Oracle 11.1.1.2 XPath issues

Currently I have been migrating BPEL for a client using Oracle SOA Suite and ran into incompatibilities between 11.1.1.1.0 and 11.1.1.2.0. A simple example that worked in 11.1.1.1.0 and not in the latest patched released is a simple evaluation where I am trying to confirm the existence of an element in a message.

<bpws:getVariableData("message","part","/element/element")> = true()

The same statement also works in Cape Clear ESB and its BPEL implementation.

One workaround that I used was to count the nodes using the Oracle XPath Advanced Functions:

ora:countNodes("message","part","/element/element") > 0

I am working with Oracle support services to see how this can be resolved in the code base.

Open Cloud Manifesto and Standardization

The Open Cloud Manifesto provides a solid definition of the state of cloud computing. Just like other industry movements in distributed computing, enterprise integration or other, cloud computing is evolving in many different directions but the core patterns and architecture of outsourced infrastructure, platforms and software supporting elasticity, multi-tenancy, metering etc.

The hope of the manifesto and other cloud computing standards/organization, standardization in the areas of deployment, execution and management are desirable. When standards exist, it allows us to focus on generating business logic and the value it provides versus the technical wiring and potential workarounds necessary. Just like Web Services and the standards they developed over the past 10 years, I envision cloud computing will take a similar period of time to clarify and flush out the details that can be standardized.

The one area that has traction is support for REST/SOAP based APIs. In fact as companies develop private clouds and potentially expose them as to the public, other architectures such as SOA become important in providing concise and clear interfaces to business logic.