Oracle previewed the technology at its OpenWorld conference in San Francisco last October, and yesterday Rahul Patel, Oracle VP of Server Technology confirmed in a ComputerWire interview that it will ship later this month.
It will also offer a way for developers to expose the Stellent content management repository to other Oracle and non-Oracle applications, once Oracle’s acquisition of Stellent is completed (most likely this quarter).
Patel told us that the technology brings Web 2.0 functionality to enterprise applications, weaving the likes of wikis, mashups, web conferences, and other collaborative capabilities around more traditional business applications through a single user interface.
The real aim is to improve end-user interaction, he said. To make it more effective, and to do so you need to have a task-oriented rather than application-oriented environment, and to bring more than one service together to integrate Web 2.0 and application services in one interface.
WebCenter Suite consists of six elements: WebCenter Framework, Services, Studio, Anywhere, Composer, and Spaces. Together, they enable IT departments to put richer, more collaborative front-ends on disparate applications, as well as bringing Web 2.0 functionality like wikis and search to the table.
WebCenter Framework is a Java Server Faces, JSF, and Oracle ADF-based framework that enables developers to embed rich, AJAX-based components, portlets, and content into their JSF applications.
Patel said that thanks to its support for the content integration standard JSR 170, the WebCenter Framework will enable IT developers to use WebCenter Suite as an access point into the Stellent content management repository that Oracle is in the process of acquiring.
WebCenter Services are out-of-the-box services that can plug straight into the portal-like interface, Patel said, including the likes of Oracle Content Database, Oracle Secure Enterprise Search, SIP-based VoIP and Instant Messaging Presence Server, a discussion forum and a Wiki service. VoIP services to enable click-to-dial applications will be available as an option.
WebCenter Studio exposes the WebCenter Framework and WebCenter Services to programmers inside Oracle JDeveloper, and WebCenter Anywhere extends the Framework to support mobile devices.
Composer is said to be a browser-based environment for composing and customizing the application user interfaces, business rules and policies, user profiles, preferences and business processes, and finally WebCenter Spaces (both Personal and Group) are virtual meeting places that enable task prioritization and collaboration.
Patel said that while WebCenter Suite is certainly portal-like, it is not the same as a portal. The question is perhaps ‘who is on top’, he said. With a portal the portal page is on top, and you bring J2EE and portlets and so on into that page. With WebCenter Suite you can start with any page or any J2EE architecture, and add portal functionality and Web 2.0 functionality to it.
Patel said that it is not so much consumer-oriented Web 2.0 applications such as certain Google and Yahoo services that are driving interest in Web 2.0 interfaces into the enterprise IT environment, but rather the need for richer and richer interfaces that can be delivered as web applications to enterprise end users.
