Sunday, December 18, 2011

Vennster @ UKOUG 2011

The UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) Conference 2011 in Birmingham is a wrap! Well, at least it was when I started writing this blog :-) Now it has been over a week since I returned on a bumpy flight from Birmingham from my first UKOUG conference which I really enjoyed! Good atmosphere, friendly people, quality presentations, lots of familiar people, and surprisingly good food (at some places at least).

Here's a short summary of the sessions that were hosted by Vennster. Due to last minute cancellations we were asked to fill in for some of the speakers that couldn't attend and presented some more sessions than expected.

BPA Suite to BPEL case study
Lonneke presented on how to model business processes in Oracle BPA Suite and how to transform business process definitions from BPMN to BPEL along with the advantages and disadvantages of this approach. You can find the slides and more background information in this previous blog post.

Effective Fault Handling in Oracle SOA Suite 11g
I presented on fault prevention and handling in SOA and BPM environments and the mechanisms Oracle SOA Suite 11g offers for fault handling. A fault can be defined as something that happened outside the expected operational activity or “happy flow”. Faults can be categorized into:

  • Technical faults (network errors, full tablespace, etc.)
  • Programming faults (nullpointer exception, cursor not closed, etc.)
  • Business faults (credit check failure, invoice amount higher than the ordered amount, etc.)
  • Faulty user input (return date of a flight before the departure date, wrong credit card number, etc.).

To prevent faults you can apply various techniques: configure a robust infrastructure to avoid technical errors (clustering, redundancy, high availability), use pair-programming and peer-reviews to avoid programming errors, identify business requirements and implement these to avoid and correctly deal with business faults, and apply user experience techniques to lower the chance of faulty user input and its impact. This session mostly focused on fault prevention and handling for technical and business faults.

Event-Driven SOA: Events meet Services
Lonneke and I presented (unexpectedly since the would-be presenter was unable to attend) the use of events and how events, services, and processes can work together to provide flexibility, decoupling, and realize business requirements. Events are important from a business as well as technology perspective. Oracle SOA Suite supports eventing through several implemenations such as Advanced Queuing (AQ), Java Message Service (JMS), and the Event Delivery Network (EDN).

I included the slides from my earlier eventing presentation at Kaleidoscope 2011 which was quite similar to the UKOUG session.

Overview of Eventing in Oracle SOA Suite 11g

Some background information can be found in this 2008 blog post explaining the importance of events.

Approach to SOA: Making This a Successful Endeavor for the Whole Organization
Lonneke was asked last-minute to present on why and when to use SOA and what will makes it successful using the (according to some) infamous "breakfast" example. At the end of this session, you will know what SOA means, when it is best used, and how you can get there. 

Wednesday Wizardry
Lonneke, Lucas, and Ronald showed how to rapidly build an enterprise application based on SOA and BPM principles using Oracle Fusion Middleware in only a couple of hours. Read all about it in this blog post.

Other sessions
Due to the unexpected sessions we needed to host I wasn't able to attend that many other presentations. However, I did visit and enjoyed the "WebLogic Server and Oracle RAC" session by Simon Haslam and Frances Zhao on the integration between Oracle WebLogic Server and the Oracle (RAC) Database; especially Active GridLink and the enhancements it offers.

Christmas in Birmingham: Lonneke in front of a square with a giant polar bear and snooker on the big screen

As for me, until next year at UKOUG 2012!

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