This chapter introduces Oracle Enterprise Repository (OER), describes basic OER concepts, provides a basic usage scenario via use cases, and provides the next steps to get started with your OER installation.
This chapter contains the following sections:
Oracle Enterprise Repository (OER) provides design-time governance support for the service lifecycle, enabling storage and management of extensible metadata for composites, services, business processes, and other IT-related assets. Oracle Enterprise Repository acts as the central source of SOA information, allowing you to find planned, existing and retired services.
Oracle Enterprise Repository provides vital information to service producers, providers, and consumers who enhance applications or deliver new service capabilities. In addition, portfolio managers and business architects use the repository to understand business capabilities and to assist with strategic planning.
Oracle Enterprise Repository provides role-based links to asset artifact stores and links to design documents, justification documents, test plans, support plans, policies, and so on. Approvers in the lifecycle process can reference and upload documentary evidence to support their approvals, and consumers can reference information to support their service choices. Oracle Enterprise Repository features that help automate service lifecycle governance include:
An Asset Harvester that automatically populates OER with SOA assets and tracks updates to artifacts automatically.
Direct integration with Oracle JDeveloper, allowing easy browsing and consumption of existing assets.
Reporting on reuse, compliance, and other portfolio management metrics.
A process engine with automatable processes to meet an organization's governance process workflows.
Built-in automated notification about a selection of lifecycle events, plus discretionary notification of asset subscribers.
An event engine that can publish repository events to any process service endpoint.
A rich SOAP-based API that allows organizations to programmatically update the repository, keeping it synchronized with the IT and business environment that it describes.
In addition, Oracle Enterprise Manager SOA Management Pack Enterprise Edition provides Oracle Enterprise Repository with a summary of runtime performance metrics. These metrics help service providers judge portfolio performance and service consumers judge runtime performance.
Oracle Enterprise Repository also tracks asset usage and provides robust reports that help organizations determine the ROI on asset reuse. Oracle Enterprise Repository's interface integrates with JDeveloper to promote developer adoption.
This section describes a basic Oracle Enterprise Repository implementation scenario:
After installing OER, the first task is to configure OER for use as a catalog for your organization's services and interfaces.
The initial step is to identify the types of assets that will be included in your OER instance. After these types are identified, you must define the metadata to be associated with these asset types. Next, you will build taxonomies to organize the assets and establish relationships to connect assets.
The benefits of cataloging your services are:
You now know what types of assets your organization has
You can see redundancies and begin to address them
See "Administering the Asset Lifecycle" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Enterprise Repository for more information about configuring Oracle Enterprise Repository to manage your organization's assets.
Before you begin using the other features of OER, you must populate OER with your organization's services. OER includes Harvesters, which are used to automate the capture and update of assets.
The initial step is to identify sources from which to harvest assets. See "Configuring and Using Automated Harvesting" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Enterprise Repository for information about from which sources OER can harvest assets. After these sources are identified, the harvesting tools must be configured. Finally, run the harvesters to populate OER with the services from the sources you chose.
The benefits of populating the repository with harvested assets are:
More services can be harvested into a growing catalog of assets
Lower costs to populate OER
Understanding of how and when to harvest form particular sources
After populating OER with your organization's services, you can establish and manage the asset lifecycle in OER. An asset lifecycle process flow becomes the foundation for process automation.
Managing the Asset lifecycle allows you to align it with your organization's software development lifecycle. An important part of this process is defining or modifying user roles and responsibilities relating to the asset lifecycle.
After the user roles have been defined or modified, your organization can establish processes for asset assignment, editing, approval, subscription, and notification.
The benefits of managing the asset lifecycle include:
Aligning the asset lifecycle with your software development lifecycle
An approval process to ensure that the information in OER is complete and correct
Providing the foundation for future process automation
See "Administering the Asset Lifecycle" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Enterprise Repository for more information about the lifecycle administration tasks available in OER.
After managing the lifecycle of assets registered to OER, users can consume the services cataloged in OER for use in their applications.
The benefits of managing the consumption process include:
Service consumption is aligned with your software development lifecycle
Automation makes consumption easy and transparent
Better reuse of services means greater return on investment
The Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle Enterprise Repository describes how developers consume assets from both the OER console and the Oracle JDeveloper OER plug-in.
After users begin consuming OER assets into their applications, it is important to manage and understand the impact of change. OER manages complex networks of project and asset relationships.
You must be familiar with the Harvester's behavior when assets are updated; this ensures that you are prepared for the effect on assets in OER.
You must also identify and implement any custom asset relationships that your organization needs. You should know the difference between technical relationships, which connect services and other service artifacts, and organizational relationships, which describe which projects produce and use which services.
You can also implement subscriptions and notifications, as appropriate to your organization.
The benefits of managing change include:
Greatly reducing risk by understanding the impact of change
Automatic notifications improving visibility and communication
See "Understanding Versioning of Assets" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Enterprise Repository for information about the harvester's behavior when assets are updated.
See "Configuring Relationships" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Enterprise Repository for information about implementing relationships.
See "Configuring E-Mail Notifications and Distribution Lists" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Enterprise Repository and "Subscribing to Asset Information" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle Enterprise Repository for implementing subscriptions.
Stakeholders can review reports documenting the project process and the reuse of assets cataloged in OER.
First, you must install and configure BI Publisher and configure reporting in OER. After this is completed, you can run reports and interpret the data therein. After the reports have been analyzed, you can define a formula to determine the value of each service.
The benefits of monitoring progress with reports include:
The ability to demonstrate the return on investment of the program
The ability to monitor trends and the progress of the program
A uniform service value assessment provides consistency
"Configuring Reporting with BI Publisher" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Enterprise Repository provides information about setting up reports with BI Publisher in OER.
Stakeholders can review runtime performance metrics for deployed services in OER for use at design time. These metrics help can help you evaluate the fit of a service for your application.
The first step is to configure the tooling required to post the metrics. Next, you run the utility to populate the metrics. Finally, you analyze the metrics.
The benefits of monitoring runtime performance include:
The ability to see metrics helps stakeholders gain trust in the services
Automation makes posting the metrics to OER easy
"Enterprise Manager Integration Utility" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Enterprise Repository provides information about integrating OER with Oracle Enterprise Manager.
"Configuring Metrics" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Enterprise Repository provides information about using metrics with OER.
See Chapter 2, "Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Repository" to get started with Oracle Enterprise Repository.