Already available in beta, the developer offering is deemed fully functional by Oracle and serves as a preview to the general release due this fall.
Oracle SOA Suite features Oracle's BPEL Process Manager, Web Services Manager, Business Activity Monitoring, Enterprise Service Bus, and Business Rules products. An abbreviated version, for use with Oracle's app server, lacks the ESB and Business Rules components because they are already tied into the app server itself.
Oracle SOA Suite provides a one-stop shopping approach to SOA, said David Shaffer, senior director of product management at Oracle. The company believes that an ESB is only part of the SOA equation; customers also need capabilities such as identity management, process composition, BPM, and even business intelligence and grid-style infrastructure management. "We think [the suite is] the right package in terms of mapping to people's real-world requirements," Shaffer said.
