Give details on Oracle Workflow:- Oracle Workflow delivers a complete workflow management system that supports business process based integration. Its technology enables modeling, automation, and continuous improvement of business processes, routing information of any type according to user-defined business rules. Oracle Workflow provides an infrastructure for the enterprise-wide communication of data related to defined business events, providing the capabilities needed to: 1) Manage enterprise business processes that may span trading partners 2) Support standard and personalized business rules 3) Streamline and automate transaction flows 4) Manage exceptions without manual intervention Oracle Workflow lets us model and maintain our business processes using a graphical workflow builder. We can model and automate sophisticated business processes, defining processes that can loop, branch into parallel flows, decompose into sub-flows, branch on task results, time out, and more. Acting as a system integration hub, Oracle Workflow can apply business rules to control business processes. What is Oracle Partitioning? Partitioning is a way of logically dividing a large table into smaller chunks to facilitate query processing,DML operations and database management.Major types of partitioning are : 1) Hash Partitioning 2) Range Partitioning 3) List Partitioning 4) Composite Partitioning - composite range-hash,composite range-list Maintenance operations on partitions includes adding,merging,dropping partitions etc. What is an Oracle Application Server? Oracle Application Server is a completely standards-based application server that provides a comprehensive and fully integrated platform for running Web sites, J2EE applications, and Web services. What are the uses of Oracle Application Server? 1) Oracle Application Server provides full support for the J2EE platform, XML, and emerging Web services, and grid standards. 2) With Oracle Application Server we can simplify information access for your customers and trading partners by delivering enterprise portals, which can be customized and accessed from a network browser or from wireless devices. 3) It allows us to redefine your business processes, and integrate our applications and data sources with those from your customers or partners. 4) We can deliver tailored customer experiences via real-time personalization, and assess and correlate customer navigation, purchasing, ratings, and demographic data. What are the problems adressed by Oracle Application server? Oracle applications server gives solutions to address development and deployment challenges common to e-business websites. What are the solutions from Oracle Applications server? The various solutions from Oracle Applications server include J2EE and Internet applications, portals, wireless, business intelligence, e-business integration, caching, management, and security, built on a scalable and highly available infrastructure. Give details on J2EE and internet applications solution:- 1) Oracle Application Server is built entirely on a J2EE framework that supports the latest industry standard technologies and programming languages, including J2EE API specifications, XML, and Web services. 2) This comprehensive and flexible framework allows us to design, develop, and deploy dynamic Web sites, portals, and transactional applications using familiar programming languages and technologies such as servlets, JavaServer pages, XML, PL/SQL Server Pages, and SOAP. 3) Oracle Application Server also provides comprehensive Web services to expose business functions to authorized parties over the Internet from any Web device. Give details on portals :- 1) Oracle Application Server provides an out-of-the-box portal that does not require endless programming and maintenance. 2) We can use Oracle Application Server Portal to build, deploy, and maintain self-service and integrated enterprise portals. 3) Oracle Application Server Portal allows for self-service content management and publishing, wizard-based development, and deploying, publishing, and consuming Web services on an extensible framework Oracle Beehive Architecture :- Oracle beehive is built upon J2EE with a suite of Oracle Products including Oracle database,Oracle Application Server and has a multi-tier architecture.Four Major tiers of Oracle Beehive are : 1) Client Tier 2) Application Tier 3) Data Tier 4) Ancillary Tier Client Tier : 1) The Client Tier is the face of the system and includes all supported clients and devices,including integration with Microsoft Outlook and a command-line tool for system administration. 2) Oracle Beehive also supports clients and devices that leverage the following standardized protocols: 1.Calendaring Extensions for WebDAV (CalDAV) 2. Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) 3. File Transfer Protocol (FTP) 4. Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) 5. Push Internet Message Access Protocol (P-IMAP) 6. Open Mobile Alliance Data Synchronization (OMA-DS) 7. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) 8. Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) 3) The open nature of the Oracle Beehive platform also enables developers to build and implement custom clients in the Client Tier using Oracle Beehive Web services. Give Note On Oracle Beehive Web Services:- Oracle Beehive Web Services is built on the Oracle Beehive Java application programming interface (API) as an abstract representation of the Oracle Beehive object model. It provides Web Services Description Language (WSDL) files, enabling developers to invoke its services from custom applications through open standards such as Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) 1.2 and Web Services Security (WS-Security), which is based on SOAP and includes Security Assertions Markup Language (SAML). With Oracle Beehive Web Services, developers can build and integrate Web applications with Oracle Beehive in any environment that can generate a proxy implementation from WSDLs, including non-OC4J environments such as Microsoft .NET. To build such applications, developers can user whatever development tools that suit their needs, such as Oracle JDeveloper, Eclipse IDE, and Microsoft Visual Studio. Application Tier : 1) The Application Tier is the core of the system and includes all Oracle Beehive server components, including interoperable, function-specific services that provide the system’s enterprise collaboration features. 2) The Application Tier supports multiple Oracle Beehive server instances. 3) Each Oracle Beehive server instance includes required components of Oracle Application Server 10g, which itself hosts the Oracle Beehive services, including: 1. Oracle HTTP Server: The Web server component of Oracle Application Server 10g. Enables connections between supported clients over HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP) and Secure HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTPS). 2. Oracle Application Server Containers for J2EE (OC4J): J2EE v1.4 -compliant containers that provide an infrastructure for deploying, undeploying, and redeploying J2EE-compliant applications and modules. Oracle Beehive services are deployed in OC4J containers. At the time of Installation Oracle Application Server components are pre-bundled and installed by default. Each Oracle Beehive server instance also includes the Beehive Transport Infrastructure (BTI), which enables connectivity between supported clients and Oracle Beehive through its proprietary multiplexor protocol (MX). Data Tier (Database Tier) : 1) The Data Tier is the information store for Oracle Beehive and contains Oracle Database, either as a single, standalone database instance or an Oracle Real Application Cluster (Oracle RAC). 2) All system configuration and collaborative data for Oracle Beehive is stored in Oracle Database. 3) The Data Tier provides Oracle Database a layer of separation from the other tiers,ensuring, among other things, optimized security and system performance. 4) Only the Database Access Framework (provided by Oracle Beehive) can access the Data Tier. 5) Oracle Beehive services cannot access the Data Tier directly and must make all connections through the schemas provided by the Database Access Framework. 6) Database Access Framework in built on JDBC (Java Database Connectivity). 7) Oracle ata tier is made of Beehive schemas.Oracle Beehive schemas logically segregate system, configuration, and collaborative data, and application code.Two types of schemas are : 1. Code Schema 2. Data Schema Ancillary Tier : 1) The Ancillary Tier contains any optional servers and applications that are external to the Oracle Beehive server. 2) Typically, components in this tier are optional because Oracle Beehive already provides many of these capabilities, such as user directories,e-mail, and time management. 3) Oracle Beehive supports Ancillary Tier components to provide enterprises flexibility in their deployment choices, especially for those that want to leverage existing or specialized component investments. 4) In either case, enterprises can choose to implement the components of this tier to coexist with or access key aspects of Oracle Beehive. Examples of supported Oracle and third-party components in the Ancillary Tier include: 1. Oracle Internet Directory 2. Oracle BPEL Process Manager 3. Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 4. IBM Tivoli 5. Microsoft Active Directory Server 6. Microsoft Exchange Server 7. Sun Java Directory Server 8. Symantec Scan Engine Oracle Beehive Terms And Concepts :- Few important terms and concepts of Oracle beehive are discussed below.Following are the important terms and concepts. 1) Services 2) Enterprises and Organizations 3) Workspaces 4) Entities, Actors, and Artifacts Services : 1) A service is a discrete implementation of specific functionality that users and other services can leverage to accomplish a task. 2) The capabilities and interactions of services enable the full scope of functionality that Oracle Beehive provides. 3) Through supported client devices and graphical user interfaces (GUIs), Oracle Beehive visually exposes to users the features and functions of some services. Other services operate in the background and play low-level roles within the system such as enabling key integrations with other systems. Examples of services whose features Oracle : Beehive exposes visually to users include the E-mail Service, the Time Management (Calendar) Service, and the Content Management Service. Examples of services whose roles enable underlying system functionality and are, therefore, mostly hidden from users include : the Authentication Service, the Policy Service, and the Coexistence Service. Enterprises and Organizations : 1) An enterprise is a logical collection of the entities that comprise an Oracle Beehive deployment, such as organizations, workspaces, and users. 2) Organizations are narrowly defined groups within an enterprise. Typically, an organization is defined by a department or line of business, but it can also be based on a project or other criteria. 3) The hierarchical relationship between enterprises and organizations in Oracle Beehive provides a logical structure for organizing users, groups, and workspaces, while enabling many aspects of the collaborative functionality offered by the system. 4) This structure also enables system administrators to more easily manage users and workspaces through their organizational associations. Workspaces : 1) A workspace is a both a virtual location and a container that provides Oracle Beehive users a place to collaborate, and enables them to create, view, store, access, and manage the artifacts related to their collaborations. 2) From the user perspective,workspaces appear in supported Oracle Beehive clients. 3) Workspaces expose to users the many collaborative services that Oracle Beehive provides, enabling users to seamlessly perform a wide range of collaborative activities in a single, intuitive place. In workspaces, users can create, view, and manage e-mail messages, calendar appointments, meetings, tasks, contacts, instant messages, and documents, and so forth. Oracle Beehive provides two types of workspaces: 1) Team workspaces 2) Personal workspaces A team workspace is a workspace that is shared by a team or group, and that supports the content and collaborative activities of its members.A personal workspace is a workspace that is primarily used by an individual user and that contains a mix of a user’s private content and content from the team workspaces in which the user is a member.Workspaces can be created for specific teams, projects, processes, or whatever criteria that makes sense. Based on this, workspaces are always in context for users and present only the features and content that are relevant to their particular activities. Entities, Actors, and Artifacts : 1) An entity is a securable, identifiable object in Oracle Beehive, such as a service, user,workspace, and artifact. In essence, every object in Oracle Beehive is an entity. 2) An actor is an entity, such as a user or service, that acts upon other entities. 3) Artifacts are another entity sub-class and represent objects that users can view, create,modify, or delete. Artifacts are the results of communications and other collaborative activities, and include e-mail messages, appointments, meetings, tasks, online discussions, notes, and documents. Oracle Beehive stores artifacts in Oracle Database. Oracle Beehive Transport Infrastructure: The Beehive Transport Infrastructure (BTI) enables connectivity between the Client and Application Tiers by providing the network-level infrastructure for both client-to-server and server-to-server communications. Specifically, the BTI provides port and connection management for Microsoft Outlook (with Oracle Beehive Integration for Outlook) and non-HTTP, standard-based clients through its proprietary multiplexor protocol (MX). In a typical enterprise client/server deployment, clients connect through a series of networks to a known port on a known server.In many cases, the communication channels must traverse firewalls, load balancing routers, forward and reverse proxies, and demilitarized zones (DMZs).The BTI is designed for deployment in these complex network infrastructures, while providing optimal port and connection management.The BTI is a bundled component of the Oracle Beehive server so it is always provided whether we deploy Oracle Beehive in the Application Tier or in a DMZ(Demilitarized Zone). The latter case provides another layer of security between clients connecting to the system and internal components such as Oracle Database. This increased level of security and control over client connections is particularly beneficial when client connections are expected to originate from points outside of our network, such as from the Internet or from other private networks. Oracle Beehive also provides Oracle HTTP Server, which enables client connectivity over HTTP/HTTPS. This can be leveraged in cases where HTTP/HTTPS is the preferred method of enabling client connections that originate from external locations. Oracle Beehive Clients: Number of clients can be used to access the Oracle beehive. 1) Microsoft Outlook: Oracle Beehive exposes specific capabilities, such as team workspaces and document access, through Oracle Beehive Integration for Outlook (OBIO), a Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) service provider for Microsoft Outlook. 2) Standards-based clients: Users can access Oracle Beehive with standard protocol clients based on Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV), Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), and Calendaring Extensions to WebDAV (CalDAV). 3) Mobile clients: Users can access Oracle Beehive with common standards-based mobile clients, and also through push e-mail for devices running Microsoft Windows Mobile. 4) Custom applications and portals: Oracle Beehive Web Services APIs enable users to access the system through portals and custom applications Oracle Beehive Command-Line Utility - beectl utility/beectl: Oracle Beehive Command-line utility is beectl.This utility is installed in $ORACLE_HOME/beehive/bin directory.The Oracle Beehive beectl utility is always used in conjunction with a qualifying command. Syntax : beectl command --option where, command - represents the beectl command --option - represents an available option(s) to use with the command - represents a valid argument passed with an option Starting and stopping Oracle Beehive: Oracle beehive needs to be started after starting the database instance. If the database instance is shutdown before oracle beehive all the Oracle beehive managed components and services,processes are terminated. The command-line utility beectl is used to administer the starting and stopping of Oracle beehive components. beectl can be invoked in Shell mode by executing $ORACL_HOME/beehive/bin/beectl.This shows the prompt: beectl>When the above prompt appears beectl is in shell mode. We don't have to specify the term "beectl" preceeding every command.Some major administrative tasks relevant to beectl are : Starting All Oracle Beehive Managed Components : To start all Oracle Beehive managed components using the beectl command-line utility, use the start command with the --all option. The following example illustrates the command with the --all option, as well as the resulting output: beectl> start --all Starting all the beehive components ... Successfully started all the beehive components. Operation completed in ms. Stopping all Oracle Beehive Managed Components : To stop all Oracle Beehive managed components using the beectl command-line utility, use the stop command with the --all option. The following example illustrates the command with the --all option, as well as the resulting output: beectl> stop --all Stopping all the beehive components ... Successfully stopped all the beehive components. Operation completed in ms. Restarting All Oracle Beehive Managed Components : To restart all Oracle Beehive managed components using the beectl command-line utility, use the restart command with the --all option. The following example illustrates the command with the --all option, as well as the resulting output: beectl> restart --all Stopping all the beehive components ... Successfully stopped all the beehive components. Operation completed in ms. Starting all the beehive components ... Successfully started all the beehive components. Operation completed in ms. Determine the component Identifiers: 1. Determine the component identifiers of all managed components by running the status command: beectl> status --------------------------------------------+----------------+--------------- Component identifier Component type Status --------------------------------------------+----------------+--------------- BTI_redirector_instance1.host.domain.com Bti RUNNING --------------------------------------------+----------------+--------------- BEEAPP_instance1.host.domain.com ManagedOc4j RUNNING --------------------------------------------+----------------+--------------- BEECORE_instance1.host.domain.com ManagedOc4j RUNNING --------------------------------------------+----------------+--------------- BEEMGMT_instance1.host.domain.com ManagedOc4j RUNNING --------------------------------------------+----------------+--------------- oc4j_soa_instance1.host.domain.com ManagedOc4j RUNNING --------------------------------------------+----------------+--------------- ohs_instance1.host.domain.com HttpServer RUNNING --------------------------------------------+----------------+--------------- The component identifier is a string of characters, including the fully qualified host name preceded by a descriptive prefix. 2. Take note of the managed component identifier. For example, from the output returned by the status command in step 1, we can determine that the component identifier of the Oracle Beehive Applications is: BEEAPP_instance1.host.domain.com. Starting a Specific Managed Component : 1. Determine the component identifier of the managed component to start.Use status command. 2. Start a specific Oracle Beehive managed component using the beectlcommand-line utility, use the start command with the --component option andargument. For example to start BEEAPP_instance1.host.domain.com beectl> start --component BEEAPP_instance1.host.domain.com Starting beehive component "BEEAPP_instance1.host.domain.com" ...Successfully started beehive component "BEEAPP_instance1.host.domain.com".Operation completed in ms. To start more than one managed component, specify the--component option multiple times: once before each argument. Forexample: start --component --component... --component Stop a specific Oracle Beehive managed component : 1. Determine the ID of the managed component to stop.Use status command. 2. Stop a specific Oracle Beehive managed component using the beectl command-line utility, use the stop command with the --component option and argument. For example to stop the component BEEAPP_instance1.host.domain.com beectl> stop --component BEEAPP_instance1.host.domain.com Stopping beehive component "BEEAPP_instance1.host.domain.com" ... Successfully stopped beehive component "BEEAPP_instance1.host.domain.com". Operation completed in ms. 1 of 1 component(s) stopped successfully. To stop more than one managed component, specify the --component option multiple times: once before each argument. For example: stop --component --component ... --component Restarting a Specific Managed Component : 1. Determine the ID of the managed component to restart. Use "status command". 2. Restart a specific Oracle Beehive managed component using the beectl command-line utility, use the restart command with the --component option and argument. For example to restart a managed component BEEAPP_instance1.host.domain.com beectl> restart --component BEEAPP_instance1.host.domain.com Stopping beehive component "BEEAPP_instance1.host.domain.com" ... Successfully stopped beehive component "BEEAPP_instance1.host.domain.com". Operation completed in ms. Starting beehive component "BEEAPP_instance1.host.domain.com" ... Successfully started beehive component "BEEAPP_instance1.host.domain.com". Operation completed in ms. 1 of 1 component(s) restarted successfully. To restart more than one managed component, specify the --component option multiple times: once before each argument. For example: restart --component --component ... --component Stopping all Oracle Beehive Processes : If the Oracle Database instance was stopped before stopping Oracle Beehive,we have to shutdown all of Oracle Beehive Processes. When this occurs, the stop command with the --all option may not be able to properly stop all of the managed components. In such a case,Oracle recommends using the shutdown command. To stop all Oracle Beehive processes, including all managed components and services,using the beectl command-line utility, use the shutdown command. No options are required. The following example illustrates the command to use, as well as the resulting output: beectl> shutdown Shutting down all beehive components ... Successfully shutdown all beehive components. Operation completed in ms. What is Oracle Beehive? Oracle beehive is a solution from Oracle Corporation that addresses enterprise collaboration. What do you mean by collaboration? Collaboration is a developmental process.It is an important attribute of teamwork.It can be a dynamic process resulting from developmental group stages and as an outcome, producing a synthesis of different perspectives .To get more details read the article here . What are the collaborative features available with Oracle Beehive? Oracle Beehive provides colloborative features such as : 1) Instant Messaging 2) Time Management 3) content Management 4) E-mail What are the building blocks of Oracle Beehive? Oracle Beehive is built upon oracle components.This framework composes of : 1) Oracle database 2) Oracle Application Server Its architecture is built on J2EE(Java2 Enterprise Server Platform Edition). What are the uses of beehive? Oracle Beehive provides the following advantages : 1) Users can collaborate in teams or individually 2) Users can easily save, organize, find, and share the content that they create during the course of their collaborative projects and day-to-day activities 3) Enterprise colleagues and key partners can leverage the platform to seamlessly interact in a variety of convenient and effective ways Oracle Beehive Terms: Certain terms are used frequently during the process of deploying Oracle Beehive. 1) Sites : A site is a collection of hardware in a specific geographic location and on which Oracle Beehive runs. A site can support multiple instances of a variety of components including Oracle Beehive servers and Oracle Database instances.Oracle Beehive currently supports only one site per deployment. 2) Instances : An instance is an Oracle Beehive server that is running on a computer in an Oracle home (ORACLE_HOME).An instance may respond to requests from a specific enterprise.Oracle Beehive supports one server instance on each computer. 3) Enterprises and Organisations : An enterprise is a container for all of the users, groups, and resources that are a part of a single Oracle Beehive deployment.An enterprise includes all of the users,groups, and resources within a company. Oracle Beehive supports one enterprise for each deployment.Enterprises are the containers for organizations, which are groups defined by a department, line of business, project, or other criteria. The hierarchical relationship between enterprises and organizations in Oracle Beehive provides a logical structure for organizing users, groups, and resources. This structure also allows system administrators to more easily manage users, groups, and resources through their organizational associations. 4) Co-existence : Coexistence is the ability to integrate Oracle Beehive with another system (or application) so that certain data from each system is exposed to the users of the other system.Through its coexistence features, Oracle Beehive provides enterprises a non-intrusive deployment approach by giving users a choice in how they access their data, either from Oracle Beehive or other clients such as Microsoft Outlook (with Oracle Beehive Integration for Outlook and connected to Microsoft Exchange).This approach enables users of third-party systems to leverage Oracle Beehive functionality through their existing applications.Coexistence in Oracle Beehive is supported and managed by the Oracle Collaboration Coexistence Gateway, which is a logical part of the Coexistence Service. For example : Oracle Beehive supports coexistence with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, which enables users of Oracle Beehive and Microsoft Exchange Server to seamlessly collaborate in a variety of ways. This includes sending e-mail messages and scheduling meetings in one system and viewing or receiving the results of those actions in both systems. Coexistence also enables Microsoft Exchange Server users to access Oracle Beehive workspaces. Oracle Beehive Collaboration Coexistence Gateway : Co-existence an important feature of Oracle Beehive enables Oracle Beehive to co-exist with Microsoft exchange Server 2003(third-party software).This is achieved using Oracle Collaboration co-existence gateway. The coesistence gateway components update and propagate data between Oracle Beehive and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, which may include meeting entries, contacts, e-mail messages,and folders. It is made of the following components : 1) Oracle Beehive Co-existence Service 2) Oracle Change Notification Service For Exchange 3) Oracle Communication Service 4) Oracle Connector For Exchange Oracle Beehive Co-existence Service : The Oracle Beehive Coexistence Service runs in an OC4J container that is installed with Oracle Beehive. The service is automatically enabled when Oracle Beehive is installed and it is required in order to implement the Oracle Collaboration Coexistence Gateway. The Oracle Beehive Coexistence Service relays data between the Oracle Connector for Exchange and Oracle Beehive. Oracle Change Notification Service for Exchange : The Oracle Change Notification Service for Exchange is the Oracle collaboration Coexistence Gateway service that is responsible for the following tasks: 1) Detecting changes to the personal data (e-mail, contacts, and calendar events) of team collaboration-enabled users 2) Detecting changes to free/busy information for third-party coexisting users 3) Dispatching changes to Oracle Connector for Exchange Oracle Communication Service : The Oracle Communication Service plays a vital role in facilitating the exchange of information between Oracle Beehive and Microsoft Exchange Server. The Oracle Communication Service is responsible for the transmission of all messages between the two systems and distinguishes between different message types, including e-mail messages, calendar entries, and contacts. Oracle Connector for Exchange : The Oracle Connector for Exchange is an Oracle Collaboration Coexistence Gateway service that is responsible for the following tasks: 1) Converting outgoing messages to an accepted Oracle Beehive format and dispatching the delivery to the Oracle Communication Service 2) Delivering Oracle Beehive meeting requests, responses, and cancellations to Microsoft Exchange users 3) Updating free/busy information