6 OracleAS Wireless

This chapter describes best practices for OracleAS Wireless. It includes the following topics:

• Section 6.1, "Deploy Multiple Tiers for High-Volume Environments to Avoid Capacity Issues"

• Section 6.2, "Establish Firewall Settings to Permit Protocols"

• Section 6.3, "Deploy Content Sources to a JVM Other Than OC4J_Portal or OC4J_Wireless to Avoid Stability Issues"

• Section 6.4, "Select a Voice Gateway Suited for Your Environment"

• Section 6.5, "Deploy Messaging Applications to Use a Gateway"

• Section 6.6, "Oracle Sensor Edge Server"

6.1 Deploy Multiple Tiers for High-Volume Environments to Avoid Capacity Issues

It is often necessary to deploy Wireless and Voice applications in a high-volume environment where the number of transactions may exceed the capacity of a single Oracle Application Server 10g middle-tier that is associated with an Oracle Application Server Infrastructure.

See Also: Chapter 14, "Load Balancing ," in the Oracle Application Server Wireless Administrator's Guide to determine if you need additional middle-tiers for your enterprise Oracle Application Server Administrator's Guide for more information about deploying multiple tiers

6.2 Establish Firewall Settings to Permit Protocols

A typical OracleAS Wireless request starts from a device to a WAP gateway. The gateway issues an HTTP request for the content to Oracle HTTP Server, which in turn issues an AJP request to the OC4J container. The Wireless application in the container then issues a corresponding HTTP request to a content source. Since these entities may be deployed on separate computers, it is necessary to ensure that the firewall settings in a DMZ permit these protocols to pass through.

6.3 Deploy Content Sources to a JVM Other Than OC4J_Portal or OC4J_Wireless to Avoid Stability Issues

Deploy content sources, that is, applications or pages that output XHTML or mobile XML, in a JVM other than OC4J_Portal or OC4J_Wireless. You may also consider dedicating a separate instance of the application server if your content source is implemented using Oracle Application Server.

6.4 Select a Voice Gateway Suited for Your Environment

Applications written in Oracle Application Server presentation independent XML can be delivered:

• To any telephone, either local or wireless

• By audio playback of information

• By a voice-enabled user interface

In the same way that SMS or WAP applications running on OracleAS Wireless can utilize gateways from multiple vendors, Oracle Application Server voice applications can also run on any Oracle-accepted VoiceXML gateway.

The voice gateways include:

• A VoiceXML interpreter

• Speech recognition (ASR) or text-to-speech (TTS or synthetic speech) software

• Telephony interface cards such as Dialogic, NMS, or AudioCodes

See Also: Integrated Partner Solutions section of Oracle Technology Network at http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/wireless/integration/index.html for a list of Oracle-accepted Voice Gateways

6.5 Deploy Messaging Applications to Use a Gateway

Messaging applications require a gateway. This gateway is most often a SMPP or UCP gateway for sending or receiving Short Message Service (SMS) messages. It is possible to configure the same short code to multiple Short Message Service Centers (SMSC). This configuration may be necessary if redundancy at the SMSC level is a requirement.

6.6 Oracle Sensor Edge Server

This section describes best practices for Oracle Sensor Edge Server. It contains the following topics:

• Section 6.6.1, "Copy edgeserver.xml to Clone Server Configurations"

• Section 6.6.2, "Analyze Requirements to Select Best Dispatcher"

6.6.1 Copy edgeserver.xml to Clone Server Configurations

The process of setting up the system configuration for an Oracle Sensor Edge Server instance can be time consuming. Because all the settings are saved in an XML file, the best way to clone the existing settings is to simply copy the edgeserver.xml file.

Implementation Details

Go to $ORACLE_HOME/edge/config directory for the application server instance and copy the edgeserver.xml file to the appropriate Oracle Sensor Edge Server instance.

6.6.2 Analyze Requirements to Select Best Dispatcher

Oracle Sensor Edge Server provides a big selection of different dispatchers, all with the purpose to deliver the collected events to the enterprise application layer. It is not always clear what dispatcher to use. By understanding the needs for your environment, you can pick the appropriate dispatcher.

Implementation Details

Table 6-1 shows the dispatcher type needed for major environment types.

Table 6-1 Dispatcher

Environment	Dispatcher
Testing or Simple	HTTP or Web Services
J2EE	JMS Dispatcher
Complex Dispatching	Event Flow
High Speed	Streams Dispatcher