Getting your feet wet with the Oracle Integration Service
The question is, what is an integration?
An integration is a simple and secure connection between multiple applications. There is also a mapping so a field in one application can correspond to a field in another application.
An integration includes at the least a trigger (source) connection (for requests sent to Oracle Integration) and invoke (target) connection (for requests sent from Oracle Integration to the target) and the field mapping between those two connections.
The Oracle Integration service is used to connect end-points between multiple applications.
The applications can be in the cloud, or on-premise.
In addition, the Integration service is able to track an individual integration as follows:
— log activity (including email of events).
— monitor execution status.
— error management.
— schedule a trigger for the execution.
Fortunately, Oracle provide some sample integrations that showcase what the service can do.
Create the integration instance
From the dashboard, you can use the hamburger menu to navigate to ‘Application Integration’, or just search for ‘’integration’ at the top of the page.
Then to create an integration instance, you’ll need to nominate a name (eg samples) and a container with the correct policy.
Takes about 10 minutes to create the instance for the integration service, so click on the instance name to go to the details page.
From the details page, there is a button for the service console.
To manage the integration instance go to the service console.
Activate a sample integration
From the service console for Oracle Integration, click on the hamburger menu, and the navigation menu appears on the left-hand side.
From there, select Integrations, then Integrations again.
The next page will show a list of integrations — but you need to remove any default filtering so all the sample integrations will be listed.
After the default filter has been removed you should see a list of 9 sample integrations from Oracle.
Scroll down the page and you see the Sample Multiple Verbs and Resources Invoke integration.
The description of this integration is as follows:
This sample demonstrates how to use multiple HTTP verbs and resources configured in the REST Adapter trigger connection of an integration. A single REST Adapter can be configured to have multiple HTTP verbs such as GET, PUT, POST, PATCH, and DELETE. The REST Adapter can also be configured with multiple resources. For this sample, a single /emp resource and an /emp/loc subresource are used.
Activate the Sample Multiple Verbs and Resources Invoke integration with the ‘power on’ button.
Activating the integration will take you back to the integration page and you’ll see an ‘Action in progress’ indicator.
After a few seconds, refresh the page and you’ll notice the Multiple Verbs and Resources Invoke integration is activated.
View the process flow of the Multiple Verbs and Resources Invoke Sample
The flow of the Multiple Verbs and Resources Invoke is documented as:
• A REST Adapter (EmployeeAPI) is configured as a trigger (inbound) connection in the integration. The REST Adapter is configured with a resource endpoint of /emp, a subresource of /emp/loc, and multiple verbs: GET, PUT, POST, PATCH, and DELETE operations. The configured operations are modifyEmployee (PATCH), updateEmployee (PUT), getEmployee (GET), getEmployeeLocation (GET), deleteEmployee (DELETE), and addEmployee (POST).
• The REST Adapter is triggered when you specify the URL in How to Run.
• Each operation is shown as a different path that branches out from the trigger connection.
• Each branch has a map and a reply action configured.
This means different branches of the integration will run depending on the type of message. ie GET, PUT, POST, PATCH, and DELETE.
View the process flow of the integration from the menu.
Now you can see the visual steps and flow that the integration is following for each type of message:
Now we are ready to test the operation of the Multiple Verbs and Resources Invoke integration.
Test the execution of the integration
Now click on the play button to show the options.
Click on Test option, and you’ll get the following test page.
You’ll have the ability to select the type of message you want to send.
So to start, choose the POST message, in order to test the function to add an employee record.
Note — for the sample integration there aren’t any actual employee records to add, but in principle there could be employee records to add from a POST message.
Now press the ‘test’ button on the right-hand side.
Even though there are no actual employee records being added — you can see the branch of the addEmployee function was triggered from the POST message.
Also without actual employee records, we can test other types of messages.
Let’s test the getEmployee function.
The getEmployee function requires a GET message type.
Just as there were no employees to add, there are no employees to retrieve but that doesn’t stop us testing the functionality.
Testing the getEmployee function still produces a log that the correct branch was triggered successfully.
A summary of the actions are also presented in a dashboard.
The integration dashboard
There is a summary of metrics for each integration, but there is also a dashboard that covers all the integrations.
Dashboard page displays overall system status, including the percentage of successful messages, total number of messages, total number of successful messages, and total number of failed messages. Details about currently used connections, currently activated integrations, and scheduled integrations are also provided. You can also view the activity stream and download diagnostic logs and incident reports.
Go to the Integration home page to see a summary of total activity.
Go back to the hamburger menu, then from the left-hand side select monitoring.
Go to Integrations, then Dashboards.
Scroll down the page to see additional metrics.
The Oracle Integration service has you covered!
Paul Guerin is an international consultant that specialises in Oracle database. Paul is based from a global delivery center in South East Asia, but has clients from Australia, Europe, Asia, and North America. Moreover, he has presented at some of the world’s leading Oracle conferences, including Oracle Open World 2013. Since 2015, his work has been featured in the IOUG Best Practices Tip Booklet, and in publications from AUSOUG, Oracle Technology Network, Quest, and Oracle Developers (Medium). In 2019, he was awarded as a most valued contributor for the My Oracle Support Community. He is a DBA OCP, and continues to be a participant of the Oracle ACE program.
