SOA Tech Magazine

Application interfaces are as old as the origins of distributed computing and can be traced back to the late 1960's when the first request-response style protocols were conceived.  For example,  according to this research, it wasn't until the late 1980's when the first popular release of RPC (described below) was introduced by SUN Microsystems (later acquired by Oracle), that internet-based interface protocols gained wide popularity and adoption. This is perhaps why the term Application Programming Interface (API)  even today can often result in ambiguity depending on who you ask and in what context. This is probably because of the fact that historically the term API has been used to (and to a degree continues to) describe all sorts of interfaces well beyond just web APIs (e.g. REST). This article therefore attempts to demystify (to an extend) the origins of modern web-based APIs. This is done by listing and describing in chronological order (as illustrated below) th...

Oracle has recently announced the release of Oracle API Platform Cloud Service . Here the official press release . This new platform -not to be confused with Oracle's previous solution, has been built almost entirely from the ground up to satisfy modern API management requirements. I have been lucky enough to be part of the beta programme and have actually been implementing the product for the last 4 months or so (but trying it for almost a year now). In this blog post I share some of the insight and experiences I've gained in the process. What is the Oracle API Platform Cloud Service? Is a 3rd generation API Platform  that delivers a 'true hybrid' model that allows for APIs to be created, deployed and managed centrally (from the Oracle Cloud) whilst API gateways (engines that run the APIs) can be deployed in any cloud (i.e. Amazon, Azure, Oracle Cloud, IBM Softlayer/bluemix, etc) and/or on-premises. In addition with the incorporation of Apiary into the port...

During the OFM Summer Camp for Mobile Cloud Service (MCS) it was all going very smooth. In fact too good!! until I had to set up MAF 2.1.2 in JDevleoper and configure the utility provided in the lab (maf-mcs-utility-2.1.3.1.4). At this point nothing worked…The fact that I use Mac didn’t make things easier either as most people were on Windows and the lab sort of assumed the same….. So after at least 6 hours banging my head against the wall I finally found a solution. Word of Caution I initially tried to make this work in an existing Jdeveloper 12.1.3 soaquickstart installation. I tried to set up MAF 2.1.2 in this environment (following the docs steps) and it got to the point that I was getting all sort of weird errors (many related to MDS not loading and others around compilation). So at this point I decided to do a full clean install of everything (including Java). Below the steps: Preparation: Uninstall JDK 1.8 or JRE 1.8 (if you don’t have a JDK installed yet) b...

A few weeks ago (just before Oracle Open World 2013) I had the pleasure to interview with Caroline de Lacvivier. Interviewing with Caroline was a fantastic experience as her questions were spot on but most of all it felt like an open conversation in a topic I am really passionate about rather than a formal interview with some reporter. After the interview I took notes of her questions and decided that I should elaborate more on my answers by creating this blog post. The original articles produced after the interview can be found in the following links: http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/soa-talk/oracle-open-world-speaker-luis-weir-focuses-on-what-matters-the-customer/ http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/feature/Mobile-developers-agree-HTML5-and-JavaScript-apps-fall-short Following further elaboration on my answers: 1.             What new service/innovation is HCL Tech particularly proud of? Why? Technology...