Oracle SOA Suite Reviews

We primarily use SOA Suite for our B2B and EDI. It's the framework for our B2B activities. It provides us with an out-of-box EDI solution that allows us to work and trade with all our partners and other companies across the world.

Granted, we're not on the newest and latest version, but there are some performance and reliability issues with the SOA Suite. We're constantly having issues. We have some scheduled scripts to run and they bounce around SOA Suite weekly, so there's definitely room for improvement there.

It's deployed without issue for us.

We've had issues surrounding our B2B and BAM process. There's quite a few issues, but that's speaking from a developer's standpoint and not a DBA's or Technical Lead's.

We don't have that many functional users using it, so scaling has not been a true issue for us.

We use a third-party hosting solution. A lot of the setup in technical maintenance is all handled through them. I know we've logged several SR's for issues with SOA Suite.

The initial setup was done by our third-party implementer. The main solution we used it for was obviously for EDI. Going forward, it may change.

We used a third-party implementer.

Just make sure you work with your technical team and know what current version is and all the patch notes that tie to that.

We use it to build integrations for customers. It has a broad set of tools for handling SOAP and REST integrations to FTP, files, and JMS depending on need.

For customers, we have often made integrations from batch processing to propagating changes in a few seconds. With the integration platform in place, it is easier and quicker to make the integrations they need.

There is always room for improvement, but it has shown a continuous growth in functionality. Nevertheless, the stability when used with JDeveloper needs improvement.

I have been using it for six to seven years.

There have been no issues deploying it.

The product is stable, but we have seen less stability with JDeveloper.

It contains good options for handling scalability. We haven't had issues scaling it as necessary.

Technical support is good and available, but you need to know how Oracle Support works to get the best help.

We had no other solution in place.

Setup of the development environment has become a lot easier, as has the production environment. For the production environment, I would recommend someone who has done this before.

Pricing has been an issue for smaller customers. Fortunately, the cloud will now give more options.

No other options were looked at.

There is an active community -- read blogs and books, and attend conferences, and training, or work side-by-side with someone who knows the product. Also, plan the architecture well.

My first application was in the planning of integral projects in a state university where we made a profile proposing the integral installation of communications, and built an edifice for the data center with a nutanix server. We created software sheltering the existing ideas, and the SOA web service facilitated this work.

Oracle SOA Suite allows for integrated systems and facilitates report making for quick decision making, although the bad administrative management software is on Microsoft platforms, while free software with MySql. However, it was decided to align the academic and administrative systems to Microsoft platforms.

Many years ago I started doing intermediate software that allows database sharing of different manufacturers based on Microsoft Access data and DBF or SQL Server databases.

This solution should allow for data output to spreadsheets and other formats. During training, it is necessary to be closer to the end user to properly manage the product.

The most valuable features are BPEL orchestrations, mediations and tight integration with Oracle Service Bus, and adapters.

A very useful feature in SOA Suite 12c has been REST adapters, which have now been upgraded so that there is no explicit need to translate REST and JSON on in/outbound.

Also, BPEL extensions and templates have been very useful.

SOA Suite 12c can significantly simplify the integrations and orchestration, including human workflow. In complex IT environments, it can lead to loosely-coupled architecture and reduce the integration complexity considerably. Also, it can contribute to service reuse.

In my opinion, an important aspect that will probably be covered in future versions is support for micro-services and the ability to scale on PaaS and Docker-like environments.

I have used this product since it was introduced as BPEL Process Manager 10g. For 12c, I was among the beta testers.

We've had no issues with deployment.

SOA Suite 12c has improved stability considerably. In the past, we had encountered some minor stability issues with WSM. However, in 12c this has been greatly improved and we have not noticed major problems in production. Also, JDeveloper has been improved.

12c has improved scalability dramatically and now uses fewer server resources. Also, Enterprise Manager provides better tools to monitor load.

We have always gotten prompt and useful responses from support.

No, however we also have experience with IBM BPM. We, however, prefer Oracle SOA Suite due to better integration and richer functionalities.

Setup is straightforward, particularly for development environments. For production and separate domains, you need to know what you are doing. However, the provided documentation is adequate.

We have evaluated IBM BPM, JBoss jBPM, and Activiti. We have figured out that SOA Suite 12c currently offers the richest functionalities and is the best integrated product.

It is essential to have a good understanding of the features provided, including BPEL, services, adapters, mediations, human workflow and other features. It is also good to get familiar with SOA concepts and patterns. Using this product is the right way to go and following sound development practices brings results quickly. However, using the product in wrong way might not provide all the benefits.

Valuable features include web service development and cloud connectivity.

We are using the SOA suite for all cloud integrations.

• SOA
• AP
• AR

We have been using this solution for two years.

There were some connectivity issues.

There were no issues with stability.

There were no issues with scalability.

Customer service was very good.

Technical support is good.

We did not use a solution previously.

It encompasses a lot of different apps. The key is that it combines a lot of commonly used apps, from a business perspective, for example, business logic implementation such as people or reporting. They made it lot easier. From a development perspective, the tools are pretty good.

My one big improvement would be to make the ID tool that the developers use to develop a lot of these applications better. It could be more stable and the performance can be improved. As a developer, me and my team face the most challenges installing it. It's very memory intensive and it crashes a lot. They could definitely improve on that.

I have been using it for 8-9 years.

Parts of it are stable. When they release a new version, it can be unstable. A lot of times we have seen that, even though they claim in the documentation to have implemented or enhanced certain things, when you start actually implementing it, you realize it's not really been done. For each major release – for example, from 10 to 11 or 11 to 12 – there can be some performance and stability issues in the initial phase. But, overall the patches and the releases are pretty stable.

It’s scalable. It will meet the company's needs moving forward.

Technical support is okay. I would think they could do better. They have a way of raising service requests with Oracle. Every time you raise one, you lose a lot of time when they go through their standard routine before you actually reach a person who knows stuff and you can actually start moving forward. I believe you lose a lot of time just getting to the right person and start going forward. They could work on that for sure. I’m thinking it’s an Oracle specialty.

The initial setup is pretty good, actually, and it's very well documented.

It's a good product, but still also mind your business needs and your business case. I don’t suggest jumping for it right away. Evaluate how much value it can add for your organization.

It has an easy-to-use interface for development. SOA also includes many in-built technology adapters to connect and integrate with different technology servers.

This product has helped a lot with major integrations with different partners and clients. It's now easy to manage customers, order, bills, invoices, etc. We depend on it for registering devices and to sync their data. For example, we sell hardware devices that need pass codes for activation. To do this, we were using a third-party software/web service. With the SOA suite, we can activate the devices ourselves in no time.

As this is not the best product, it comes with minor or major bugs which Oracle keeps improving from time to time. For example, it loads and works slowly, using huge amounts of CPU and RAM. It'd like to see it work more smoothly in the next versions. Also, the support system could be improved, as tickets keep rolling, shift by shift for many days.

I've used it for five years.

If everything if fine at code level, there are no deployment issues.

There are some stability issues. On a few occasions, it behaves abnormally and technical support is unable to come up with a proper solution. Just looking at logs and changing config files is not proper debugging.

Also, we have a specific Oracle SOA server that is not very stable even after following their best practices (which are sometimes very hard to follow).
But it's not a bad software, you just need a good admin to run it.

It scales sufficiently for us.

Customer service is good.

Technical support I would rate at 6-7 out of 10.

We did not use a previous solution.

The initial setup was not very straightforward and is a bit complex. During initial setup, many things need to be taken care of -- DB installation, dehydration store version, number of CPUs, RAM size, heap size, Java versions and their conflicts, and many other configurations. We have to follow each step carefully, and it's not the same for all servers.

We implemented it with our in-house team.

I can't say what the ROI is. I don't work in that area.

You have to have patience and struggle with it, as with all technologies!

I think adapting different protocols easily with no coding is the best feature of the middleware SOA Suite.

We have created an offering for our customers, leveraging industry standards in order to utilize the delivery for that.

It should provide better log management and an easier tool for configuration.

There are still some problems that are not covered. The login mechanism still creates issues when it is not configured properly. The monitoring in general is complex. I think that there are some integrations with the cloud and mobile that need to be taken care of.

I have found version 12c to be stable.

The organization by logical domains based on WebLogic is definitely a key factor for the scalability of the solutions.

Technical support is quite a stable process but sometimes there are not responsive, especially for the more urgent and critical cases. In that case, we usually escalate it with our partner.

I'm a system integrator, not a customer. We usually use it in order to provide middleware solutions to our customers. Basically, also based on analyst reports, SOA Suite is at the edge of the technology, so we invested in it.

Initial setup was really complex.

We also have looked at TIBCO, which is very strong as well, and WebSphere, but I think that is a niche player, especially in financials. At the moment, I think TIBCO is the most realistic competitor for Oracle, apart from all of the open-source solutions.

When I’m looking at a vendor such as Oracle to work with, the most important criteria are scalability, reliability, maturity and also support.

Ask for Accenture support. We have tons of experience at the moment in the team and in the regions, in Europe, especially. I think that the best solutions start with the configuration, in terms of high availability that is similar to production, in order to test all the configurations sent in from development.

During the last five years, the product has improved a lot. At the moment, it's a very natural product; a lot of very good features at the high end of the market.