Preface

Digital transformation is at the core of every business strategy regardless of what type of business an organization is in. Companies that embark on a digital transformation journey are able to create innovative and disruptive solutions that are capable of delivering a much richer, unified, and personalized user experience at a lower cost. They are able to engage the customer in a seamless fashion through many channels, such as mobile apps, responsive websites, and social media. Organizations that adopt innovative digital business models gain considerable competitive advantage over those that don't.

The fundamental driver for digital transformation is the ability to unlock key information assets and business functionality, which is often hidden inside an organization's enterprise systems, and also services built following traditional Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approaches.

Especially in regard to SOA, although many organizations have succeeded in the implementation of traditional SOA solutions, it has been broadly acknowledged that traditional SOA (meaning SOA implemented using traditional SOA tools, standards, and skills) did not deliver all of the capabilities required to fully unlock and also materialize an organizations' enterprise information and functional assets.

Moreover, new technology trends, such as multi-device mobile applications, Internet of Things (IoT), and API Management, have all introduced new ways of thinking about how technology can deliver benefits to the business. Although these technologies are in fact broadly based on SOA principles, they introduce their own flavor of architectures, implementation approaches, and integration patterns.

Here are some examples:

• Creation of lightweight APIs that typically implement REST as a binding protocol and JSON as a message format, to facilitate the following:
  • Integration of mobile apps with backend systems
  • Exposing key information and functionality to third parties
  • Pay-per-use APIs that generate additional revenue
• Cloud integration via Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) solutions, therefore giving birth to what is known today as hybrid architectures
• Sensors built into devices and/or machines using embedded Java (or equivalent) that connect to other systems and/or machines using lightweight protocols, such as MQTT, which can also participate in broader business processes
• Strong inter-business collaboration becomes a common practice in development teams, which allows broader process flows that are more customer-centric

Unfortunately, given the potential benefits that these new technologies bring to businesses and customers alike, many organizations rushed to adopt such technologies often at a tactical level without a clear strategy and with almost no governance in place. This approach has resulted in similar integration challenges to those experienced in the past, such as with early SOA adoption. However, the scale of these problems is much greater in nature as the spectrum of integration now also extends beyond on-premise systems into the cloud and mobile applications to name a few.

We can conclude that tactically implementing these new technologies without a robust governance framework drastically increases the complexity of integration, which in turn increases program costs both in terms of capital projects and runtime support. Although this might not be apparent initially, in the mid and long term this will likely become a roadblock to continue on the digital journey.

So, how do we define governance in relation to SOA and now API, mobile, and cloud? Although a very common question among practitioners, one is likely to be presented with many different answers depending on who is asked. However, the real question is not really what it is, but what it means to an organization and what benefits it can bring to a business. How can it be successfully implemented and which tools and processes are required to achieve it?

SOA Governance is a commonly misunderstood term and is often confused with other disciplines, such as Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Development Operations (DevOps), and/or Standards. In practice, although SOA Governance covers all of these concepts, its scope is broader still and covers everything from planning, analysis, service discovery and design, building, and testing stages of an SOA solution (design-time governance) to live operations and monitoring (runtime governance).

This book defines SOA Governance as the interaction between policies (what), decision makers (who), and processes (how) that are needed in order to successfully deliver SOA solutions (SOA Governance: Framework and Best Practices - An Oracle Whitepaper: http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/soa/oracle-soa-governance-best-practice-066427.pdf).

In the context of APIs and mobile applications, SOA Governance has evolved into a new discipline known as API Management. This book defines API Management as the adoption and adaptation of SOA Governance principles and tools in the context of managing the end-to-end lifecycle of an API and the personas (actors) around it.

If we think of new technologies and trends, such as cloud, B2C, and B2B collaboration, market place and APIs as dimensions of a cube and superpose SOA Governance with API Management, we give rise to a more holistic approach; this book refers to this approach as Application Services Governance (to read more on Application Services Governance, refer to Govern Your Services and Manage Your APIs With Application Services Governance at https://www.gartner.com/doc/2239615/govern-services-manage-apis-application).

Application Services Governance implementations can only be successful in business terms if they can realize measurable benefits and provide a Return on Investment (ROI) or important nontangible benefits. Failing to apply this principle means that these solutions will be seen as complex and expensive technologies, rather than architecture and solutions that deliver business benefits.

While reading this book, SOA practitioners and API developers will embark on the journey of implementing Application Services Governance using Oracle API Management solution. The book will discuss the common problems that different organizations face when implementing SOA and APIs. It also explains how the implementation of best-practice processes, standards, and other techniques, along with appropriate Oracle toolsets, can solve these key architectural issues.

The components that build up the Oracle API Management solution are depicted in the following diagram:

Here are the components:

• Oracle API Catalog (OAC): This is aimed at design-time governance. This tool is very simple to implement and allows the quick collection and publication of APIs (WSDL-based or WADL-based) from Oracle and non-Oracle environments, hence allowing APIs to be visible and reused. The tool comes with a rich user interface and provides capabilities, such as API discovery, collaboration capabilities (for example, My APIs and ratings), and API metadata.
• Oracle API Manager (OAPIM): This is built on top of Oracle Service Bus (OSB) 12c. This tool facilitates a runtime environment for the management of APIs through their life cycle. Using the OAPIM portal, different personas, such as architects and developers, can discover, consume, and monitor APIs running on the Oracle Service Bus.
• JDeveloper: This is Oracle's preferred integrated development environment (IDE) for the development of software solutions using Java, OSB, SOA Suite, and other technologies, such as SQL, PLSQL, XML, and PHP, among others. JDeveloper offers a wide variety of plugins to integrate with other products, such as OER and OAC.
• Oracle API Gateway (OAG): Formerly Oracle Enterprise Gateway, OAG is a standalone product to implement robust security polices and apply these to services. OAG is typically deployed as a policy enforcement point (PeP) in demilitarized zones (DMZ) where services are consumed or exposed by applications located in untrusted networks.

This book presents the concepts, guidelines, and tips required for successful API Management using the Oracle API Management solution.