systematicHR

It’s not mystery that Oracle’s Fusion Middleware product was really only a half baked cobbling of old products when it was released a couple years ago.  Much like Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” sign, Oracle proclaimed “Half Way to Fusion!”  We all waited expectantly for either a set of Fusion applications to be as half baked as the middleware, or we expected Oracle not to role anything out at all.

At the simplest level, Oracle Fusion Middleware is just like any other SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) product.  It seeks to enable better integration for data and process which should be brought forward to the user layer as better usability.  (I don’t think I can put it any simpler than that).

However, Oracle’s original Fusion Middlware was itself just a cobbled together set of rather loosely coupled applications.  Loosley stated, if the SOA suite is not integrated, how is it going to integrate anything else?  Now comes a new part of the Oracle Middleware suite called Oracle WebCenter.  Perhaps this is what Oracle should have released when they declared the halfway point to Fusion.

Oracle WebCenter, a new offering in Oracle’s Fusion Middleware product line, is designed to help build more effective applications that take advantage of SOA to bring complete context to the information worker’s daily tasks. Oracle WebCenter weaves process, business intelligence, structured and unstructured content, communication, and Web 2.0-style services into the very fabric of the application to create next generation online work environments.

By bringing together the standards-based, declarative development of JavaServer Faces, the flexibility and power of portals, and a set of horizontal Web 2.0 services, Oracle WebCenter provides a unique ability to build applications that eliminate context shifts and maximize productivity.  ((Oracle, October 2007.  “Oracle WebCenter: Platform for In-Context, Next Generation Applications with Embedded Web 2.0 Services.”  An Oracle Whitepaper.))

By integrating the toolset and inserting Web 2.0 capabilities, organizations will be able to provide end to end SOA capabilities not only from a data transaction level, but theoretically they should have better integration with all sorts of non-database content held within wikis and blogs, and they should have a better view into the organization that is not tied to the rigid structures of the organization tree hierarchy.

Theoretically.  I guess I’ll wait until I see it implemented.

Head nod to Michael Specht for the link to Oracle.