An SOA (service oriented architecture) has the appealing allure for reducing costs and improving your company's agility. But, before digging up your existing IT roots, you'll need assurances there's a fortified and fertile ecosystem waiting to support you in those supposedly greener pastures.

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The Bottom Line Oracle SOA Suite 10g Release 3 Oracle, http://oracle.com Excellent  8.7 criteria score weight Interoperability 9 30% Features 9 20% Management 8 15% Scalability 8 15% Security 9 10% Value 9 10% Cost: Starts at $50,000 per CPU with Oracle AS Enterprise Edition; $65,000 per CPU for non-Oracle application servers Platforms: Windows, Linux , HP-UX, Solaris, AIX; Application servers: Oracle Application Server 10g R3; JBoss 4, IBM WebSphere 6.1, and BEA WebLogic 9 (forthcoming); Browser: Internet Explorer, Firefox; Database: Oracle, IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server 2000, more Bottom Line: The Oracle SOA Suite pulls together top-notch governance, business rules, security, and business activity monitoring into an ESB package replete with native BPEL orchestration and human workflow integration. Tools skew to the developer side (with the exception of BAM) but are well-suited to the job. Ease of implementation and affordability make it a standout consideration. About our Reviews and Scoring Methodology

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What's exciting about the new Oracle SOA Suite 10g Release 3 is the comprehensive scope and breadth of its well-integrated component set that's geared to provide just such an environment.

SOA Suite packs an Oracle ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) for message routing, enrichment, and transformation with good adapters available for plugging into most any existing transport or ERP system in use. And, the Oracle BPEL Process Manager provides an orchestration engine based on native BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) with tools to easily string together complex business flows, human workflow, and exception management.

Topping the stack are the OWSM (Oracle Web Services Manager) -- locking down services with sturdy security and policy management -- and an easy-to-use rules facility, Oracle Business Rules Engine, for processing business logic and authoring customizable rule sets.

Oracle further enriches the suite with its Oracle BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) application, showing good analytics, proactive monitoring, and insight into process optimization with strong dashboard drill-down features.

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At the start, I was somewhat apprehensive of the comprehensiveness of the suite: The sheer number of components conjured nightmares from days of monolithic vendor lock-in.

But, fear not. Although Oracle SOA Suite does run Oracle's application server, a number of additional app servers are gearing up for certification. And, the BAM, OWSM, and BPEL PM apps can all be used to manage third-party infrastructure, as well. Oracle includes Oracle JDeveloper for its IDE, but Eclipse will also do the job nicely.

There remains some room for improvement, certainly. The BAM module is currently Windows-only, and globalization/localization across the platform needs improvement. The BPEL Designer for orchestrating services, though great for developers, lacks analyst appeal and would be enhanced by efforts to round out autonomous access for the business-focused. And, the multiple Enterprise Manager interfaces required to administer the suite belies an otherwise well-integrated composition.

I would like to see more non tech-driven interface development tools, such as those available in BEA's AquaLogic User Interaction suite, and more of the distributed process debugging, dependency mapping, and integrated WS-standards found in Sonic SOA Suite. But, unlike Sonic, Oracle standardizes on the open BPEL (with minor extension) for orchestration, which I prefer.

I found Oracle SOA Suite, hands down, the most comprehensive and easy to use product on the market today for effectively developing and securing most services-based architectures.

Oracle SOA Suite culminates strategic merger-and-acquisition execution into a well-integrated product that is at once effective, usable, and highly extensible, making it a sure shot at reducing initial integration costs and benefiting management of your SOA infrastructure going forward.

Peeling back the skin
Oracle has accomplished quite a feat by streamlining installation for most of the suite. SOA Suite sets up its components and application server from a single click, with only minor configuration required. The BAM module required separate installation to a Windows machine running IIS and .Net 1.1. But here, too, there was nothing beyond anticipated configuration parameters and initial setup of the administrative Message Center for outbound communications. In all, a well-architected process.

To manage the native BPEL engine, BPEL PM uses the browser-based Enterprise Manager interface for administering in-flight flows and drilling into stuck processes and audit trails. I liked the ready heads-up listings of deployed processes, visual status cues, and the chance to graphically examine status and review XML payloads. There are also good sort-and-filter mechanisms to isolate active instances.

For me, the interface breaks down when navigating process flow diagrams. The process becomes cumbersome due to the inability to zoom in and out, and due to the absence of high-level thumbnail views to quickly jump to parts of a diagram.

However, individual subsections could be collapsed to make them more readable. The result was a clear, graphical, real-time rendering of the status on any instance. I could check sensor values and ownership of a process (say, in stuck workflow-related items) as well as drill into the decision-making logic that brought an instance to its current point. I could also launch directly into the rules interface for updates.