Oracle AIA 2.0.1

Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA) is one of the most widely discussed topics when it comes to middleware integration on Oracle stack using webservices/SOA. I have actually enjoyed the experience working on Oracle AIA. Though there has been many challenges and pain points (when it comes to pain points, I have to accept that every product has some pain points and this in nothing special about AIA), I was actually thinking about the work that has gone into building this product. This is no simple work, and no one can claim it’s not a big deal. Its indeed a big deal. With Oracle AIA, a customer can look at hitting the market in 6 months provided his IT system has to align with Oracle principles (if not a few customizations might be required). It has changed the approach/face of middleware integration.

I have been involved with two PIPs of AIA,  Order To Bill (O2B) and Agent Assisted Billing Care (AABC). I will detail what these PIPs do in my further posts. I was very impressed with the organization of the PIPs and of course, the canonical data model artifacts (EBO, EBM and EBS). They have been designed based on standards, and sometimes I wonder how long it would have taken to bring about such an organized structure, version them and provide options of extending them as per the customer’s requirement. It’s easy to say that given a year time, any service vendor or telco company can develop this kind of product. No it’s not. We know how difficult it is to even maintain a small piece of code, standardize it and project it as a product.

Purists would definitely not agree AIA is indeed a revolution. I found that there were lot of business cases/logic handled within AIA, which if it had to be developed would consume enormous amount of time. As we were using some custom bpel/esb integration on top of AIA, we already had a base on which we had to fit these entities and a reference architecture which we could adhere to. I should say AIA either makes your life easy or hell ! If there customer requirements which require you to customize AIA, life is hell. I had a tough time in understanding the AIA code and make changes.

The major drawback would be the documentation/support for groups on AIA. In my company, we did not have a forum for AIA as this was something new and we had to refer to external blogs. No documentation of AIA at the code level meant, you were back to school, learn by self. Of course, Oracle had documented business processes in their different implementation guides, which proved useful to an extent (till you need to understand what AIA is, but not for customizing AIA.

Introduction

A little about what I do and how relevant it is for me start this blog. I am a software engineer based out of Chennai, working with a leading consulting company, primarily in the Telecom Domain. I have been involved in the project that I am currently working on for the past two years and it has been a tough journey so far. I am working for an european customer, where we are trying to revamp their complete IT system, starting from CRM, Middleware to the Billing System.

I am working on an E2E Oracle stack where we use Siebel 8.0, Middleware and BRM 7.3. By Middleware I mean, Oracle SOA Suite 10.1.3.3.0 with MLR18 and AIA 2.0.1 sitting on top of it. I have faced many issue wrt AIA and Oracle SOA Suite and I will be sharing those issues and resolutions and some useful links that I used for reference.

I have also been in involved in customizing AIA for the customer requirements and I will be able to help out with issues in customizing AIA. I will try to share some patch installation special instructions for a few patches, AIA related patches, few things on BAM and OWSM and of course, some information that I gather from reads and blogs.

Cheers,
-  AR