Oracle's Fusion Cloud Applications Suite: What Are the Latest Updates and How Much Will They Boost Your Business? Find Out Now!

 

Oracle Fusion Applications is a modular suite of enterprise applications that are service enabled. It works in conjunction with Oracle Cloud Application Unlimited to take the business to new performance levels.

Oracle Fusion Applications offers businesses the option to choose from a single module, an entire product family, or all of them, and at their own pace.

Oracle Fusion Applications Is Best Described As:

1. It is built upon an open standard-based platform.
2. Business processes based on best practices.
3. The deployment is done by selecting from a variety of options.
4. Security is a top priority.

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Standards-Based Architecture

Oracle Fusion Applications are standards-based and highly adaptable. Standards-based software allows you to adapt to changes with ease.

It is flexible, modular, and user-driven, powered by the best business capabilities built using open standards.

The Technology Framework It Comprises Includes:

1. Oracle WebCenter is a set of tools that allows you to create enterprise portals, social networks, and transactional sites.
2. Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) 11g offers a wide range of capabilities for business intelligence that allow you to present, analyze, report, and deliver data within your organization.
3. Oracle Universal Content Management allows you to use document management, Web content management, digital assets management, and records retention capabilities to enhance your business applications.
4. Oracle SOA Suite is a comprehensive set of components that provide a service infrastructure for creating, deploying, and managing SOA Composite Applications. Oracle SOA Suite allows services to be addressed and orchestrated in SOA composite apps.
5. Oracle WebLogic Server (Java Enterprise Edition, or Java EE) is a scalable and enterprise-ready server based on Java Enterprise Edition.
6. Oracle JDeveloper provides end-to-end development support, including modeling, developing, and debugging Java and web applications and optimizing and deploying them.
7. Oracle Enterprise Manager provides business-driven application management, integrated applications-to-disk-management, integrated systems management, support, and experience.
8. Oracle Identity Management allows organizations to manage user identities from end to end and secure their access to resources and assets.

A standards-based architectural approach reduces integration costs and allows you to reuse technologies and systems.

Standards-based architecture increases flexibility in applications. The application can be tailored to suit your needs by customizing the interface, business objects, processes, logic, and intelligence.

Oracle Fusion Applications' ease of management offers low cost-of-ownership, resulting in faster investment returns by using flexible deployment and rapid setup models.

Upgrade protection is also provided.

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The Best Business Practices

Oracle Fusion Applications integrates the best business practices from Oracle products such as Oracle E-Business Suite PeopleSoft, Oracle On Demand JD Edwards, and Siebel to maximize user productivity and experience.

Oracle Fusion Applications' user interface allows for a customer-driven and intuitive application design that results in significant productivity gains.

Oracle Fusion Applications' user interface is designed to:

1. The role-based approach allows pervasive distribution in various modes, channels, devices, and formats.
2. Configurable and extensible, either through JDeveloper at design time or composer in runtime. This increases the productivity of individual and group users.
3. Contextual and composite information provides integrated information within the context of a process.
4. It is social and collaborative and offers built-in communities, workspaces, Web 2.0 distribution of information, and embedded social computing for collaborative work.

Features Specific to the User Interface Include:

1. Dashboards based on roles that can be configured to meet your specific business requirements.
2. Worklists unified across all applications.
3. The Guided Business Processes are organized tasks to help you complete your work more efficiently.
4. The embedded analysis method provides the information needed to complete a particular task.
5. The contextual aid includes information on conceptual and procedural references.
6. Oracle Fusion Applications Search provides an easy-to-use search interface for finding and analyzing relevant data.
7. Tags allow you to easily locate objects by associating keywords.
8. Contact information of people who are involved in your task is provided instantly.

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Choose your Deployment Options

Oracle Fusion Applications can be purchased as a single suite or in modular form. The Oracle Fusion Applications suite can be purchased as a whole, or you can choose to adopt it as an individual product offering (the most comprehensive collection of features that can be licensed and implemented) or solution sets compatible with the Oracle Applications Unlimited line.

Oracle Fusion Applications can be Deployed in the Following Ways:

1. Enterprises can host their on-premise solutions.
2. Oracle Business Partners offer BPO solutions, Oracle's public cloud service (available to all), and software-as-a-service (SaaS) hosted on the Internet.
3. SaaS, BPO, or private cloud hosted internally (behind a firewall).
4. Hybrid implementations combine both cloud and on-premise systems.

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The Security of Your Own Home

Oracle Fusion Applications Security Offers:

1. Access based on role
2. Separation of duties
3. Data security and consistency of function.
4. Privacy protections that are robust.
5. Native Identity Management and Access Provisioning.
6. The same policy is enforced across all tools (all tools have the same guidelines).
7. Integrate Oracle Fusion Governance Risk and Compliance.
8. A comprehensive reference implementation.
9. Tools to expand the footprint.

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Oracle Fusion Applications Architecture Design

 

Oracle Fusion Applications is built on a standard-based, modular architecture. Oracle Fusion Applications is built natively on Oracle Fusion Middleware components 11g and utilizes Oracle Database.

The following product families or collections of products that are connected to a functional area are included in Oracle Fusion Applications:

1. Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management is a software that manages contacts, customers, and other resources. It also includes data quality configuration.
2. Oracle Fusion Financials is a financial management system that manages all aspects of the business, such as assets, ledgers (cash cycle), invoices and payments, receivables, collections, and sub-ledger accounting.
3. For effective risk management and compliance management, Oracle Fusion Governance and Risk, Compliance blends corporate intelligence, process management, and automated controls.
4. Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management is a tool that helps an organization manage its employees.
5. Oracle Fusion Procurement is a procurement management system that manages all aspects of the purchasing process, including purchase orders, requisitions, and negotiations with suppliers.
6. Oracle Fusion Project Portfolio Management is a project management tool that helps you manage projects by managing how to budget, estimate, invoice customers, collect costs, and bill them.
7. Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management automates, integrates, and streamlines critical supply chain activities, including design, procurement, and planning.

This product family also includes Oracle Fusion Functional Setup Manager, which is used to set up data for applications:

1. Oracle Fusion's Home Page provides a Welcome Dashboard with portlets and task flows to answer common questions.
2. Oracle Fusion Applications Help provides users with the information they need to accomplish their tasks. Optionally, you can install Oracle Fusion Applications Help locally to customize and extend the help.

Every product family uses a similar data model and service set. Each product family contains one or more Java EE apps that are specific to Oracle Fusion Applications and deployed on Oracle WebLogic Server.

A product may span across multiple applications, while an application itself can include various products. A product has a one-to-one correspondence with Enterprise Archive files (EAR).

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Data Modeling and Business Logic Design

Oracle Fusion Applications utilizes a single data model that is an amalgamation of E-Business Suite entities, PeopleSoft attributes, JD Edwards, and Siebel attributes.

This data model can be extended while maintaining consistency in semantics.

Global organizations can benefit from flexible structures with logical data stripping. Reference data sets allow business units to exchange reference data.

Groups are used to manage reference data. Business units are responsible for the management or stripping of transactional data. Each business unit can be assigned a set of codes.

You don't need to duplicate the reference data. The line-of-business processes are also defined more effectively. Oracle Business Intelligence exposes it. The data model contains the tree structure directly used in Java business logic.

Flexfields allow you to define critical structures and add custom attributes in Oracle Fusion Applications. The metadata dictionary and metadata store are accessible by all tools and provide consistency across all technology stack components.

They also allow you to maintain changes between upgrades. Upgrades from Applications Unlimited to Oracle Fusion Applications are supported by unified concepts in existing applications and from new ones.

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Designing Business Processes

Oracle Fusion Applications leverages Oracle SOA Suite to create a declarative design of business processes. SOA components used in Fusion Applications include business rules, Oracle BPM Worklist, approval management flows, and human workflows.

The SOA features of integration, business process creation, and workflows are identical to SOA.

Features of the Business Process Design for Oracle Fusion Applications:

1. The declarative business process definition allows for collaborative processes between IT and business.
2. Business process management that unifies the execution of business processes through a system-based workflow involving human and machine input to ensure upgradeability while optimizing business processes.
3. Monitoring, tracking, and variance analyses across organizations.
4. Customize business processes in real-time by changing data models, event types, and rules.
5. The shared business metadata dictionary contains the BPEL processes and rules.

During the design phase, there are two languages: Business Process Execution Language BPEL and Business Process Modelling Notation BPMN.

Both share a standard engine and metadata dictionary.

The BPM Composer includes powerful tools that allow you to customize your business processes. These include the Rules Editor, Routing Editor, and Profile Editor.

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Business Intelligence

Oracle Fusion Applications Provides Oracle Business Intelligence Capabilities:

1. Analytical dashboards, such as what-if analyses, operational analyses, and analytical dashboards, allow you to adjust analytics to changing transactional systems and processes.
2. Calculations and definitions for analytic calculations.
3. Dashboards based on roles with consistent navigation and security.
4. Sales forecasting and trending based on data mining.
5. Reporting (pixel-perfect reports for printing).

Oracle Business Intelligence uses a standard design for all its products.

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Operating Management Design

The Oracle Fusion Applications Operational Management Design Offers:

1. Unified Business Services Level Management to achieve Comprehensive Lifecycle Management.
2. To attain comprehensive management, a single point of administration is required for all applications and technologies.
3. Centralized control of user privileges and access controls simplifies identity management.
4. Flexible deployment options.

Oracle Enterprise Manager is responsible for the management of the middleware as well as the database. The application-centric views show information based on the products you've deployed.

You can also drill down to technology through one dashboard.

Oracle Fusion Applications do not manage users or roles internally but instead, externalize them to a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol system.

Oracle Fusion Applications is built on an identity management model that centralizes entitlements, access rights, and other information. Oracle Fusion Governance Risk and Compliance ensures that roles are not overlapping.

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Service-Oriented Architecture

 

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an enterprise architecture that supports the development of connected enterprise applications to solve business problems.

SOA allows enterprise application development as web-based services which can be integrated quickly and repurposed. This creates a flexible IT infrastructure.

SOA is a technology that uses orchestration to combine various services into a comprehensive service. Oracle Business Process Management assembles these web services into end-to-end functionality.

Oracle SOA Suite is a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware that provides an integrated set of features to design, deploy, and manage SOA composite apps.

The Oracle SOA Suite allows services to be addressed and orchestrated in SOA hybrid apps. You can easily combine multiple technologies into an SOA composite app using composites.

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Oracle WebLogic Server

 

Oracle WebLogic Server, a Java application server for enterprise, is a Java-based platform that allows the deployment of scalable, robust, high availability, and secure distributed applications.

Oracle WebLogic Server provides a solid foundation to build and deploy enterprise Java EE apps based on SOA.

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Oracle WebLogic Communication Services

 

Oracle WebLogic Communication Services offers click-to-dial functionality to applications, primarily via contextual actions.

Contextual action provides related information to the user within the context of the objects on which the users act.

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Oracle Identity Management

 

Oracle Identity Management, an enterprise identity system, manages access rights for users across the enterprise.

The system provides an infrastructure shared by all applications and allows for controlling the identity life cycle. This includes everything from creating access rights to adapting dynamically to changing enterprise requirements.

The company also offers services and interfaces to facilitate the development of enterprise applications by third parties.

The interfaces can be helpful to application developers that need to integrate identity management into applications.

Oracle Identity Management Includes the Following Components:

1. Oracle Access Manager is a system for identity management and control that can be shared across your applications. Oracle Single Sign On (SSO), a solution that automates and centralizes the direction of who can access what data across your IT infrastructure, is the result.
2. Oracle Authorization Policy Manager (OAPM) is a GUI-based tool that manages the authorization policies for Oracle Platform Security Services applications.
3. Oracle Identity Manager automates adding, updating, and deleting accounts in applications and directories. The detailed reports it generates identify users with access to specific applications. This improves compliance with regulatory requirements.
4. Oracle Internet Directory is the central repository of users for Oracle Identity Management. It simplifies user management in Oracle environments and provides the enterprise with a general-purpose, standards-based directory.

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Oracle WebCenter

 

Oracle WebCenter is a set of integrated components that allows you to build social applications, social communities, or enterprise portals.

It also contains composite applications. Oracle WebCenter is built on a service-oriented, standards-based architecture. It combines dynamic interface technologies to create rich Internet applications with the power and flexibility of a multichannel integrated portal framework.

Oracle WebCenter Comprises Four Components:

1. Oracle WebCenter Framework is an Oracle JDeveloper extension for a design that allows you to integrate portlets, Applications Development Framework Oracle task flows (Oracle ADF), content, and customizable components into your applications.
2. Oracle WebCenter Services is an independently deployable set of collaboration services with Web 2.0 features such as collaboration and communication. Oracle WebCenter Services include task flows and portlets which can be directly embedded into Oracle ADF Applications. You can also use APIs to customize UIs or integrate some of these services in non-Oracle ADF apps.
3. Oracle WebCenter Spaces is a closed-source application built using Oracle WebCenter Framework, Oracle WebCenter Services, and Oracle WebCenter Framework. It offers an easily configurable working environment for individuals or groups that allows them to collaborate and work more efficiently.
4. Oracle Composer is an application that allows any portal or application to be personalized or customized after deployment and use. It is integrated with Oracle WebCenter Framework, Oracle WebCenter Services, and WebCenter Spaces. This allows you to personalize and customize group spaces and your own.

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Oracle SOA Suite

 

Oracle SOA Suite provides a platform that enables business processes to be human-centric, system-centric, and document-centric.

This is a comprehensive and integrated foundation for business processes, connecting IT with business users, partners, customers, and other stakeholders.

Oracle SOA Suite allows developers to drag and drop business processes and compose them. This results in faster assembly and delivery of solutions and reuse.

Oracle SOA Suite's event delivery network unifies services and business events in a declarative environment.

Oracle SOA Suite provides a complete, plug-and-play software solution for building, managing, and deploying a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

Suite components share standard capabilities, including consistent tooling and deployment, an end-to-end management model, and metadata management.

Oracle SOA Suite Includes the Following Components:

1. Oracle Business Rules allows business analysts to modify and define business logic easily without programming. Oracle Business Rules provides faster and easier modifications to rules by defining them outside the process or application.
2. Oracle Business Activity Monitoring is an application that uses an event-driven and message-based architecture. It allows users to create real-time interactive dashboards and receive proactive alerts.
3. Oracle B2B allows an organization to configure, monitor, and manage electronic information exchanges between trading partners. This software allows for document management and transport management. It also provides partner management and reports.
4. Oracle BPEL Process Manager is a runtime for BPEL processes (Business Process Execution Language). It provides a complete, easy-to-use solution to create, deploy, and manage cross-application operations that include both human and automated workflows. The BPEL Standard delivers reliable, high-performance execution of service-oriented business processes.

Oracle BPEL Process Manager has a native BPEL Engine that runs the process. The approach allows reuse and also provides visibility of in-flight operations on an individual or aggregate level (the latter is provided by Oracle BAM).

It is the basis for closed-loop business process management and process improvement:

1. Oracle User Messaging Service allows two-way communication between deployed applications and users. Integration is supported by both Java APIs as well as web services. Supported channels include voice, SMS, email, instant messages, and email. Oracle User Messaging Service supports intelligent messaging, where the destination of an email is determined by user preferences.
2. Oracle Human Workflow manages the entire lifecycle of tasks for users, from creation to expiration and notification; Oracle Human Workflow takes care of everything. The system supports dynamic, sophisticated task routing based on declarative patterns. Oracle Human Workflow consists of three sub-components: Task Editor, Task Service Engine, and Worklist Application.
3. Oracle Mediator is a lightweight, flexible framework that allows you to mediate amongst the various components of a hybrid app efficiently. The capabilities of Oracle Mediator include routing, validation, transformation, and exchange patterns such as event subscription, publishing, and synchronous messaging.
4. Oracle Business Process Management Suite (Oracle BPM Suite), a unified BPM Platform, allows users to collaborate and access tasks across an enterprise through simplified Business Process Management.
5. Oracle BPM combines BPEL with Business Process Modeling (BPMN 2.0) and offers a unified engine for controlling the integration of enterprise applications and simplifying their implementation. The Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Business Intelligence Suite, and Oracle Business Process Modeling Notation Suite are integrated. It can execute BPEL or BPMN processes and implement workflow rules.
6. They help to organize your activities into milestones. The process is hidden, and you are guided through all the tasks. The user's experience is improved by Guided Business processes, which provide a visual representation that explains the process and a hierarchical breakdown of the process.

Guided Business Processes rely on Oracle SOA Suite, a platform for reusable services that provides access to them.

The SOA infrastructure and SPA also act as the control agent of the business processes across disparate systems.

Guided Business Processes uses Oracle BPEL Process Manager to create, deploy, and manage composite applications business processes that include human and automated workflows within a service-oriented architectural framework.

Guided Business Processes also rely on Oracle BPEL Process Manager for task coordination, combining Oracle BPEL Process Manager with worklist applications and human task flow to link disparate tasks.

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Oracle Application Development Framework

 

Oracle ADF, a Java EE Framework that provides ready-to-use infrastructure services and a declarative and visual development environment, simplifies the development of Java applications.

The framework supports the rapid growth of applications based on design patterns that are readily available and tools with visual and metadata-driven interfaces.

Oracle ADF makes Java EE easier to develop by reducing the amount of code needed for the infrastructure. The user can then focus more on the application's features.

Oracle ADF also focuses on providing a visual, declarative Java EE experience through Oracle JDeveloper.

Oracle ADF combines a built-in service interface and business services, making creating flexible applications that expose data through services more accessible.

Oracle ADF performs this separation by using metadata. This metadata-driven architecture allows application developers to concentrate on business logic and the user experience rather than the specifics of service access.

The Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural paradigm is the foundation of Oracle ADF. Three layers make up an MVC application:

1. The model handles data source interaction and business logic.
2. The view, which takes the user interface of the application.
3. The controller manages application flow and acts as an interface between the view and model layers.

Oracle ADF further separates the model layer and the business services to allow service-oriented application development.

Oracle ADF is built on four different layers:

1. The business service layer handles business logic and data sources, simplifying business service creation. The business service layer in Oracle Fusion Applications is ADF Business Components.
2. ADF Business Components is a pre-built object that helps to deliver and maintain high-performance and highly available database-centric services. It also provides a ready implementation of Java EE best practices and design patterns. The key components (entity objects, view objects, and application modules) are provided for building database-centric services.
3. The model layer links the application's services to objects in other layers that use the service. The ADF Model Layer in Oracle Fusion Applications stores implementation details for the business services as metadata. This allows developers to swap services without having to modify the user interface. The developers creating the user interfaces do not need to worry about business service details. They can instead focus on the development of application interfaces and interaction logic.
4. Controller layer, The controller manages application flow and user input. Oracle JDeveloper allows you to design the flow of your application by placing pages and navigational rules in a diagram. ADF controller will enable you to break down your application flow into smaller, more reusable task flows, include non-visual elements such as method call calls, and create flow page fragments that are run within a specific region of the containing page. The approach promotes maximum reuse of user interface elements and simplifies integration with portals and mashup apps.
5. The view layer provides the user interface. Oracle Fusion Applications' view layer is built on ADF Faces. This rich client framework includes over 150 Ajax-enabled JavaServer Faces components. This allows you to create an enhanced user interface. Ajax combines asynchronous JavaScript with dynamic HTML (DHTML), XML, and a communication channel called XMLHttpRequest.
6. The combination allows requests to be sent to the server without re-rendering the entire page. Ajax allows client-like web applications to utilize standard Internet technologies. On the other hand, JSF provides server-side controls, reducing the need for JavaScript in Ajax-based applications.

Oracle ADF supports ADF Faces as well as the following view technologies:

1. Apache, Trinidad, is the donation of open-source code from Oracle to Apache Software Foundation. ADF Faces are built on Trinidad components.
2. ADF Swing is a Java Swing application development environment that uses the ADF Model layer. ADF Swing allows you to create Java Swing apps that utilize the ADF Model Layer.
3. ADF Mobile is a standards-based framework that allows you to build mobile applications based on JSF components.
4. ADF Desktop Integration offers tools and components integrating Microsoft Excel with Oracle ADF applications. Oracle ADF Desktop Integration can configure Excel workbooks to invoke Oracle ADF components at runtime.

Oracle Fusion Applications utilizes ADF Security. This framework provides a security solution based on JAAS. Oracle ADF implements JAAS permission-based.

JDeveloper allows you to grant permissions for Oracle ADF Resources of Oracle Fusion Applications.

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Oracle JDeveloper

 

Oracle JDeveloper, the Oracle Fusion Applications integrated development environment is Oracle JDeveloper.

JDeveloper allows you to build service-oriented apps using industry-standard Java, XML, and SQL. The complete development lifecycle is supported by integrated features such as modeling, coding, and debugging. It also includes testing, profiling, tuning, and deployment.

Wizards simplify everyday tasks, such as connecting with IT systems.

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Oracle HTTP Server

 

Oracle HTTP Server uses the Apache HTTP Server Infrastructure. The web server provides an application web listener and a framework to host static and dynamic web pages and applications.

Oracle HTTP Server has significant improvements that simplify load balancing and administration. Oracle HTTP Server includes features such as clustered deployment and high availability.

Oracle HTTP Server allows developers to create websites in various languages, including Perl, C++, and PHP. The server can be used as a forward or reverse proxy.

Reverse proxy servers allow content from different servers to look like it is coming from the same server.

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Oracle HTTP Server WebGate

 

Oracle HTTP Server WebGate plug-in is included with Oracle Access Manager and is ready for use. Oracle HTTP Server webGate intercepts HTTP requests from the users to access resources on the Internet and sends them directly to Oracle Access Manager for authentication and authorization.

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Oracle Web Services Manager Policy Manager

 

Oracle Web Services Manager provides an organizational policy framework for managing and securing web services. Oracle Web Services Manager policy manager (Oracle WSM) is included in the framework and allows you to define policies centrally.

The Oracle WSM Repository reads and writes policies, including custom and predefined ones.

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Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite

 

An integrated set of products for managing content is called Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite. The following features are part of the suite:

1. Oracle Universal Content Management allows you to use document management, Web content management, and digital asset management functionality to create and enhance your business applications.
2. Oracle Inbound Refinery, a server for file conversions, manages electronic assets like digital images and videos. The software also offers thumbnail functionality, video storyboarding, EXIF, and XMP data extraction from images, documents, and electronic files created by Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator.
3. Oracle Fusion Applications uses Oracle Imaging and Process Management Advanced Queuing Mode, which impacts the administration features that can be used. For example, Oracle Fusion Applications does not allow you to use the Oracle Imaging and Process Management work manager.

The components of Oracle WebLogic Server can be installed as an application.

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Oracle Data Integrator

 

Oracle Data Integrator provides a complete data integration solution that can be used to meet all integration needs: high volume, high-performance batch loading, event-driven integration, trickle feed integration, and SOA-enabled data services.

Oracle Data Integrator loads and transforms the data of product families.

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Oracle Secure Enterprise Search

 

Oracle Secure Enterprise Search offers a familiar interface for Internet users, enabling a secure, high-quality search of all enterprise data sources, including websites, file servers, and content management systems.

It also supports enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, business intelligence, and database systems.

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Oracle Fusion Applications Search uses Oracle Secure Enterprise Search as its search engine. The search engine provides indexing and querying capabilities and some added functionality, such as security.