As part of this multi-part blog series, we are examining why the underlying technology matters for Oracle Cloud Applications. In our previous post, we introduced Oracle Cloud Application Integration and explained that Oracle Cloud Applications can integrate with any external business application. Next, we want to take a deeper dive into the included Oracle Cloud Applications functionality and frameworks that are available for setting up external integration.
Oracle Cloud Applications include a comprehensive collection of out-of-the-box functionality and frameworks to facilitate integration with on-premise systems, third-party systems, and other cloud systems.
Figure 1: Integration Frameworks Included with Oracle Cloud Applications
The following is a description of these built-in frameworks as well as information on how Oracle Cloud Applications customers can leverage them.
1. Bulk Data Loads
Importing file-based data into Oracle Cloud Applications is an extremely common requirement for Oracle customers. As a result, Oracle Cloud Applications include the ability to import bulk data from any data source for a variety of purposes. To streamline the process, Oracle Applications provide predefined import templates for all common business objects. When performing bulk data loads, this process can be fully automated using embedded Oracle Applications Web Services that will be described below.
For more information on bulk data imports, please refer to the link below as an example. While this example shows information on importing financials data, bulk imports for other application business areas follow a similar framework.
Oracle Cloud Financials Integration
2. Bulk Data Extracts
Bulk data extracts are another common business requirement for Oracle Applications customers. One of the tools to support bulk data extracts is the Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Connector (BICC). BICC is often leveraged for extracting bulk data and loading it into external applications or databases. As with bulk data imports, bulk data extracts can be fully automated using embedded Oracle Applications Web Services, also described below in this blog post.
For additional information on Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Connector (BICC), please refer to the following:
Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Connector (BICC)
3. Report Data Extracts
Another framework for extracting Oracle Cloud Application data is the embedded Oracle BI Publisher utility. This powerful tool supports both scheduled and ad-hoc reporting and can be based on either predefined Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence analysis structures or customer-defined data models. When using Oracle BI Publisher for outbound integrations, customers can generate reports in various formats, such as CSV or XML, to support optimal downstream processing for specific business cases. Report data extracts can be fully automated using embedded Oracle Applications Web Services described below in this post.
To support customer requirements in this area, Oracle publishes application data dictionary tables and view information for the different business areas. For example, Oracle Cloud Financials data dictionary information can be found on the following page:
Oracle Cloud Financials Data Dictionary
4. Excel Integration
Oracle Cloud Applications include functionality that allows customers to import data directly from Microsoft Excel. Various types of records or business objects, such as orders, receipts, invoices, inventory balances, or accounting transactions can be imported using Oracle-supplied templates. Spreadsheet integration allows customers to prepare data in Microsoft Excel, then with the click of a button, import the data directly into the application and have it validated as if it were entered directly from the application front-end. This functionality saves customers a tremendous amount of time because it eliminates the re-keying of large volumes of data.
In addition to Excel data imports, customers can also export Oracle Applications report data in Excel format for easy opening, viewing, and manipulating if required.
5. Inbound/Outbound REST APIs
In addition to the file-based and Excel-based import functionality described above, Oracle Cloud Application customers are able to leverage embedded REST APIs to read, write, update, and delete Oracle Cloud Application data. These prebuilt APIs are included with Oracle Applications and can be invoked externally by sending a URL and optional parameters to the applications over HTTPS. REST APIs are often used to support real-time transaction processing. Most APIs are designed to process single transactions, but they can be invoked repeatedly for multiple transactions.
For additional information on embedded Oracle Cloud Application REST APIs, please refer to the following:
Oracle Cloud Applications REST APIs
6. Inbound/Outbound SOAP Web Services
In addition to embedded REST APIs for integration, Oracle Cloud Applications include embedded SOAP Web Services. One commonly used web service is ERPIntegrationService. It contains multiple operations including loadAndImportData, which when invoked, will upload a file to the Oracle Cloud Applications environment and submit an Enterprise Scheduling Service (ESS) job to process the file. The use of web services can be fully automated and therefore result in significant operational time savings. For additional information on this specific web service and others, please refer to the following:
Oracle Cloud Application Web Services
7. B2B Integrations
For customers needing to import/export OAGIS XML data for B2B purposes, customers can use the built-in Oracle Cloud Applications Fusion Collaboration Messaging Framework (CMK). This allows customers to enable business-to-business (B2B) message exchange capabilities with customers or suppliers. This is in addition to other file formats, which can also be imported to and exported from Oracle Cloud Applications.
With Oracle CMK, customers can send and receive real-time transactional B2B messages directly with customers or suppliers. Customers can also send and receive data to an intermediary such as a B2B service provider.
For more information on B2B integration, please refer to the following:
Oracle Cloud Applications Fusion Collaboration Messaging Framework (CMK)
Additionally, customers can augment this embedded B2B functionality using Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC), which will be described in our next blog post.
Summary
As you can see, Oracle Cloud Applications integration tools and frameworks enable customers to integrate their Oracle Applications with any external business application or data. In our next blog post, we will describe some prebuilt integrations that have been created using these frameworks. We will also explore how these frameworks can be leveraged by customers to adapt prebuilt integrations or build their own using Oracle Integration (OIC).
Be sure to come back soon for our next post as well as future posts on why technology matters for Oracle Cloud Applications.
2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Integration Platform as a Service
The authors are members of Oracle’s North American Applications Advanced Technology team, dedicated to helping customers modernize their businesses through technical innovation. They provide subject matter expertise and vision on SaaS, platform technology, operations, and data management.