What Are the Advantages of Oracle Blockchain Platform?

As a preassembled PaaS, Oracle Blockchain Platform includes all the dependencies required to support a blockchain network: compute, storage, containers, identity services, event services, and management services. Oracle Blockchain Platform includes the blockchain network console to support integrated operations. This helps you start developing applications within minutes, and enables you to complete a proof of concept in days or weeks rather than months.

How Oracle Blockchain Platform Adds Value to Hyperledger Fabric

Oracle Blockchain Platform is based on the Hyperledger Fabric project from the Linux Foundation, and it extends the open source version of Hyperledger Fabric in many ways.

Provisioning and Integration in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Includes preassembled PaaS with template-based provisioning. See Before You Create Your Instance.
Uses Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to incorporate infrastructure dependencies (managed containers, virtual machines, identity management, block and object storage).
Supports multi-cloud, hybrid blockchain network topology that spans multiple Oracle Cloud Infrastructure data centers, on-premises deployments of Hyperledger Fabric, and third-party clouds to link blockchain nodes across organizations, data centers, and continents.

Operates as an Oracle Managed Service

Includes Oracle operations monitoring.
Has zero-downtime managed patching and updates.
Includes embedded ledger and configuration backups.

Enhances Security

Uses data in-transit encryption based on TLS 1.2, prioritizing forward-secrecy ciphers in the TLS cipher-suite.
Uses data at-rest encryption for all configuration and ledger data.
Isolates customers from other tenants and the Oracle staff.
Includes a web application firewall to protect blockchain components against cyberattacks, including predefined Open Web Access Security Project (OWASP) rules, aggregated threat intelligence from multiple sources, and layer 7 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
Provides audit logging of all API calls to the blockchain resources, with records available through an authenticated, filterable query API or as batched files from Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage.

Leverages Built-In Oracle Identity Cloud Service Integration

Provides user and role management. See Set Up Users and Application Roles.
Provides authentication for the Oracle Blockchain Platform console, REST Proxy, and CA.
Supports identity federation and third-party client certificate support to enable consortia formation and simplifies member onboarding.

Adds REST Proxy

Supports a rich set of Fabric APIs through REST calls for simpler transaction integration. See REST API for Oracle Blockchain Platform.
Enables synchronous and asynchronous invocations. Enables events and callbacks and DevOps operations.
Simplifies integration and insulates applications from underlying changes in transaction flow.

Accelerates Integration

Provides plug-and-play enterprise adapters using Oracle Integration Cloud Service to integrate Oracle SaaS, PaaS, and on-premises applications with blockchain transactions, queries, and events. See Oracle Integration.
Blockchain-enabled Oracle Flexcube, Open Banking API Platform, and other Oracle applications with embedded blockchain APIs.
Enables ERP, EPM, GL, SCM, and HCM business processes in Oracle SaaS, on-premises, and non-Oracle systems to rapidly integrate with blockchain to streamline data exchange and conduct trusted transactions with other organizations.

Provides the Management and Operations Console

Provides a comprehensive, intuitive web user interface and wizards to automate many administration tasks. For example, adding organizations to the network, adding new nodes, creating new channels, deploying chaincodes, browsing the ledger, and more. See Oracle Blockchain documentation library.
Enables DevOps through REST APIs for administration and monitoring of blockchain.
Dynamically handles configuration updates without node restart.
Includes dashboards, ledger browser, and log viewers for monitoring and troubleshooting.

Replaces Ledger DB World State Store With Oracle Berkeley DB

Provides Couch DB rich query support at Level DB performance.
Provides SQL-based rich query support. See What's the State Database?
Validates query results at commit time to ensure ledger integrity and avoid phantom reads.

Integrates Rich History Database

Enables transparent shadowing of transaction history and private data collections to Autonomous Data Warehouse or Database as a Service and the use of Analytics or Business Intelligence (for example, Oracle Analytics Cloud or third-party tools) on blockchain transaction history and world state data. See Create the Rich History Database.
Supports standard tables and blockchain tables for storing rich history. Blockchain tables are tamperproof append-only tables, which can be used as a secure ledger while also being available for transactions and queries with other tables.

Includes Low-Code Blockchain App Builder

Blockchain App Builder assists with rapid development, testing, debugging, and deployment of chaincode on Oracle Blockchain Platform networks. Blockchain App Builder generates complex chaincodes in TypeScript (for Node.js chaincode) and Go (for Golang chaincode) from a simple specification file. Blockchain App Builder supports the full development life cycle either from a command-line interface or as an extension for Visual Studio Code.

Blockchain App Builder also includes tokenization support for both fungible and non-fungible tokens. Token classes and methods are automatically generated, and additional token methods are provided so that developers can create complex business logic for tokens.

Highly Available Architecture and Resilient Infrastructure

Built for business-critical enterprise applications, Oracle Blockchain Platform is designed for continuous operation as a highly secure, resilient, scalable platform. This platform provides continuous monitoring and autonomous recovery of all network components based on continuous backup of the ledger blocks and configuration information.

Each customer instance uses a framework of multiple managed VMs and containers to ensure high availability. This framework includes:

Peer node containers distributed across multiple VMs to ensure resiliency if one of the VMs is unavailable or is being patched.
Orderers, fabric-ca, console, and REST proxy nodes are replicated in all VMs for transparent takeover to avoid outages.
Isolated VM environments for customer chaincode execution containers for greater security and stability.

Built-in integration with Oracle Identity Cloud Service for user authentication, roles management, and identity federation immediately leverages Oracle Identity Cloud Service accounts and enables easy onboarding of consortium members who prefer using SAML-based federation for authentication against their own identity providers.

Oracle Blockchain Platform is an Oracle managed services in which provisioning, running, and maintaining all of the infrastructure is transparent to customers. The entire framework can be provisioned with only a few clicks and user inputs, such as which shape to use, the initial number of peers, and if the instance type is Founder or Participant. The rest of the instance is automatically defined by the QuickStart shape you selected. See Before You Create an Oracle Blockchain Platform Instance.

The platform is integrated with Oracle Cloud operations management and monitoring service for continuous DevOps. Full stack zero-downtime patching and upgrades are provided with the platform. These are transparently performed by Oracle operations with no customer downtime required. And if any security vulnerabilities are discovered, emergency security patching is enabled for the operating system and all of the components that comprise the service. Ongoing adaptive intelligent cyber-threat detection, mitigation, and remediation are provided as part of the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure security-in-depth approach. This leverages machine learning-based adaptive intelligence for quick detection of intrusions and abnormal behaviors, and automated patching as one of the tools for faster remediation. See Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentation.

Oracle Blockchain Platform supported by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Oracle Cloud Operations delivers the best-in-class levels of availability, performance, and security. For availability SLAs, see Oracle PaaS and IaaS Public Cloud Services - Pillar Document.