Oracle Developer Tools Blog

This blog entry will cover Rich Enterprise Application deployment architecture for the cloud, using Oracle JDeveloper 11g, Oracle ADF 11g, Oracle WebLogic Server 10gR3, Oracle Database 11g, and Amazon’s EC2.

Introduction

This post is the first in a series in which I’ll walk through the process involved in the creation of a new Oracle microsite that takes advantage of Cloud computing.

Background

I found myself in search of a home for a recent microsite project that I was working on with some of my Oracle colleagues who share this blog. That project, http://rea.oracle.com, is a developer resource index and showcase for the new ADF Faces Rich Client technologies, JDeveloper 11g, and Oracle WebCenter 11g Tech Preview. The cool thing about the site it that it was completely built with the ADF Faces 11g Rich Client components, so the site itself is a demo of the technology.

Since I was working with pre-release software, I wanted control over the deployment environment. I’d heard a lot of hype about cloud computing, and wanted to give that a try. Oracle’s partnership with Amazon meant that I could fire up an Oracle Database quickly and easily. The pay-for-what-you-use model was attractive, and it is Oracle’s intention to provide more AMIs for Fusion Middleware, so deploying Rich Enterprise Applications on the cloud will only get easier. The WebLogic Sever AMI was very recently released to Amazon for consumer usage, for instance. While customers still have to purchase Oracle licenses for Oracle technology, it’s incredibly easy to deploy applications to cloud computing environments like Amazon EC2.

Amazon machine instances (AMIs) & Oracle

Statelessness

Amazon’s machine instances are stateless! This means that any data, configuration work, etc., done on or saved to an instance will disappear when the instance is shut off -- unless you preserve it on a separately mounted EBS (Elastic Block Storage) disk or configure your own AMI to achieve the desired configuration on startup. For example, make sure you store your Oracle Database (DBF) datafiles on an EBS so your schemas don’t disappear if you restart your instance.

Creating your own AMI’s

This is beyond the scope of this article, but this is the 100% sure-fire way to achieve repeatable results when booting an instance. The process is somewhat involved, to say the least. This page on Amazon’s site provides a primer.

Selecting an existing AMI

I used an Oracle Database 11g / Oracle Enterprise Linux (64 bit) instance as my starting point. Elasticfox makes it easy to search for and fire up instances (see the screenshot below). Amazon has also recently introduced their own browser based management console. In Elasticfox, simply type in a keyword like “Oracle” to see a list of matches. It should display the complete list by default.

Amazon’s docs on Running an instance are quite useful, albeit focused on the command line style of interaction.

Oracle AMI’s

Oracle has delivered a set of free Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), to make it easy for customers to get started deploying Oracle solutions on Amazon EC2. Developers can take advantage of the provisioning and automated software deployment in these AMIs to rapidly build applications using Oracle’s popular development tools, such as Oracle Application Express, Oracle JDeveloper, Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse and Oracle Workshop for WebLogic. Note that licenses for the software must still be purchased

REA microsite

The REA microsite runs on Oracle WebLogic Server 10gR3, Oracle DB 11g and Oracle ADF 11g. It was developed using JDeveloper 11g.  It makes primary usage of the ADF Hierarchy Viewer component, which is planned for public release in 11gR1 version of JDeveloper / ADF 11g.

Using the rea.oracle.com website and the ADF hierarchy viewer is simple and easy, and involves a few simple gestures from the user.

1.) EXPAND NODE

2.) FLIP NODE

3.) MOVE

Click, hold, and drag in the center of a node as shown below to re-position the tree.

4.) ZOOM

That action expands the toolbar as shown below. Then you can move, zoom, and change the hierarchy layout.

5.) ROLLOVER

At lower zoom levels, rolling over a node will create a popup with potentially different content.

In the next post in the series I’ll explain the technical concepts and details about working with Amazon, and free 3^rd party software used with the cloud.