Introduction

My objective for this blog, is to provide you with guidelines to help in planning your integrations during the implementation of Oracle Product Management Cloud Service.

Integration Types

The table below gives a high-level overview of typical integration patterns / types.

Use Cases

The key functional integration scenarios and technical use cases are given below:

This article focuses around integration options and capabilities of product data between your source and target applications when implementing Oracle Fusion Product Management application cloud.

Guidelines

Choose your integration model

While deploying cloud applications, one of the key components is integration. Oracle Product Management Cloud application provide robust features to support both inbound and outbound integrations. There are several integration technology and solution options available today for you to choose from based on your business and technical requirements. The table below can be used as the guideline for deciding the options for your integration needs during the Product Management Cloud implementation.

The following flow diagram provides a high-level decision-making guideline for your integration solution.

Key Integration Considerations

1. Understand your environment sizing, and perform a sizing exercise early in the implementation after finalizing the scope of the implementation.
2. Chunk the records into smaller batches for initial / batch data load process and plan for running in parallel when data volume is higher.
3. Avoid using Publication framework feature for full data extract / export when you have high volume (example: millions of records); instead explore OTBI / BIP / BICC options. High volume extracts using publication could have performance and file size impact. 
4. Do not use Item web services / API’s for batch or initial data load / data extracts as they are recommended for real-time or for smaller volume use.
5. Always plan ahead for volume testing, and start with smaller data set and expand; this will help you in identifying the bottlenecks, data issues, and resolve it quickly.
6. Plan your functional/business resources for data conflict resolution for initial data load.
7. Plan your ongoing administration, support and monitoring resources for all integrations.
8. Make sure that data security, and compliance related use cases are addressed on all integrations.
9. Avoid 100% automation for initial data loads, and batch integrations as they more likely require manual intervention for data conflict resolution, and need additional configurations / development efforts.

Product Data features guidelines used in integration

The table below provides the integration features available within Product Management Cloud application. 

Conclusion

The recommendations and options described on this blog are general guidelines that you can use to decide on a solution for integrating Product Management Cloud application with external applications based on your business requirements. I recommend you to look into the latest documentation for available web services and REST API’s to plan your integrations. 

References

Note: Always refer to the latest documentation.

1. Architectural patterns for integrating Oracle SaaS applications.
2. Oracle Integration Cloud
3. Using Integrations in Oracle Integration
4. Cloud Integration Patterns using Oracle PaaS