Oracle Corp. has released its Fusion Middleware 11g suite of products, promising developers easier interaction with the technologies that govern application servers, business process management, business intelligence, and content management.
Billed as the power center that helps customers “develop, run, and manage their custom, packaged, and composite business applications,” the 11g suite comprises four main offerings — SOA Suite 11g, WebCenter Suite 11g, WebLogic Suite 11g, and Identity Management 11g — each with an enhanced slate of functionality aimed at creating easier integrations across an enterprise, the company said.
Oracle SOA Suite 11g is standardized on a single Service Component Architecture. Together with a similarly standardized Event Delivery Network, the services-oriented architecture technology allows IT personnel to “manage business events and application services in one place without writing custom code,” the company said in a statement.
In WebCenter Suite 11g, developers will find drag-and-drop capabilities geared to creating composite applications and websites that can be customized. The development team standardized all components on a metadata management system, Oracle said.
In Oracle WebLogic Suite 11g, the company has parlayed its acquired BEA Systems technology into a “cornerstone technology for an application grid approach to application infrastructure.” The technology provides clustering capabilities that allow application grids to capitalize on RAM-based storage and the latest hardware architectures, according to Oracle. The suite also features a Transaction Processing Monitor used to manage the performance of legacy systems.
New features in the governance- and security-focused Identity Management 11g make it possible to conduct accelerated compliance and e-discovery efforts, according to the company. “The fully integrated suite provides the foundation for Oracle's innovative services-oriented security strategy, which gives developers the freedom to build the application they want, and then quickly add or change security capabilities with plug-and-play ease,” Oracle said. Users can also externalize and manage application permissions and roles centrally.
In announcing the latest version of its middleware, the company again touted the idea of a single stack — the assertion that businesses can now rely on Oracle for each element of the technology landscape, from hardware and servers — via the pending Sun Microsystems acquisition — to database software, middleware technology, and business applications. Fusion Middleware, Oracle said, serves as the integration element needed to bring those technologies together.