As cloud-based SaaS programs come to dominate IT enterprises, the need to share data between such programs becomes critical. Exporting and importing flat files, such as .csv files, won't typically meet the needs of organizations rife with data that requires frequent and rapid updates. An integration platform, ideally also in the cloud with automation capabilities, can help fill this gap. Oracle's Integration Cloud Service, or ICS, provides functionality to integrate cloud-based applications within the cloud itself, although it does also support integration with on-premise platforms. Connecting two SaaS applications with ICS shouldn't pose too much of a problem for anyone familiar with basic integration principles, but some may find Oracle's online ICS tutorials less than exhaustive. Thankfully, the era of the book has not faded completely, not yet at least, in early 21st century digital culture and anyone seeking more in-depth information on ICS can turn to Packt Publishing's "Implementing Oracle Integration Cloud Service." In block paper form, the book does suffer the same fate as many fibrous technology references in that it can't update itself, so consider the first edition frozen in time at January, 2017. As such, expect screen shots that don't exactly match the current ICS interface, ancillary applications that differ somewhat as described and, of course, no descriptions of any new functionality following publication. New editions, paper or electronic, will hopefully provide updates as the book will likely age rapidly in the hyper-dynamic cloud era. Currently, this book stands as one of the only, if not the only, book length treatment of ICS.Everything begins where it should, with the basics. A preface gives a general overview of recent terms such as SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and where ICS fits into this landscape and into the Oracle tool suite. The book assumes no previous knowledge with any of these concepts or any prior experience with ICS. Those who want to really learn the platform hands on will need access to ICS either through a licensed version or via a 30-day free trial. Each chapter also uses numerous tools, such as SoapUI, cURL and VirtualBox, to simulate real-world scenarios. Other tools such as Apiary and Mockable simulate web services for convenience, so readers won't have to create their own full-blown services to run the book's examples. Once again, some of these tools may have evolved since the book's publication. The first chapter delineates a typical ICS workflow with connectors, adapters, integrations, mappings and agents. Agents come into play with on-premise integrations. Short discussions of different integration types, such as point-to-point, publish-subscribe, content-based routing and orchestration provide previews of subsequent chapters. A very brief outline of transformations, XSLT, XPath and Lookups closes this introductory chapter. All of this sets the stage for the book's first real integration that uses an airline messaging scenario between SOAP and REST connections. Apiary and SoapUI provide the framework to complete the integration. Setting up these tools arguably takes up just as much, or perhaps more, time than setting up Oracle ICS itself.Subsequent integrations use different patterns and SaaS platforms to demonstrate ICS's capabilities. These include a Pub-Sub integration, a Salesforce integration using outbound messages, WSDLs and Twilio, and an integration using Twitter and the GMail API. Transformations and Lookups for enriching information in process appear in Chapter 6. Filtering using ICS's condition builder and Routing with logic based on data conditions appear in Chapter 7. Integrations with external applications, Chapter 8 uses a sample Java application and the OMCS connection, show how ICS can works with non-cloud based resources. Anyone wanting to transfer files with ICS should consult Chapter 9's discussion of the FTP connector, which also introduces orchestration, scheduling and encryption. Chapter 10 brings orchestration to the forefront by showing its workflow, routing, variable and logic capabilities. Orchestration can probably do just about anything, though this chapter only shows a simpler examples, probably due to obvious space restrictions. Chapter 11 takes things on-premise and talk about connection and execution agents, deploying agents to a VirtualBox instance and performing an integration. It also includes a basic integration with a simple Oracle database. Chapter 12 talks about the crucial topic of monitoring, or making sure that integrations don't fail, or at least knowing when they do. It outlines the dashboard, logs, error codes, maintenance windows and certificates. A final chapter gives advice on how to further expand one's ICS experience and knowledge with more advanced concepts such as importing and exporting integrations, pre-built integrations, packaging and the ICS API with examples using cURL."Implementing Oracle Integration Cloud Service" provides a decent introduction to this highly flexible cloud-based tool. It covers enough of the ICS landscape to get just about anyone started happily integrating. Of course no book can cover everything and this book by necessity leaves out integrations with non-Oracle products such as Microsoft SQL Server. In such cases one must peruse the not always intuitive Oracle documentation. Not only that, the book has already dated and some of the tools used have changed enough to make certain instructions no longer applicable. A little research or fiddling around will solve these problems relatively quickly, but some examples do require effort outside of just miming the book's text. Plus, readers will have to explore all of the possibilities of Orchestration integrations on their own as the book covers only a smidgen of this advanced topic. Ultimately, it doesn't seem fair to call this the best book on Oracle ICS because it appears to be the only book on Oracle ICS readily available. At the very least, it builds a solid foundation upon which to build future ICS experience. One has to start somewhere.

Good Introductory book.

This is a great book.Why is a great book? For many reasons:1. It is very well written.2. All the examples and scenarios that are described are very clear and useful for the reader3. The content is good for a person that is new with Oracle ICS and also for a person who wants to go deeper with the product4. Even though Oracle ICS, as well as the other Oracle Cloud products, are being updated every 2-3 months, the book contains the core functionality that is useful today and it will be tomorrow.5. The book is also useful to undrerstand how things are integrated in the cloud. It also covers scenarios of on.premise to cloud integration, or cloud to on.premise integration6. The authors are professionals with a lot of experience. They really put their print in the book. They are experts in the topic7. The book is useful for a person who wants to go through the samples and test them on its own environment, or just go through the concepts. It will help both audiences.I really enjoyed reading it and it helped me a lot to understand every piece of Oracle ICS.

Brilliant for ICS Developers. Pretty Detailed