SOA Glossary

Service Component Architecture (SCA)
Service Component Architecture (SCA) is a set of specifications that describe a model for building applications using a service-oriented architecture.
1. Services are assembled together to form a composite application that creates a solution that addresses a specific business requirement.
2. Composite applications may contain new services (specifically for the application) and business functions from existing systems and applications (reused in the composite application).


SOA Composite
A SOA composite is an assembly of services, service components, and references designed and deployed together in a single application. Wiring between the service, service component, and reference enables message communication.

1. Services provide the outside world with an entry point to the SOA composite application. The service advertises its capabilities (also known as operations) to external applications with a WSDL (Web Services Description Language) file. The binding of the service describes the protocols that can communicate with the application. Examples include SOAP/HTTP or a JCA adapter.
2. Service components are the building blocks of a SOA composite application. Oracle SOA Suite 11g includes the following components:
   - The BPEL Process component enables design and execution of a business process that integrates a series of business activities and services into an end-to-end process flow.
   - The Business Rules component provides the means of making business decisions based on defined rules.
   - The Human Task component allows you to model a workflow that describes tasks for users or groups to perform as part of an end-to-end business process flow.
   - The Mediator component is used for validation, filtering, transformation, and routing of message data between components.
3. References enable messages to be sent from the SOA composite application to external services in the outside world.

Service Data Object (SDO)

An SDO exposes any data source as a service, which enables retrieval and manipulation of the data in an XML format through service operations. The task of connecting applications to data sources is performed by a data mediator service.
Oracle SOA Suite 11g enables a BPEL Process to access an SDO through an Entity Variable, a special type of BPEL variable associated with a SDO as a service. Oracle ADF-BC components can be deployed simultaneously as Web Service and an SDO.


WSIL (Web Services Inspection Language) Connection
The http://localhost:8001/inspection.wsil URL accesses a Java EE application that dynamically discovers WSDL URL endpoints for Java EE and SOA composite applications deployed to the same run-time server.


Adapters
Adapters provide a service interface that:
• Exposes external application functionality in a form that can be used by SOA composite application components
• Converts request and responses into a form suitable for other (external) systems
• Implements interfaces by using the Java Connector Architecture (JCA) API standards

Oracle Web Service Manager Policy Manager Policy Manager

Oracle WSM  Policy Manager provides the infrastructure for enforcing global security and auditing policies in the service infrastructure. By securing various endpoints and setting and propagating identity, it secures applications. Oracle WSM Policy Manager provides a standard mechanism for signing messages, performing encryption, performing authentication, and providing role-based access control.

The Oracle Metadata Repository

The Oracle SOA Suite 11g runtime environment requires MDS to maintain SOA application configuration and runtime information. It is used to manage deployed services and composite applications.
The MDS can also be used as a central location for storing and referencing shared service artifacts, such as business events, rule sets for Oracle Business Rules, XSLT files for Oracle Mediator, XSD and WSDL documents for Oracle BPEL Process Manager, and other service documents, which can be deployed in a sharable archive format known as the Metadata archive (.mar files).


Business Events and the Event Delivery Network

A business event is a way for one application to notify another application of a significant occurrence to the business. When a business event is published, another application (or service component) can subscribe to it and initiate whatever processing is implied by that event. For example, when product stock levels are updated in an inventory database, an event can serve as a trigger or signal for another process to fulfill orders that have been on hold until products become available.
Business events are typically an asynchronous fire-and-forget (one-way) notification of a business occurrence.
Events are defined by using Event Definition Language (EDL) to specify the name and structure of an event. Definitions for business events are stored in the MDS, and published in the Event Delivery Network (EDN).
The Event Delivery Network is designed to handle asynchronous messaging arising from a business or system event. The EDN is not messaging infrastructure. It provides an application with a declarative publish-subscribe implementation to publish events so that a composite application with a Mediator component can subscribe to events that trigger execution of the composite application.