App Developer Fundamentals
Here are some concepts within the App Developer Framework to familiarize yourself with before getting started.
Apps
Applications are specialized programs that app developers have built to extend the functionality of an Oracle Marketing product. Apps are comprised of services, which represent the functionality of the app. An app can contain multiple different services. The apps we walkthrough are defined as apps that have been built to interact with Oracle Marketing on the CX App Developer Framework.
App developers host their applications externally outside of the framework. Apps have no executable code in Oracle CX Apps. The App Developer Framework only hosts app URLs, the app hosting is the App developers responsibility. Apps are developed to interact with a set of Oracle CX APIs.
An app is used for management, installation, and configuration. "Services" represent the specific functionality of the app. An app is comprised of services.
Learn more about Apps.
Services
Services are self-contained components of apps that are used by marketers. There is currently one service type available for the App Developer Framework applicable to Responsys: Action Services. Building an action service in Responsys enables marketers to add new Program activities to their orchestration workflows.
The action service is the component of the app that marketers drag onto the canvas.
Most of the development effort will be focused on developing the actual service, as this is the component that contains the Design Time and Run Time elements of the app.
Learn more about Services.
App Providers
App Providers are the top-level organizational unit for apps. A single App Provider can have multiple apps, and every app on the framework must be associated with a provider.
A provider can have multiple team members that have different roles. Team members of a provider can only manage apps for their provider.
Users who need support for an app will contact the associated App Provider for support. For this reason, we ask App Providers to supply company or support-specific information (such as a support website URL) when App Providers are being created within Oracle App Manager.
In Oracle AMS, you must create an App Provider before you can start creating apps.
Learn more about App Providers.
Oracle App Manager
Oracle AMS stands for Oracle Application Management Service. Oracle AMS is the name of the cloud service that interacts with Oracle Marketing products, and apps developed for the App Developer Framework.
App providers use Oracle App Manager to register their apps with the app framework with the Oracle CX Marketing products the app needs to interact with. Oracle Marketing customers then install the apps for their respective accounts.
Products
A product is an entity within the app framework that represents an Oracle CX Marketing product. For example, Oracle Responsys is a product and Oracle Eloqua Sales Tools is a product. Apps are developed with a specific product in mind. Depending on the product you want to develop an app for, the services available for your app will differ.
Tenants
A tenant is the term used to describe an account instance. An account instance can be tied to a marketing account or a developer account. Developers should note that each tenant has an associated id which is used when making requests within the app framework.
Example: Let's say for example a marketing company named ABC Company downloaded an app called ZYX app. In this scenario, the tenant is ABC Company.
For developer account instances, the tenant may be the account being used to develop apps.
ID, Key, and Secret
These are details used by AMS for communicating between apps and product. They are sometimes required to be used as private claims for some calls between apps and product. Provided to both the product and app during registration.
There are two different sets of IDs, keys, and secrets:
- Application Keys: Found in AMS under Application Keys. App ID, token key, and token secret.
- Provider Keys: Found in AMS under Provider Keys. Provider ID, token key, and token secret.
Record Definitions
Defines the configuration for the service as set by the marketer. You'll learn about record definitions later on, but for more information, see Record Definitions.