Service Oriented Architecture For Dummies®

Chapter 23. The Oracle at SOA

In This Chapter

• Watching Oracle grow

• Oracle fuses the SOA pieces together

• Hello Helio

Oracle, founded in 1976, made its first big splash in 1979 when it introduced one of the earliest commercial relational database products. For the first decade of its existence, the company focused most of its energy on the database market, but in the next decade the company began branching out to focus on the development of applications, the Internet, middleware, packaged applications, and consulting. Part of this branching out meant being on the lookout for acquisitions that would expand its traditional market while, at the same time, open up new avenues for growth. Oracle proved to be pretty adept at the acquisitions game and has experienced considerable growth as a result.

Today, the company is focused on two primary technology areas: databases and packaged applications. Over the last few years, Oracle has managed to become a major player in the packaged applications market through its high-profile acquisitions, including enterprise resource management companies like PeopleSoft, Seibel, and JD Edwards. In addition, Oracle acquired other related packaged-software companies in areas such as retail management.

Oracle's vision for SOA included providing customers with a complete suite of SOA products. The company wanted customers to be able to get all the software they need for a SOA implementation in one place from one integrated group of software products without any missing ...