiall CommiskeyOIC 
Create a fixed-length file in Oracle IntegrationAnkur JainOIC 

OIC Scheduling for End of Month style processes – Tip #11

Setting up calendar schedules that aren’t simply reoccurring, such as a specific date in a month like 28th or third Friday, become more of a challenge with the OIC Scheduler. The calendar works with the ical standard set by the IETF standard 2445. If you review the standard’s section 4.3.0, this describes the reoccurrence options, whilst able, not able to address these needs.

Reoccurring on specific dates can, in theory, be set. If you review section 4.3.4, you will see a date has the potential to be defined as a comma-separated list. So multiple dates for month-end can be provided as a list. Note, this is predicated on the calendar attribute supporting date-mday (DATE). The DTSTART and DTEND attributes accept DATE with no indication that the date-mday is not supported.

Specifying the dates explicitly overcomes the problems of national holidays. The downside is that you need to know when the list needs to be extended and, in the case of OIC, the means to edit the scheduler format safely.

NOTE: we have not tested whether the OIC scheduler is compliant with the use of date-mday at the time of writing.

Versions 1 and 2 running concurrently

Complex formulas for scheduling and more manageable scheduling..

There are several options for managing reoccurring events, such as month-end, year-end accounting, payroll and expenses payments etc.

In most options, we assume that we have a simple reoccurring schedule that triggers an integration that determines whether the trigger is legitimate. This could be as simple as daily. If valid, then invoking the main integration with the business process.

Defining Dates in the database, we can wrap it with JET, Visual Builder or APEX to create a presentation layer. The task of managing the schedule to be taken on by the business.

This approach makes it very easy to adjust and test. Whether there are any more future schedule dates can also be overcome by having an integration that queries the table for the next date being set. If not date set, then the generate relevant alerts using OCI native tools.

The schedule is triggered regularly, e.g. daily, and the scheduler trigger invokes an integration then looks up the DB to see if the date appears in the list. When the date appears, then the integration is executed. It would be straightforward to extend this to trigger different schedules.

Automated option

If an algorithm can be described for when the month-end processes should be performed, we eliminate the need to manage a list of dates. There are some ways to implement a formula, and you have the option of trying to do it OIC, but using OCI Functions – the formula is coded in the language of your choice and then packaged and deployed. The Function is then invoked using a REST web service to confirm whether the process should run (more on how here).

Handling public and national holidays. Not all national holidays are locked into an algorithm, or the holiday is fairly complex. That said, there are several API sources available that can tell you these dates, for example, https://holidayapi.com; this makes things easier.

The beauty of this process is that the same Function could keep a company website up to date with the next run date. Be integrated into corporate notifications and so on. As a result, one point of truth.

Enhanced Automation (feature wish …)

Unfortunately, OIC doesn’t provide an API to add new schedules. We can’t simplify the integration logic until it does, which adds the next calculated date for the process to run as a one-off schedule.

iCal Resources (inc Tools)

July 21 – New OIC articles

Article / LinkAuthorSubject MatterConnecting
Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) & octet-stream MIME-typeAmy Simpson-GrangeOIC 
delete a schedule from an IntegrationKabir YadavOIC 
How Granular Should My Microprocesses Be?Jan KettenisPCS 
How to perform FBDI GL File UploadDeb MukherjeeOIC 
Load FBDI and callbackDeb MukherjeeOIC 
Basic File Encryption and Decryption in OICDeb MukherjeeOIC 
Oracle Digital Assistant – Backend Integration with the Oracle Integration CloudDaniel TeixeiraOICODA
Oracle Integration Message Packs and PricingAnkur JainOIC 
Business Identifiers in Oracle IntegrationAnkur JainOIC 
FlexDeploy Support for Oracle CloudJurgen KressOICCI/CD
OIC & Blue Prism Part 1, Part 2Niall CommiskeyOICBlue Prism (RPA)
August 2021 Oracle Integration UpdateAntony ReynoldsOIC 
OIC Monitoring and Logging Analytics – adding Business Data to DashboardsNiall CommiskeyOICLog Analytics
OIC and Logging Analytics – steps towards fleet management and more stepsNiall CommiskeyOICLog Analytics
Logging Analytics for OICNiall CommiskeyOICLog Analytics
Event Driven Integration with Oracle Commerce CloudNiall CommiskeyOICCommerce Cloud
Turning SFTP Cloud NativeJohan LouwersOIC 
Authenticating Oracle Integration flows using OAuth token from 3rd party providerPrakash MasandOICOAuth
August 2021 New Third Party Application AdaptersPrakash MasandOICSAP, Zendesk

April 21 – New OIC articles

Blink and it’s another month gone. But Oracle has been very very busy as we come around for the latest quarterly updates and the details published. Plus a lot about Oracle Hospitality Integration Hub (OHIP) which builds upon OIC.

Article / LinkAuthorSubject MatterConnection
May 2021 Oracle Integration UpdateAntony ReynoldsOIC 
May 2021 Third-Party application adapters updateMichael MeinerAdapters 
May 2021 Oracle Integration Fusion Application Adapters ImprovementsPrakash MasandSaaS Adaptors 
May 2021 Oracle Integration Database Adapter ImprovementsPakash MasandDB Adaptors 
May 2021 Enhanced Security in AdaptersMichael MeinerAdapters 
May 2021 Technology Improvements in AdaptersMichael MeinerAdapters 
Connect Oracle SaaS (ERP, HCM, CX) with Pre-Built Recipes – Accenture Oracle Webcast May 5th 2021Amit Tahilramani, Mani Choudhary and Amit Singh with Dhiraj ChhajerOracle SaaS Recipes 
Invoking Process Applications with Anonymous Users from VB Apps with Oracle IntegrationArvind Venugopal, Shay Shmeltzer, and Nathan AngstadtVisual Builder 
Extend Process Automation UI Components to JET-Based ApplicationsArvind Venugopal, Rameshkumar Arumugam, and Sacheth SavandurgaProcess 
Using an Event Based Pattern with Oracle IntegrationMichael MeinerOIC PatternShopify
Practical Guide to use HCM Data Loader with Oracle IntegrationPrakash Masand, and Harris QureshiOICHCM
Using UN/EDIFACT for B2B TransactionsArvind Venugopal, and Sunil ApteOIC 
Modelling Transport Integrations with Trading Partner ManagementArvind Venugopal, and Sunil ApteOICOICTrading Partner
May 2021 Oracle Integration Pre-built RecipesMichael MeinerOICNetSuite, ServiceNow, Facebook, Slack, docusign
Connecting securely from Oracle Integration to Autonomous database using network access listShreenidhi RaghuramOICAutonomous DB
OIC – Oracle Hospitality syncing Company/Guest with SFDC Account/ContactNiall CommiskeyOICOracle Hospitality
OIC May 21 Release – New Jira adapterNiall CommiskeyOICJIRA
OIC for File Transfer – Rename – Move to Target – Delete SourceNiall CommiskeyOICFTP
OIC –> Oracle Hospitality – refreshing OAuth TokenNiall CommiskeyOICOracle Hospitality
Box to HCM Cloud –> HDL File LoadNiall CommiskeyOICBox
Integrating Oracle Hospitality Cloud and 3rd party CRM (SFDC) via OIC and OHIPNiall CommiskeyOICOracle Hospitality
OIC and Oracle Hospitality (OHIP) – Getting the most out of Opera APIsNiall CommiskeyOICOracle Hospitality
Five key Oracle Integration lessons from handling billions of messages monthlyAmit Saxena & Daryl EicherOIC 
Working Around not Having Complex GatewayJan KettenisOIC 

Beating OIC’s FTP File Limits

OIC has for some time now provided an FTP adaptor and more recently included a full FTP server capability. But both have limits on the file size and capacity. The file constraints (1GB for a file and 500GB for the FTP server) shouldn’t be an issue for day to day activities. But OIC is often used to support SaaS Financials and other cloud solutions which do have monthly process cycles which can generate significant data volumes, for example, payroll data. The question is how to handle such data with such constraints?

Data Integration?

There is a school of thought that points to the possibility when handling such large data volumes we should consider using Data Integration rather than a more event-centric integration tool. Personally, I think there is a lot of validity in the argument, and anyone dealing with such bulky data activities should review and question if it is a better answer.

That said, there are cases where it does stand-up. For example:

  • If an organization is transitioning to a more event-driven or at least micro-batch model, you have to start the transition somewhere, but trying to line up changes everywhere can be problematic, so we have to start somewhere. Building an integration process so you have an event model developed, but in the interim, you need to take that bulk mechanism and convert it to a small stream of events.
  • You may be working with a bulk data extract and only need a small subset of the data provided, it won’t help if the data is also represented using a verbose notation such as XML.

Other Approaches

How to overcome the constraint? Oracle databases aren’t so constrained, and SQLLoader can provide an easy means to ingest the data into a staging table. The benefit of this is:

  • if you’re only needing a subset of the data you can pull just those columns from the table.
  • the bulk of the use of XML to be self-describing can be shed through using the DB schema as being more prescriptive.
  • SQL scripts can handle the checksum records removing that data and overhead from the integration process, leaving you to concentrate more on the business process.

If the data is still substantial once in the database there are a number of strategies to consume the data in more manageable chunks, such as

  • Running SQL script on the database that takes each row and calls the OIC as a restful API point. This approach is potentially very interesting as it may then mean if you’re moving towards an event process in the future the API endpoint represents the future state and the database stored procedure is mimicking the future client behaviour.
  • Use polling strategies and result set limits to control how much data is processed in a single execution of the integration. This approach does mean the integration needs to tag which records have been processed to avoid re-reading them.

Useful Links

Feb 21 – New OIC articles

Article / LinkAuthorSubject MatterConnecting
Subscribing to Fusion Custom Business Events in OICKishore KattaICSBusiness Events for Finacials, SCM, Engagement
Linking Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to ServiceNow via Oracle IntegrationMichael ChenICSOCI, ServiceNow
Edit XSLT Source Code in OIC Mapper UIIshruthilaya MalarvizhiICS 
February 2021 Oracle Integration Fusion Application Adapters EnhancementsPrakash MasandOICDescriptive and Extended Flex Fields, Atom Feeds,
Embedding Oracle Integration Insight dashboards : Quickly and EasilySandhya Lakshmi GopalanInsights 
OIC & OCI API Gateway Integration: Quick and EasyVarinder KaurICSOCI API Gateway
Automating Oracle Integration Cloud SFTP Server ConfigurationSiming MuFTP Server 
Guidelines when moving Integration Workloads from SOA to Oracle IntegrationShreenidhi RaghuramOICSOA
OCI Streaming Adapter as TriggerNiall CommiskeyICSStreams
OIC Feb 21 New Features – Adapter ImprovementsNiall CommiskeyICSVarious
OIC February 21 Release – New FeaturesNiall CommiskeyOIC 
OIC Feb 21 Release New Features – API Gateway DeploymentNiall CommiskeyICSOCI API Gateway
Oracle HCM Integration via the HCM Adapter / REST API – Managing EmployeeNiall CommiskeyICSHCM

September 20 – New OIC articles

Article / LinkAuthorSubject Matter Connecting
Replace Existing Connection with New Connection in OIC IntegrationAmit Kumar SumanOIC
OIC: How to configure endpoints of ORDS Connections in OIC?Jan KettenisOICDBaaS/DB
Zero loss of service, smoothly migration from Salesforce to Oracle Apps CX with Oracle Integration Cloud Salesforce Adapter plus helper technology tools such as an Autonomous Database, Data Integration and Object StorageJavier MuguetaOICSalesforce
Oracle Integration Cloud August 2020 new features: Accelerators, Recipes and Couple of Brand new Adapters, and more..Javier MuguetaOIC
How to Configure the New Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) Streams AdapterJohn GravesOICStreams
Inbound EDI message to Oracle Integration for B2B WorldSubhani Sahib ItalapuramOICB2B
How to create a XSLT map that reads many correlated payloadsJorge HerreriaOIC
Creating Complex Local Temporary Variables in OICJohn GravesOIC
How to Keep Exactly One OIC Integration Instance running 24/7John GravesOIC
Oracle Intelligent AutomationMilomir VojvodicOICIA under the hood
An Advanced Guide to OIC Notification via EmailsRenukaradhya DakshinamurthyOICOCI email
Create a B2B Document to Define Custom Definitions in Oracle Integration(OIC)Subhani Sahib ItalapuramOICB2B
Introducing B2B in Oracle Integration(OIC)Subhani Sahib ItalapuramOICB2B
Extending OOTB OIC Recipe – Extract New Hire Info (part1, part2)Kishore KattaOICHCM
Update Lookups in Oracle Integration CloudAnkur JainOIC
Oracle Integration Cloud New Home PageAnkur JainOIC
[Creating Journal Entries in Netsuite via OICNiall CommiskeyOICNetsuite
Oracle Integration (OIC) Recipes – HCM Directory SynchronisationNiall CommiskeyOICHCM
OIC Technical Accelerator – Alert NotificationsNiall CommiskeyOIC
OIC Technical Accelerators – Re-sequencerNiall CommiskeyOIC

OIC and Integrating Oracle SaaS

Handling integration between Oracle SaaS applications and modules has been something of an evolutionary journey. A couple of years ago if you wanted to intgrate say HCM and ERP you needed to ICS or OIC to perform the integration.

In many respects this wasn’t such a terrible thing. Technically as it meant that the back end database schema development for each app was not going to be slowed by needing to be mutually dependent with each other. As a result avoiding the complexities of managing a canonical model and ensuring any changes to that model are delivered in a manner that aligns across multiple development teams plans.

Although you can see from a marketing position it might not have seemed so great, as the customer incurs more cost and development effort to realize a process of managing people (HCM) and paying them (ERP) for example.

Things have moved on, and as long as SaaS apps reside in a Global Single Instance (GSI) (i.e. same region, account and deployment) then for the major products (e.g. ERP, CX, HCM, etc) are internally integrated so a person change in HCM will propagate to ERP as necessary. This certainly reduces the need for integration, saving effort (and the cost of needing OIC).

The problem now is understanding which entities in the SaaS apps are integrated out the box if you deploy using the GSI manner. If you have been working from an integration/technology view point with ICS and OIC for a while it is very easy to get sucked into thinking you need to repeat the integration. After all explicitly integrating the apps is how we started out.

Oracle also want to make it very easy for non Oracle products to integrate, so OIC documentation and the many very good blogs from product management and the engineering team focus on external integration which does (for me atleast) lead to thinking about the older way of working.

Recommendation

Look to see if you’re working with GSI deployment or not. If it isn’t a GSI setup then the old way of working is required. If it is, then determine whether the entity or processes are out the box integrated. This is probably best approached from the SaaS documentation today.

Useful Links:

June 20 – New OIC Articles

Article / LinkAuthorSubject MatterConnecting
 Ankur JainOICERP
Identity Propagation In Structured ProcessJan KettenisOIC / PCS 
Use Oracle Integration to Add Attachments to a Process InstanceBogdan EremiaOIC / PCS 
Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) Notification ActivityHarshit YadavOIC 
Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) ADW/ATP AdapterHarshit YadavOICADW/ATP
Our best blogs for Oracle Integration CloudHarshit YadavOIC 
Managing & Monitoring Integration/Errors In Oracle Integration CloudAtul KumarOIC 
Sugar CRM 2 Netsuite Integration with OICNiall CommiskeyOICSugar CRM, Netsuite
Netsuite REST APINiall CommiskeyOICNesuite
Netsuite Asynchronous Request ProcessingNiall CommiskeyOICNesuite
Invoking Netsuite Saved Searches / MiscellaneousNiall CommiskeyOICNesuite
OIC June 2020 release UI updatesNiall CommiskeyOIC 
OIC Packages – cool feature I didn't know we hadNiall CommiskeyOIC 
OIC –> Shopify Adapter now supporting EventsNiall CommiskeyOICShopify
OIC –> Date ManipulationNiall CommiskeyOIC 
embedding VB CS app in HCMNiall CommiskeyVBCSHCM
Data Stitch Assign operation for Elements with AttributesJorge HerreriaOIC 
Oracle Integration (OIC) Generation 2 is now available in all cloud tenanciesSimone GeibOIC 
Data Stitch: Append and Assign for repeating elementsJorge HerreriaOIC 
Empower your Business Users with Integration InsightSimone GeibOIC (Insights) 
How to use the Dynamic Invoke feature in OIC OIC 
Integration Monitoring and Scheduling pages – Progressive Web App UI ExperienceArya SanyalOIC 
Data Stitch: Repeating element path does not have a predicate for selecting 1 instance – WarningJorge HerreriaOIC 
Big Changes are AfootAntony ReynoldsOIC 
HCM Data loader in Oracle IntegrationAnkur JainOICHCM
Oracle Integration Cloud HCM adapterAnkur JainOICHCM
Global Variables and Data Stitch in Oracle IntegrationAnkur JainOIC 

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