Using OracleAS 10g and Apps in an Enterprise Configuration

I’ve been receiving a number of questions about integration architectures from customers who have multiple ERP systems.  These long-suffering system administrators are getting awfully tired of maintaining overlapping user namespaces for each of these systems separately. 

Now that all Oracle applications, including the E-Business Suite, have been certified with Oracle Application Server 10g, it’s possible to use a single instance to provide identity management services across your enterprise.

Shared OracleAS 10g Services Across the Enterprise

As shown above, you can now install a single instance of Oracle Application Server 10g and use it to provide unified identity management and portal services to applications across your enterprise.  Applications that delegate user authentication to this central Oracle Application Server 10g instance are called partner applications.

The E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and Oracle Collaboration Suite can all be registered as partner applications with Oracle Application Server 10g.

Users log onto Oracle Single Sign-On 10g, which provides access to all registered partner applications.  A single user definition is maintained centrally by Oracle Internet Directory 10g, which is much more efficient (and safer) than maintaining overlapping user namespaces in each of the individual partner applications.

If you’re so inclined, you can create a portlet in Oracle Portal that links to specific functions in each of the partner applications.

Integration with Third-Party Identity Management Systems

The centrally-shared Oracle Application Server 10g instance can be integrated with third-party identity management systems.  I’ve covered this integration already, so rather than repeating myself here, see this article if you’d like more details about how that works:

• In-Depth: Using Third-Party Identity Managers with the E-Business Suite Release 11i

Taking No Chances

As the axiom goes, if you put all of your eggs in one basket, you’d better watch that basket carefully.  The same goes for centralizing all of your identity management and portal services.  If that system goes down, the outage now affects all registered partner applications.