From The JDeveloper and SOA Book Of “Why”: Chapter 0 – The Why of “Why”

Thank heaven for Google.

I honestly can’t imagine doing my job as an Oracle consultant without access to Google. Consultants, developers, DBAs – we’re all at the mercy of pure information overload. No longer are we just expected to know our area of expertise – making the whole system work together (application, network, database, security, performance, etc.) is required for all but the most junior of consultants and developers. As systems have evolved, options for design, coding and configuration of systems have grown exponentially.

For example, in a modern, enterprise application, where does the code for a simple business service live? Should it live in the browser code inside of a JSP? Should it live within the middleware application? Should it live within a web service? Should it live within an EJB? Should it live within the enterprise service bus? Should it live within a BPEL process? Should it be contained within a Business Rule? Or should it live within a stored procedure in the database?

It’s tough enough just knowing and understanding all of the different permutations – knowing the “right” answer (if there even is a “right” answer for your situation) is even more challenging. Google is great for the “what” and “how” in these types of situations: How do I write code and place it in the Service Bus? What tool can be used to load test my application? How do I write an EJB? What attributes can I set dynamically in this JSF component? How do I deploy a BPEL process? How do I test a Web Service?

But what about the “why” questions? Why does it make sense to use the Enterprise Service Bus for this problem? Why does JMS exist? For the new release of a product, why should we consider changing the application’s basic architecture?

These are the types of questions I struggle with as a developer and architect every day.

Along with Google, there is a rich community of Oracle bloggers out there. There are people who are willing to give of their time and create wonderful blogs that outline their experiences in the challenging development world of SOA using Oracle JDeveloper. Without these bloggers, all of our lives would be much more difficult.

There is a challenge, however, putting their works to good use – namely, this: the set of features in Oracle JDeveloper 11g and the creative things you can do with them is so incredibly large, being able to pick out the specific things discussed on many of their blog posts and put it to practical use can be a challenge for many developers – a case of being able to see the forest from the trees, as it were. There are many, many times I’ve poured over a post knowing I was reading something essential, but struggling to fit it in to the bigger picture.

It’s my sincere hope to contribute to this space by focusing less on the “what” and “how” of SOA Development using Oracle JDeveloper and to talk about the “whys” of working with Oracle JDeveloper in the SOA space. Throughout 2012, I’ll be publishing different lessons on working with Oracle JDeveloper to create SOA applications focusing on the “whys”. In the beginning, there will be lots of discussion on the “whys” and less on the “hows”, but that ratio will shift as we get into more and more detail. Whenever I can tie a chapter on this blog to another blog out there, I’ll make every effort to do so.