New in SOA Suite 12c and AIAFP/OER Backward Compatibility Table

Finally Oracle SOA Suite 12cR1 (12.1.3.0.0) is out (http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pressrelease/soa-suite-12c-062614).Having implemented all versions of SOA Suite (10.1.3.1-5, 11.1.1.1-7) I am particularly more exited about this new release as I was when its predecessors were launched. And this is because unlike the previous releases, these versions is releases in the middle of major trends such as cloud computing, mobile integration, Internet of Thins, Machine to Machine, are starting to become main-stream and I see SOA Suite 12c as a fundamental building block to supporting all of these new trends!
Listing below some of the new features of Oracle SOA 12c that I am more exited about:

• Enhanced cloud integration with cloud adapters
• Improved mobile & IoT support with REST/JSON adapters (suggested article: http://technology.amis.nl/2014/06/26/soa-suite-12c-rest-adapter/)
• Seamless OEP integration (very useful for EDA’s or Big Data integration support)
• New Coherence adapter (suggested article: http://technology.amis.nl/2014/06/28/soa-suite-12c-first-steps-with-the-coherence-adapter-to-create-cross-instance-state-memory/)
• Improved user experience and productivity by:
  • Finally having OSB IDE now fully supported by JDeveloper
  • New “template” feature which allows developer to create blueprints of pre-built SOA/OSB composites/services
  • “Composite like” development of OSB services
  • Completely new ADF based OSB console
  • Suggested article: http://technology.amis.nl/2014/06/26/soa-suite-12c-all-about-developer-productivity-and-performance/ 
• Improved support for large/small documents transfer by incorporating the Oracle Managed File Transfers
• Finally an OOTB Enterprise Scheduler (ESS) (suggested article: http://niallcblogs.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/10-soa-12c-new-features-enterprise.html)
• Unified error hospital (suggested article: http://niallcblogs.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/13-soa-12c-new-features-unified-error.html)
• Enhanced Business Rules composer but feature I like the most is ability to export / import rules to Excel!! (suggested article: http://niallcblogs.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/11-soa-12c-new-features-enhanced-soa.html)
• Backward compatibility with AIA FP with the use of SOA Core Extensions (suggested article: http://docs.oracle.com/middleware/1213/core/INSOA/planning.htm#INSOA498)
• As per my understanding, OER harvester for SOA 12c assets will be available as part of the release of OER 12c (12.1.3) which will come out soon

Is about the last point two points  (AIA/OER) that I want to talk a bit more, specially because both of them are governance related features.
Although 12c introduces many features which will make it easier to govern a SOA project, if you are using AIA or OER in 11g or if you are about to start a 11g project, you must take note of the following:

• AIA Foundation Pack will not be available 12c meaning there is no, and my understanding is that there will not be an AIA FP 12c release. This means that I don’t expect AIA pre-built integrations to be created explicitly for 12c . This makes sense to me as the original purpose of AIA FP was to provide a SOA framework specially aimed to help Oracle Apps practitioners kick start integrations between Oracle Applications (remember that at the time SOA was still immature specially for the Oracle Apps community in which SOA was still a big unknown). Note that some backward compatibility will be provided in SOA Suite 12c by enabling the SOA Core Extensions during the installation process.
• AIA Object Library (EBOs, EBMs, WSDLs) are not installed automatically as part of Oracle SOA 12c Core Extensions. To make these available you will have to extract your 11g objects and package them in a JDeveloper project so they can be deployed into MDS. I personally don’t think this is an issue at all as this is the same way I used to do it in 11g anyway!
• Suggest you read the Using SOA Core Extensions article for more info on this topic: http://docs.oracle.com/middleware/1213/soasuite/develop-sce/getstart.htm#AIRDV109
• OER 12c (12.1.3) will be released soon. This new version will support harvesting of SOA Suite 12c assets. I will provide links on this topic later on.

Having said that, it is important that if you are starting a new 11g project (and you are evaluating using AIA or OER) or if you are already planning an 11g to 12c migration, you consider these factors and plan accordingly. In fact, in a recent 11g project I was faced with the dilemma on whether or not to make use of AIA and OER. I will not go into details on the decision made, however what I will share if the following table which helped me and also the customer make an educated decision:

SOA 12c AIA/OER Backward Compatibility Table

Feature	Requires AIA FP Installation?	SOA 12c AIA/OER Backward Compatibility
Service Constructor JDeveloper Plugin	Yes and No. Yes, It can be used independently of AIA as it is a JDeveloper Plug-in however it requires AIA FP to be installed on server as otherwise composites deployed which were developed with constructor will not run on server.	This feature is not available in 12c. Not even as part of 12c Core Extensions
Code Compliance Inspector (CCI)	No. It can be used independently of AIA as it is a Jdeveloper Plug-ing	Part of OER bundle. OER 12c (12.1.3) will be released soon and will support 12c SOA 12 harvesting
Lifecycle Workbench	Yes. It requires AIA FP	This feature is not available in 12c. Not even as part of 12c Core Extensions
Composite Application Validation System (CAVS)	Yes. It requires AIA FP	CAVS is available in 12c as part as SOA Core extensions
Setup Pages	Yes. It requires AIA FP	Exception handling features of AIA FP are supported on 12c as part of 12c Core Extensions
AIA Message Resubmission Utility	Yes. It requires AIA FP	Exception handling features of AIA FP will be supported on 12c as part of 12c Core Extensions
AIA Solution Pack	No. Comes as part of OER installation	Part of OER bundle. OER 12c (12.1.3) will be released soon and will support 12c SOA 12 harvesting
AIA Harvester	Yes. It requires AIA FP	Part of OER bundle. OER 12c (12.1.3) will be released soon and will support 12c SOA 12 harvesting
AIA Deployment Plan Generator	Yes. It requires AIA FP	This feature will is not available in 12c. Not even as part of 12c Core Extensions
AIA Installation Driver	Yes. It requires AIA FP	This feature is not available in 12c. Not even as part of 12c Core Extensions
AIA WSM Policies	Yes. It requires AIA FP	Yes, this will be available in 12c. Anyhow creation of Policy Sets in WSM which will be supported in 12c are not complex to create
AIA Composites	Yes. It requires AIA FP	Yes, exception handling related composites are available in 12c as part of SOA Core Extensions in 12c
AIA Prebuilt Integrations	Yes. It requires AIA FP	It is not my understanding that AIA pre-built integrations (i.e. PIPs) will be created for 12c. However some backward compatibility will be provided in 12c with SOA Core Extensions
AIA Error Handling Framework	Yes. It requires AIA FP	Exception handling features of AIA FP are supported on 12c as part of 12c Core Extensions
AIA Logging Framework	Yes. It requires AIA FP	Logging features of AIA FP are supported on 12c as part of 12c Core Extensions
AIA Metadata	No. They can be extracted from an environment that has AIA and then deployed as JDEV Metadata Projects	AIA Object Libraries (including EBOs) are not installed in 12c along with the Core Extensions. Only way to deploy these libraries to 12c will be packing them in a JDeveloper project and  deploying it to 12c MDS