This guide acts as a repository for getting started with Oracle Integration and where to find relevant resources.
Oracle Integration, OIC, is a fully managed service offered by Oracle, ranked as a leader in application integration by Gartner. OIC offers application integration, typically triggered by an enterprise's business events. We have many successful customers that have digitally transformed their businesses.
OIC substantially differs from Oracle's ODI, EDQ, and GoldenGate offerings. The latter 3 offer data integration - moving larger quantities of data, typically to a data warehouse, for analysis. OIC can eliminate the pain points caused by point-to-point integrations. If this is your first time hearing about OIC, check out the OIC Product homepage.
If you do not have an OIC environment, you can start with this tutorial. You can follow these instructions so spin up an instance. Once you have OIC spun up, start with these beginner tutorials.
- General Resources
- Components of OIC
- Basic types of integrations - with workshop examples
- Treatise: developing in OIC
- Other resources
- Youtube sources
- Additional Workshops
- Advanced use cases
- Error Handling
- Administering OIC
- Beyond Application Integration
The main OIC documentation is your friend.
Do I need the on-premises adapters, what is process automation, how much does it cost? Check out OIC Pricing & editions, it's based on how many 'messages' you consume. But what is a message and how do you count them? Check out this explanation.
Perhaps you want to programatically schedule OIC, or even have OIC integrate with itself? Then check out the OIC REST API documentation. What credentials do I need to connect, how do I configure SaaS outbound messaging, what can an adapter do? If these questions sound familiar, start with the adapter documentation.
The Integration blog is where new features for OIC are announced and very helpful articles. If you see a new feature you want to try - here's how you can request a feature flag.
From the marketplace you can download pre-made integration recipes from here and customize them to your use case. Need to start/stop your instance, scale for more message packs, or export your integrations? Check out how to manage Oracle Integration.
- Application integration
- VBCS, Visual Builder Cloud Service
- Insight - coming soon!
- The agent
.................... note: Enterprise edition only below ....................
- Process Automation
- On-premises Entrise Application adapters
- SaaS triggers
- Scheduled
- Generic REST trigger
There are more than these, but these have been the typical use case patterns I have seen.
SaaS trigger integrations typically rely upon these factors:
- Use of one of the SaaS adapters in trigger or trigger & invoke mode
- Configuration on the SaaS to fire off an outbound message or a webhook to OIC
- An event then occuring in the SaaS application that will trigger communication with OIC
Using Eloqua as a trigger first requires installing this agent and linking it to your OIC environment. After installing the agent, you then need to create the rule in Eloqua that triggers the outbound call to OIC by adding a task to a campaign canvas.
This workshop shows how to configure Fusion/Cloud ERP to perform outbound communication with OIC. In it, a product created in Product Data Hub triggers an integration to then add the data to CPQ. It will also get you started with Process Automation.
This video shows you how to start configuring salesforce for business events as integration triggers. This article explains configuring Service Cloud outbound communication to Eloqua.
Schedule integrations are good for sending data from applications to data warehouses, reading information from csv files, or pulling information from applications and writing that data to a csv file.
This workshop is an example of pulling info from an FTP server and writing them to Google's data warehouse, BigQuery, via its REST API. However, for files larger than that and less than 1 GB - you will need the 'stage file' operation in order to read the file - as shown in this YouTube video. Besides reading files, you can write them to an FTP after invoking data (seen in this video), and list files - even from multiple directories.
OIC can process flat files up to 1 GB in size. For larger files than that - check out my data integration repo. What if errors occur in my scheduled integration?
The next use case pattern is basically using OIC as a 'drag & drop API builder'. You can use a blank REST adapter at the beginning of your integrations. This can also be used to abstract away SOAP endpoints. These endpoints can also invoked from Postman, SOAP UI, VBCS, your given front end framework of choice, coding language API call, etc.
In this workshop, we basically use OIC to create a REST API for an Autonomous Transaction Processing database. Click here for a video explanation by a colleague & I. It will also show you how to get started using VBCS.
The generic REST trigger can also be used to create SaaS trigger integrations with webhooks. Applications need to be configurable to send payloads to a generic REST endpoint. For example, Agile PLM, an Oracle application lacking its own adapter, can be configured to make an outbound call to a generic API as a result of event updates.
The generic REST endpoint can also be the beginning of creating an omni-channel communication device, like Wuphf!
I want to explain how to go about developing for an integration, such as is in this lab. How does one know what fields to have in the mapper when you have a generic endpoint going to a SaaS API?
When trying to invoke a SaaS endpoint - perhaps with a generic REST trigger, you may find that you are inundated with hundreds of fields in the mapper you do not know. Typically, beginning by searching the documentation is a good start. Looking at the 'Defaults:' we can find the fields required for the lines, schedules, and distributions. If you are calling a SOAP API and simply want to abstract it away as a REST API - simply make the request payload have the same fields that the SOAP API has and then press the recommend button - it should work for the fields if they are about a 1:1 ratio and have identical names.
Then, to understand the data types for the fields - or see how they're formatted, I'd call the endpoint to give me one or all of the given business object I'm trying to create. In this case, I can look at the get all POs or get 1 PO endpoints. The responses from calling the API directly show me how it expects values to be for the given fields. I can then use this information when sending in field/value pairs in the request payload.
Typically for development purposes, I would start this integration with a generic REST adapter that has ~5 fields that map to important fields for the SaaS. After filling out the important ones like POHeaderID, ItemNumber, etc. I activate the integration, then send a payload. Typically, the response will be a 500 error and the response will then contain the field that still requires an attribute. Next, deactivate the integration, map another field from the REST adapter to the business field and then from Postman you can dynamically try different values for that field. Once you find a working value - you can leave it in the submission to the generic REST adapter, or just hardcode it in the adapter.
If you create a contact in Fusion, or a new lead in salesforce, but the business event isn't appearing in tracking - you need to verify that you properly configured the SaaS. You should also check if you are logged in as the user on the SaaS that you used to create the connection on OIC.
This is where I go to examine if a given SaaS version is compatible with the adapter.
Oracle Integration Certification
Santa Monica Hub Youtube channel
This channel can get your started with VBCS, Process Automation, RPA, and more!
Process Automation Introduction
Integration workshop with Process
The above workshop, labs 100 & 300 contains great starters for basic Application Integration while seeing a variety of its features. Lab 400 has a great introduction for Process Automation that builds on the previous work. The next two workshops below expand on the use case while showing VBCS and integration with other systems. These three workshops are good starters to learn about the components of OIC and how to leverage them with more advanced use cases.
Basics, database, REST, Process
.......
HCM to EBS, with video
The varieties of Fusion ERP integrations + Apiary + salesforce
The above workshop shows you the various ways to use the Cloud ERP adapter, how Apiary can substitute for a 3rd party API, and my write up "Background on the Fusion REST API" - useful for understanding how to start creating Fusion Integrations. It shows how to use the SOAP adapter with Fusion, invoke Fusion's REST API, use the ERP adapter for querying, FBDI imports, and business events firing to an Apiary endpoint. The salesforce adapter's querying capabilities are also exhibited.
Hybrid integration with the agent
The agent enables communication with systems not visible through the internet, via port 22.
Getting started with VBCS, with video
Workshop on BigQuery + Oauth2 authentication
This workshop shows how to use the Oauth2 policy with the OIC REST adapter and the basics of scheduled integrations.
Hitting an OIC endpoint with a Python API call
In this followup, my python script only needs to worry about the basic auth to the OIC API. OIC is taking care of Oauth2 with BigQuery.
Being able to embed VBCS & Process forms is a powerful feature - imagine a company is doing a Lift and Shift of EBS to Cloud ERP over the course of 6 months. As they move different modules, new business users can interact with forms embedded in Cloud ERP that are actually integrated to call endpoints in EBS. This means that EBS is integrated with ERP - without even being noticed. This effectively places the functionality of the non-migrated parts of EBS inside of Cloud ERP.
This blog is the first in a series about doing this. The other parts are at the bottom ‘click here to proceed.’
This describes embedding process forms elsewhere.
Embedding your VBCS applications - Youtube
This video shows how to embed your VBCS applications elsewhere.
Configuring VBCS for embedding
Steps 1 - 10 of this show how to enable embedding on VBCS
Using Process Automation with VBCS
This video shows how to integrate processes in VBCS.
Sending attachments with notifications
Integrating chatbots with VBCS applications
You can also give chatbots custom skills to call APIs from conversations - this could include the OIC API.
Using a javascript function in OIC
Have to deal with an oddly formatted flat file or API response? Use a javascript function to convert it to a workable format.
Oracle Integration Solutions Catalog
This provides pre-defined cross-product architectures.
Best video for installing an agent
The agent is required to integrate with systems not accessible from the internet. You only need an egress rule allowing communication over port 22. The agent ensures your on-premises systems can live in harmony with the cloud. If you are having issues, check this page for solutions; ex: when configuring - do not use an IDCS federated account!
Using a Service Gateway to route agent traffice soley over OCI
Integration with PeopleSoft, part 1 & Integration with PeopleSoft, part 2
Service Cloud to Eloqua, custom objects
Service Cloud to Eloqua, contacts
Extracting bulk data from Fusion HCM
Oauth2 token with the REST adapter
Using VBCS with Fusion Supplemental material on cloud native architecture
Invoking the REST API for IDCS
Example: When a new user is created somewhere - they can then be created in IDCS.
Calling a serverless function with the REST adapter
In order to call the OCI REST API, like above, - you have to configure the REST adapter connection to use the OCI Signature Version 1 security policy. This policy enables you to use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services. For example, you can create an integration that lists your VCNs.
An event that occurs in OCI can also be fired to an integration HTTPS endpoint.
You can also call the Oracle Blockchain platform's API.
BYOL metering, do I qualify? Turning it on/off
Sending notifications with a custom email
Creating budgets and budget alerts in OCI
CI/CD for OIC (video), CI/CD for OIC (article)
This is an alternative to just using import/export.
Integration roles in IDCS (gen1) - IDCS roles for OIC
Integration roles in IAM (gen2) - IAM roles for OIC
Real examples of error with & without error handling
Hybrid & Multi cloud integration
Managing your integration endpoints with API Gateway
Getting started with APIPCS + Apiary
Managing your endpoints with APIPCS, seen in action here
Other Fusion integration methods
Using the BI Cloud Connector with Fusion