My first steps on integration were on Oracle AQ (from Oracle 8i onwards) and Oracle Workflow Standalone 2.6.x. One of my big dissapointments were that from Oracle 10g AS and DB, Oracle Workflow is desupported. You may use it as long as the 10g licenses last (either for database or AS). But then it is End of Life time. In 11g Oracle Workflow is not delivered anymore. And that is quite a pity, since it was quite a good Workflow tool, especially for datasbase centric applications. The nice thing is that it recides and runs completely in the database. Also it has a pretty good Eventing system. You can define events on a web-based UI. Then you can subscribe Oracle Workflow processes, Java-classes or pl/sql rule-functions on an event.

The good thing about business events is that you can make applications really independend from each other. If you have an application and you need that something happens if a certain mutation in your application is done, for example on creation of an order, the order should be interfaced to another application or logged, then you would create a function call in a database trigger, or from your ADF-BC entity-object. The side-affect is that if your called-functionality is invalid, not available or gives errors, then your calling-application would not work. Also if it is a long running process that is called, than it will all happen in the session of the end-user, who must wait until all processing is done.

And that all is wrong. The calling application should only notify an infrastructure component (like a business event system) and should not care about what is done with this notification. Doing so the end-user get's his sesson back immediately. The application won't disfunction because of corrupted subscribing applications. The application has done what it's responsible for.

The business event system then will handle all the subscriptions in the back-ground. And handle all errors, throw them to an error hospital for example.

But unfortunately the Oracle Workflow Business Event System is no more. Although it is still available in Oracle's E-Business Suite. But that is quite large to install for only BES. EBS is leaning heavily on BES, since most mutations on EBS entities have Events defined on which as an EBS-developer you can subscribe your custom-code. Even if there is no Event available for what you need to do, you shouldn't code it directly on a trigger, but let a database trigger raise your newly defined custom event. And subscribe your code on that event.

This week I delivered the OPN Bootcamp on SoaSuite11g. It was very nice and I'm looking forward to the next to come (9-11th february in Belgium). There's already written a lot on SoaSuite 11g, but little on the comeback of BES: the Event Delivery Network.
Although I like the SCA/Composite. Although I like the integration of all components. But if I must choose, I would pronounce the EDN as the most interesting and promissing addition.

In the OPN Bootcamp there is a small chapter with a little lab to smell just a little on EDN. See also the chapter in "Getting Started with SoaSuite11g". A larger explanation is found here. And here you can read about the managing of EDN.

Raising/publishing an event from a mediator is really easy. Just a few clicks. Also subscribing on a event is just a few clicks away. Also you can raise/publish events from ADF-BC or from Java. But what I miss is an explanation on how to raise an event from Pl/Sql. It is mentioned that it is possible. And in the managing-guide, you'll see how you can create database-agents. But I have to find out how to do it from Pl/Sql. I'll post it when I've found out the how-to.

I've great expectations on EDN. I hope and expect that Oracle will expand the useability further more with enabling other technologies to be able to publish and subscribe to events, the propagation of events to remote systems over WANs, etc. I think they'll do because they need a good Event System when for example BPEL and/or BPM is to replace Oracle Workflow in E-Business Suite.

But we as SOA/EDA consultants have to train Business Analists to think in events. EDN is targetted to the Business. So they have to embrace the concept of events.