#1053 OIC 2024 Review

Introduction

2024 was a great year for OIC, ushering in the release of a plethora of new features and enhancements. As we head towards the end of the year, let's review some of the excellent value-add we got in 2024. Please note, this is not an exhaustive list; please consult the 2024 What's New Docs for all features added.

So, without further ado, let's begin our Rückschau 2024.

New OIC Components

• OIC for Healthcare
• RPA

Connectivity

• Rapid Adapter Builder
• Host of new adapters and enhancements to existing adapters

Core Design time

• new OCI and File Server actions
• ability to test in the design canvas

OIC Projects

• inclusion of B2B and RPA in Projects
• integration and connection sharing between Projects
• Project design time dependency analysis e.g. which integrations are using specific connections
• observability in Projects

Observability

• new features in OIC Observability
• OIC dashboards in OCI Logging Analytics

B2B

• new B2B Dashboard in OIC
• support for new protocols, AS4 etc.

AI

• support for leveraging AI in your business processes
• embedding AI Document Understanding in Process forms

OIC API Catalog & Consumer Portal

• harvest your OIC integrations to the OIC API Catalog
• curate your OIC integration apis
• publish your OIC integration api to the Consumer Portal 

Again, this is not an exhaustive list, just my top picks. But it does show the dynamics behind OIC, bi-monthly release, each with a rich set of new features, mostly based on the customer feedback. A big shout out to our engineering team and their commitment to creating the greatest business process automation platform out there.

Finally, and most importantly, thanks to all our customers and partners - your success is our success!

Now to a deep dive on the bullet points above.  

New Components

OIC for Healthcare

Available with the 24.08 (August 2024) release. OIC for Healthcare includes MLLP and FHIR connectivity as well as support for healthcare document management. This value-add puts OIC in a great position for enterprise interoperability between clinical apps with other business apps, such as financials. 

Naturally, this doesn't just apply to Oracle Fusion Apps, as OIC has a multitude of adapters for other ERP, HR apps etc.

RPA

The 24.10 release saw the limited availability of RPA in OIC - This is certainly a gamechanger for us, and for OIC customers as well. The latter no longer need to purchase an RPA product, they already have it in OIC. 

Robots are always invoked from an integration. The robot activity log is included in the OIC activity stream, making it fully integrated with OIC from both design time and runtime perspectives. 

Connectivity

Rapid Adapter Builder

February 2024 saw the release of the rapid adapter builder component, allowing you to easily create your own adapters for REST based services, and deploy them to your OIC instances.

This is all down declaratively, based on input of either postman collection or open api specification.

Here I've created my own RabbitMQ adapter, with the name "Coinin Gaelach Adapter"

BTW. Coinin is the Gaelic for rabbit.

This surfaces in OIC as follows - 

New Adapters / Enhancements to existing adapters

New Adapters:

The list of new adapters includes - 

1. Amazon S3
2. Amazon SNS
3. Amazon SQS
4. ArcGIS (ESRI)
5. Coupa Procurement
6. Coupa Sourcing
7. MS Dynamics 365 CRM
8. Oracle Aconex Cloud
9. Oracle Primavera Cloud Data Service
10. Salesforce REST

Again, this is not an exhaustive list, but it does 

Adapter Enhancements:

I cannot do justice to the full set of enhancements, but here's a couple of examples -

1. Private Endpoint support for multiple adapters
2. OIC REST adapter - Heterogeneous JSON arrays support
3. Snowflake Adapter - Connectivity agent support
4. GCP Pub Sub Adapter - Dead letter and opaque schema support
5. Azure Service Bus Adapter - Subscribe to existing topic subscriptions

Core Design Time

File Server Native action

April 2024 saw the release of the File Server Native Action, removed the need for you to create an FTP connection to the OIC File Server -

This allows you to easily interact with File Server Directories and Files - 

Design Time Canvas - Tester

There have been many enhancements to the canvas in 2024, but this is certainly one of my highlights.

This is a great boon, saves you having to exit the canvas, activate the integration and then run your test.

OIC Projects

Projects are your one stop shop for implementing your business process automations. The goal is to design together, deploy together etc.

Put RBAC (Resource Based Access Control) on top of this and you have the optimal platform for developing your business processes.

The 24.06 release saw the inclusion of OIC Events in the Integration tab of projects.

24.08 saw the inclusion of Healthcare in projects, while the 24.10 release included B2B support.

2024 also saw many project enhancements, such as dependency analysis (24.08 release) - detailing the relationship between design time artefacts - 

The 24.04 release brought the ability to share connections between projects; one can also "share" integrations between projects, making it easy to create common projects which can be used by others e.g. common error handling/logging project.

Observability

2024 was a great year for OIC Observability, with lots of new features added to OIC itself as well as the release of OCI Logging Analytics Dashboards.

OIC Observability 

The 24.02 release saw the inclusion in the activity stream of the user invoking the integration -

 

The 24.04 (April Release) brought the ability to sort OIC runtime activities/actions executed, by duration. Just click on the egg timer icon -

This is extremely useful for isolating bottlenecks etc.

Also note the cool observability features such as - 

Improved Error Filtering is also now available; this is extremely useful for first level error isolation.

The 24.04 release also saw the inclusion of the opcRequestId in the data sent to OCI Logging & Logging Analytics. Think of this field as a guid, passed between integrations. The inclusion of the opcRequestId and other fields in the payloads sent to OIC, means we can have much richer OIC dashboards in Logging Analytics. I have seen a great uptake in OCI Logging Analytics by OIC customers in 2024. It is a great value-add in respect of OIC Fleet Management as well as providing the basis for creating your own analytic queries.

B2B

Again, 2024 ushered in lots of new B2B features including - 

B2B Dashboard

This gives you a high level visual health check. It was introduced with the 24.02 (February 2024) release.

 

24.02 also say the introduction of support for the X12 HIPAA standard and fixed length files.

24.04 saw the introduction of standalone support (without a trading partner) for the following doc types -

• Fixed length
• Custom XML
• OAG
• X12 HIPAA
• Delimited

With this release, one can now define correlation parameters for all document types.

24.04 also saw the introduction of a SOA Suite B2B to OIC B2B conversion utility.

24.06 saw the introduction of import and export of design-time artefacts. This is very useful, for those using B2B in standalone mode.

24.08 release saw the introduction of AS4 support as well as the inclusion of B2B in OIC Projects.

AI

The Process component of OIC supports the embedding of document understanding in its forms. Take for example an order entry form, now we can embed the order the customer has sent us, within the form. The order will be processed by the OCI AI Document Understanding Service and the salient details will be returned.

Naturally, OIC can, today, be used for orchestrating AI Services. You can check out my blog post on OIC & Gen AI here. 

We have also many customers looking at implementing Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) use cases with OIC.

Expect lots more in this space in 2025!

OIC API Catalog & Consumer Portal

This is a compelling offering via our partner digitalML. 

You can also find this offering on the Oracle Marketplace and in OIC itself - 

This is a HUGE value-add to all OIC customers, who expose their integration apis to either their own developers or 3rd parties. Essentially, OIC Projects along with their integrations can be imported into the API Catalog. The integration api data can be enriched, e,g, by providing more documentation etc. The apis can then be published to the Consumer Portal, where developers can check out the apis, test them and read the documentation. They can also register their interest in using the apis, which results in requests being sent to the API Catalog administrator, who can then decide whether to grant access. 

Now to some screenshots of the Consumer Portal - 

Ask for access to the API- 

Again, this is a great value-add to OIC customers and I have blogged extensively on this new offering. I've also created a video, no mean feat for me! So do check them out. I suggest you start here.

 

Summa Summarum

2024 was a very successful year for 2024. We have a very compelling roadmap for 2025, so I'm really looking forward to the New Year.

Wishing us all Happiness, Health, Wealth and Wisdom for 2025 and beyond! 

#1052 - OIC Project Deployment

Introduction

This post is based on a conversation with my esteemed colleague, Harris Q. Here I look at the basics of project deployment.

Basic Use Case

Here I have 2 integrations, one connection and a lookup. The lookup is currently not used in either of the integrations.

I create a deployment - 

Export - 

Import into a different OIC Instance -

Note: the Lookup is not included, as it is not used by any integration - 

Now back to my "source" project; here I add a new integration that uses the lookup -

I then create a new deployment - 

I export and then import to my "target" project - 

I check out the Deploy page of my "target" project -

I check out the Design page -

Back to the "source" project where I make a minor change to an integration, upping the minor version number -

I now create a new deployment - 

I export and then import to my "target" - 

I check out the "target" project -

Summa Summarum

As you can see, deployments can support an iterative development process. Importing a deployment always adds to a project; it never causes the deletion of any integrations.