OFM 11g Launch Event - 1 July 2009

03 Jun 2009 by Simon Haslam (in General)

Yesterday Oracle publically announced the launch event for Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g on 1st July, to be held in Washington DC, USA (and presumably there will be a webcast for those of us across the pond!). This time last year Thomas Kurian develivered a webcast covering the strategy for the Middleware product set following the BEA acquisition - here we are, exactly a year later, and much of the work is complete.

Certainly OFM 11g has been eagerly anticipated and is, I think Oracle would agree, long overdue. The initial release was expected nearly 2 years ago (which would have included the 11g JEE5-certified OC4J), though of course Oracle's purchase of BEA changed all that. Their rapid replacement of the core OC4J Java Server with WebLogic, the migration of ALSB and ESB into OSB, and various other product merges have been a major undertaking. Another big difference compared to 2 years ago is the wholseale integration of Coherence which is becoming a key ingredient for high performance java implementations.

At this stage there is still some debate as to what will be included in the initial OFM 11g release and what will be in the next release later in the year. My understanding is that SOA Suite 11g and ADF 11g will be included, WebLogic will be maintenance release of 10.3 (which is already JEE5 certified) and many of the OAS components will be certified to be run alongside it. JDeveloper and ADF 11g have been available since just after OOW, and there's another version in beta. Forms 11g has been ready for a while (we had what I think was the first public presentation about it at the UKOUG App Server and Middleware SIG last June) so conceivably that could be included with OFM 11g EE, or as a standalone installer. Since we've had updates to the Identity Management products fairly recently (e.g. 10.1.4.3) I guess we will be waiting a little longer for the 11g versions of OID and the like (although I'll be very glad to see the back of oidadmin!).

Anyway, enough of this speculation - we should all know more on 1st July!

By the way, for readers in the UK, the next UKOUG Application Server and Middleware SIG is in the Midlands on 18th June. We've got a packed agenda, this time themed around WebLogic including:

• An Introduction to WebLogic Server Clusters (Philip Aston, Oracle)
  
• Enhanced Capabilities of Oracle Enterprise Manger for administering Oracle WebLogic (Mark McGill, Oracle)
• Application Deployment on Oracle WebLogic (me! Veriton Limited)
• Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g - Identity Management Strategy and Direction (Rob Otto, Oracle)
  
• Eradicating WebLogic Application Construction Problems (Gordon Cruickshank, eoLogic Limited)
  

Places are filling up fast (we're at Oracle's BVP office so are limited to 50 maximum) so if you're able to attend you should register soon on the UKOUG website. It should be a really good day!