In Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.1 and above the product introduced the concept of real time JMS integration within the Framework for interfacing. Customer familiar with older versions of the Framework will recall that we used a component called the Multi-purpose Listener (MPL) which was a very light service bus for calling interface channels (including JMS). The MPL is not supplied with all products and customers prefer to use Oracle SOA Suite and native methods rather then MPL.

In Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.1 (and for Oracle Utilities Application Framework V2.2 via Patches 9454971, 9256359, 9672027 and 9838219) we introduced real time JMS integration natively for outbound JMS integration and using Message Driven Beans (MDB) for incoming integration.

The outbound integration has not changed a lot between releases where you create an Outbound Message Type to indicate the record types to send out, create a JMS sender (though now you use the Real Time Sender) and then create an External System definition to complete the configuration. When an outbound message appears in the table of the type and external system configured (via a business event such as an algorithm or plug-in script) the Oracle Utilities Application Framework will place the message on the configured Queue linked to the JMS Sender.

The inbound integration has changed. In the past you created XAI Receivers and specified configuration about what types of transactions to process. This is now all configuration file driven. The configuration files for the Business Application Server (ejb-jar.xml and weblogic-ejb-jar.xml) define Message Driven Beans and the queues to monitor. When a message appears on the queue, the MDB processes it through our web services interface.

Configuration of the MDB can be native (via editing the configuration files) or through the new user exit capabilities (which is aimed at maintaining custom configuration across upgrades). The latter is better as you build fragments of configuration to make it easier to maintain.

In the next few weeks a number of new whitepaper will be released to illustrate the features of the Oracle WebLogic JMS and Oracle SOA Suite integration capabilities.