OpenWorld Had Little News for J.D. Edwards Integration

Most of the people I talked to at the recently concluded Oracle Open World were asking the question: "Where's the Beef?" Sure there were hundreds of sessions, but most of the sessions lacked depth. Reporters complained that Oracle executives dodged interviews and there were far more questions than answers. When will Fusion be delivered? When is the next version of Oracle J.D. Edwards World going to be released? How will J.D. Edwards users benefit from Fusion Middleware? Which components of the stack are needed for coexistence, which ones are required for migration?

With so much due in the future and so little delivering today, there were plenty of unanswered questions. Perhaps the most exciting thing about the conference was the sheer energy and mass of the gathering – some 41,000 people packed Moscone Center and the Hilton, where the J.D. Edwards program was centered. Quest International User Group put on a nice reception. But useful hands-on sessions that go beyond the basics were in short supply. It's as if Oracle thought there were 41,000 CEOs attending Open World instead of 41,000 IT professionals.

The current war between SAP and Oracle has many customers concerned as to whether or not they should upgrade. Most are searching for coexistence rather than migration, and that's where solutions like JDE Connect and the iBOLT Integration Suite appear as a right-sized approach to integration, whether they plan to upgrade or not. Most World customers will probably continue to solve urgent integration challenges with custom RPG programming. But for some enterprises, code-free alternatives like JDE Connect deserve a closer look.

Life Flows On: But Do Your Business Processes?

Sure life flows on, but do your business processes? As discussed earlier, the JDE Connect/iBOLT system helps you create smooth running business processes between your J.D. Edwards ERP system and the other applications and workflow processes that surround it. JDE Connect connects you to websites, portals, homegrown RPG applications, third party applications and even human workflow (such as SMS or email, etc.) with all the security and operational integrity measures you desire.

We've discussed in previous entries how JDE Connect lets you define a topology that describes the physical relationship between your servers and applications and also allows you to model a high level business process view.

These are essentially preparatory steps taken before the real task at hand which is to create an executable business process. To create a smooth-running business process, you need to define the actual steps and tasks in that process. With JDE Connect, this is accomplished using the iBOLT Flow Editor, a very useful visual editor with drill-down functionality for defining logical conditions, expressions, and branches using required services, triggers and schedules. In other words, you use the flow editor to visually dictate how the JDE Connect/iBOLT Server will execute your business rules. This approach gives you complete control over how the integration of procedures, websites and applications outside JDE are handled. The advantage of the visual editor is that it allows business analysts and system architects to implement and modify business rules without the need for programming and it documents the flow of these business rules in a way that is easily understood.

A flow is where you define integration processes that are part of your topology. Within your flow, you include flow components to manage integration processes. You can also define an error handling policy for the flow.
Let's consider at a high level, the kind of power JDE Connect gives you over your business processes:

JDE Connect Understands When to Act Triggers, schedules and branching let you control when steps in your business process are executed. JDE Connect can use triggers to monitor events and execute a flow each time that event occurs. JDE Connect can execute a flow on a schedule or interval that you specify. JDE Connect can group your actions in branches that follow steps in a procedure one at a time (serially) or all at once (in parallel). You create a flow by inserting flows into the Flow Editor. The Flow Editor has Trigger and Flow areas. Components that trigger a flow automatically are placed in the Trigger area. Components that are part of the flow are placed in the main Flow area. The flow is executed in the order that you place the components. However, you can move a branch of components to change the branch order.

JDE Connect Understands Whether to Act JDE Connect allows you to set conditions for any step in a process. You can use conditions, or rules, to define the flow's execution behavior and create Flow Logic. You can conditionally specify the execution sequence of the flow components by setting the conditions, the condition execution point in the flow, and which flow component is executed when the condition is True or False.

JDE Connect Understands How to Act If you had to build all of your business processes from scratch by building up logical routines for common procedures, that would be a lot of unnecessary work. Instead, JDE Connect/iBOLT's out-of-the-box flow components have been developed to let you use the different iBOLT services.
When you develop your flows, you can configure the components to utilize iBOLT services. The iBOLT services are building blocks that provide the project architect more control over the project and are used to specify specific behavior while modeling the project. Adding services to a flow is as easy as dragging the Service into the flow.

The various services available within JDE Connect/iBOLT for quickly building processes that incorporate a best practices approach to business automation are: Data Mapper Service, Scheduler Service, Locking Services, Logical Name Service, Delay, Publish and Subscribe Services, Enable Flow Service, Wait for Event Service, Post Event Service, Flow Data Service (ODS and Variables), Flow Manager, Save Message, BAM Service, SNMP Service, Java Class Connector Service, and EJB Connector Service.

In our next post, we will overview the available components within JDE Connect. Life flows on. Blog you later!

Monitoring the Situation: ERP Integration

The initial promise of ERP was that a single application could run an entire business. Needless to say, ERP systems had limits and there are dozens of enterprise applications running outside the ERP system in most businesses. These applications often have to be integrated to the ERP system. That work is hard enough. But when you add the requirement to monitor those exchanges occurring between applications, you stretch most IT department capabilities to the limit. That's why systems like JDE Connect/iBOLT provide business process monitoring ability. Every business needs up-to-the-minute 360-degree views of vital business information. Business pulsing is the act of taking a snapshot view of the state of the enterprise at any given moment.

Business activity monitoring is designed to deliver up-to-date, useful information about the processes occurring within a company. The threats and opportunities identified by monitoring systems range from technical threats such as data throughput bottlenecks to strategic threats such as customer retention rates that lag behind industry benchmarks. Business activity monitors, such as the one included in JDE Connect/iBOLT make excellent activity collectors for the executive oriented business performance management consoles and reports provided by such systems as ARIS by IDS Scheer. Unfortunately, these performance management systems are blind to underlying business processes, and therefore really need a solution like the monitoring capabilities of JDE Connect/iBOLT. How does JDE Connect/iBOLT business activity monitoring work?

The JDE Connect/iBOLT Monitor lets you see a wide range of information about your integration project’s deployment performance. (In fact, you can choose to monitor any or all of your integration projects). The system has visibility of all its processes and can help you to see what is really happening in your business. You can view the information for your entire ERP integration project or you can select different levels within the project, right down to the performance of individual flow components, which are essentially performing specific steps in a business process, such as the approval of price exceptions or the rejection of shipments. With JDE Connect/iBOLT, relevant information is displayed and updated regularly. By default, the information is updated every five minutes, however you can change the refresh time interval as desired.

The information provided by the Monitor lets you examine your J.D. Edwards World or J.D. Edwards Enterprise One integration project and see where you need to make any modifications to improve performance. This functionality is provided whether or not Oracle Fusion Middleware is present. In fact for users on the IBM System i or iSeries, JDE Connect/iBOLT is much closer to the actual system being monitored because it employs native integration servers on the System i in i5OS (OS/400) or Linux. The Monitor also lets you make adjustments to the Servers without having to go back to the Editor and reconfigure your project.

The Monitor has three views that show the current activities and history of the JDE Connect/iBOLT project you selected. These are the graphical Monitor View, the Activity Log view, and the BAM Message View.

Dashboard Views. The graphical monitor view is the most exciting to business people because it provides a visualization of your business processes. Remember our discussion of your topology – the definition of your business integration map, so to speak? Well now you can see the performance of your topology. What specific business processes (flows) are a part of it? How often are they executing? How quickly are the processes completing? How often do they fail? This information can be vital to understanding what is really happening inside your business, and in the hands of a trained business analyst are quite useful in diagnosing problems as well as successes in business processes. You can also drill down to get a dashboard representation of similar information for a specific object or step in your business process.

Activity logs may not be visually exciting, but they are just as important as dashboard views, if not more so. Activity logs can be archived and as such represent an important record of what really happened in your business process and the associated data. Often, the real story that will interest auditors and regulators is in the metadata and not the data itself. How did the information get here?

BAM Service. You can also use Business Activity monitoring for triggers, so that as certain JDE integration events occur in a process, they can trigger other events, flows, alerts, alarms and escalations. The BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) service lets you define and configure the messages sent by the server that are related to your business processes. BAM messages monitor the essential business processes and provide messages and alerts about them. JDE Connect/iBOLT gives you extensive capabilities to add the BAM service to your flow and define the messages that are returned.

Good News. For Oracle J.D. Edwards World and Oracle J.D. Edwards Enterprise One users, all of this is good news because monitoring can now occur outside the walls of the ERP system. Businesses gain a holistic view of the enterprise that helps to deliver on one of the original promises of ERP.

For information on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Integration, please look at the Integrate My JDE blog. You will find information on ERP and accounting interfaces and integration with CRM systems, enterprise portals, eCommerce, social media, and other business applications and software.

Today's Announcement Missed JDE Customers

It is with more than just a little curiosity that I note the announcement by Oracle today regarding the new release of Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g. Support for Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise and Siebel was noted. However, there was no mention of J.D. Edwards. Let's hope this is not a trend. On the other hand, most JDE users have such superior application management capabilities on IBM System i, that they simply may not have had much demand for such tools. And the Enteprise One users on other platforms are certainly outnumbered by Oracle's other customers. Still, it is the process of leaving JDE out that will probably raise a few eyebrows.

The announcement is here on Oracle's website

BPEL and J.D. Edwards: Is it needed?

Companies that utilize J.D. Edwards applications, especially J.D. Edwards World, may ask: do I need an integration solution compatible with BPEL? To me, this question is sort of like asking, do I need insurance? The answer is hopefully not, but it won't hurt to have it -- just in case. In case of what, you ask? Suppose your integration vendor goes out of business or you change platforms, wouldn't you want your integration work to have the potential to migrate platforms with you? Wouldn't you want to be able to hand over your integration files to another vendor who could implement these using Web Services and a different set of integration tools, if necessary?

BPEL or Business Process Execution Language (formerly BPEL4WS, or Business Process Execution Language for Web Services) is a programming standard supported by multiple vendors that lets developers compose multiple linear and parallel Web Services into end-to-end business process flows. Choosing an integration solution that supports BPEL or that can at least export your integration work into BPEL, gives you some assurance of future portability. BPEL4WS is an XML standard, and more specifically incorporates Web Services.

BPEL is a language used in the orchestration of Web Services. The JDE Connect/iBOLT Editor lets you export Web Services Business Process information to the BPEL format versions 1.0 and 1.1. Since 2.0 is still being debated in the community, it will not be supported until a future version.

At any point in the JDE Connect/iBOLT Editor you can export your Business Process (BP) design to BPEL4WS format with the .bpel file extension. The how-to is pretty straightforward. To export to BPEL format simply go to the the Tools menu and select Export. Then click Export to BPEL4WS and Export project to BPEL4WS to export all of the business process designs in your project.

In either case, JDE Connect/iBOLT indicates the name and location of the BPEL4WS file or files that will be created. Obviously, only business process designs that use a Web Service are able to be exported.
So that's the how-to. It is sort of nice to know that it is there, if you ever need it. By using an integration tool today that supports both JDE z-files and BPEL for example, you are positioned well for future Fusion Middleware based integration, because the next release should support BPEL imports quite well. So while we are waiting for Fusion, we can utilize tools like iBOLT to get the real integration work done, especially on System i. Sure z-files will probably go away, eventually, but in the meantime (translate the next decade), I can visualize many situations where one site will utilize Fusion middleware and Fusion applications and another will utilize existing time-tested (and highly customized) versions of J.D. Edwards applications in conjunction with JDE Connect/iBOLT for application-to-application integration and business process automation.

The 10,000 Foot View: Business Process Models

Business process models provide a 10,000 foot view of your business and help you to see the big picture from a process standpoint. You get a feel for the ebb and flow, the bottlenecks and the dead ends in your business. And you gain insight into the pathway to greater predictability, stability and efficiency. Some companies spend a lot of money buying business process modeling tools that create nice documentation but don't actually do anything. One of the things I like about JDE Connect / iBOLT is that it gives me the ability to document my J.D. Edwards World or J.D. Edwards EnterpriseOne business processes from end-to-end – including (and especially) the applications and human workflow processes that take place outside JDE. In fact, JDE can take care of itself – I don't see as much need to document its processes. But it is in fact the processes outside of JDE that I really want to think about as this affects the efficiency of my business in innumerable ways. Since nearly everything ends up in JDE at one point or another, the efficiency of the integration and interaction is a key to business agility.



Magic Software Enterprises provides a Business Process Editor with JDE Connect / iBOLT that provides business process modeling capabilities that include business functions or activities, business rules, resources, and performance measurement. The difference is that these business process models help me to identify the flows in my business that really do something. JDE Connect / iBOLT provides intuitive editing facilities that help you capture and maintain business-process knowledge and accurately reflect current business goals in the JDE Connect / iBOLT Editor’s Business Process View.

A business process is a graphical representation of business activities that represents the integration project from the organization’s business perspective. The business process design helps you understand the business needs behind your integration project and how to relate these to the integration flows that should implement the business process activity. By the way, while the use of this editor is completely optional from a technical standpoint, from a business standpoint I consider it mandatory.

And of course the models, the flows, the topology and all of the associated information with them can be used in documentation tools where I can begin adding written descriptions as a base for documentation of processes. This documentation is key to survivability and compliance. It is quite useful for auditors and essential to business process recovery efforts. The weakest link in any business process is the one person who understands it. So if you want to integrate your JDE using JDE Connect, don't forget the 10,000 foot view. From the big picture we can control the strategy of our business and as we extend into the details of our business, we improve the tactics.

On Top of Topologies

When using JDE Connect, you are really using a fully functional version of the iBOLT Integration Suite and applying it to your J.D. Edwards integration requirements.
The first step in implementing a JDE Connect integration project is the definition of your topology.


A topology is a graphical representation of the integration connections between the different applications, including J.D. Edwards World or J.D. Edwards Enterprise One, and the JDE Connect/iBOLT Servers that connect them. In a topology you can define the connections and relationships between the JDE Connect/iBOLT Servers and the various applications.
The Navigation pane shows your topologies and their related flows. When you click one of the topologies, the main Editor window graphically represents the topology.

Of course, when you first begin you will need to insert a new topology in the Navigation pane by selecting Topology from the Insert menu. You should immediately set the topology properties before going on to design the topology through drag and drop techniques.
A topology is both a visual representation of the physical relationships between your applications and servers that is useful in planning as well as the place where you set actual properties that are used in your project, especially by the JDE Connect/iBOLT Server. You can not perform integration without a server, so of course, you must include at least one Server in your topology. But you can have more than one server in a topology and a project can have more than one topology – usually reserved for discrete clusters of integration activity, for example, front office topology might be different from a topology defined for a secure area behind a firewall. But multiple topologies could also be useful in data centers with massive numbers of servers and applications that would be easier to visualize in smaller parts. The best practice is to always start small, so don't worry about multiple topologies for now, that's an advanced topic.

As we said, you should always start by defining your topology properties. You will right click the topology and then select properties. The topology properties dialog box opens and you simply enter the name and description of the topology. The ID or identifier number shown is generated automatically; you don't need to worry about it. Click OK or Cancel and you're done with it. As with most tasks in JDE Connect/iBOLT, the process is straightforward and tasks are broken down into simple steps that can be executed via dialog boxes and other friendly interfaces without programming. The objects in your topology design can always be moved about by clicking and dragging them, by the way.
Once again, you will be entering applications and integration servers in your topology. I recommend starting with the applications for two reasons. First, they are pre-existing. A second reason is that seeing the applications visually helps you to visualize how many iBOLT servers you will need. In most cases it is one server. The JDE Connect/iBOLT Suite supplies you with a number of icons representing commonly-used applications. These are located in the application repository. You can add your own applications to the list of applications and you can then use these in your topology designs. You can also insert, modify and delete applications in your topology.

Applications are also added through simple dialog boxes that allow you to enter the name, description, physical location (such as a server), and icon to be used. Once again, the unique identification number is entered by the system. Once you close the dialog box and accept your entry, the new application appears on the list of applications and in the Applications repository pane. You can create as many applications as you want before leaving the repository.
Now that you've defined your applications, you can move on to defining the integration server or servers to be used for this topology. The JDE Connect/iBOLT Server is the heart of the integration project at deployment. You can also configure your server(s) in the Topology Editor in a similar fashion to your applications. You can have as many servers as necessary. The standard JDE Connect/iBOLT Server runs from 5 to 35 concurrent processes. It is possible to deploy more than one server. Usually this is done when the main integration server cannot access the application server directly or when the application server is located in a remote location. It can also be done if you are trying to create an enterprise service bus with numerous lightweight servers, usually capable of handling up to 5 concurrent processes.
By default, one server is created when you create a new Topology. When you add a server to a topology or double-click an existing server in the Topology Editor, the JDE Connect/iBOLT Server Properties dialog box is displayed and you should enter the required information. You can add a new server or an edit an existing server to the topology using this dialog box.
You define Server settings in the JDE Connect/iBOLT Server Settings dialog box, which you access from the JDE Connect/iBOLT Server Repository. Here the level of detail increases when compared to the initial simplicity of naming and describing your topology, for example. But that's as expected. What is great about JDE Connect is that even when solving complex issues, you don't need to write program code and the information requested is presented via dialog boxes in manageable chunks.

So the JDE Connect/iBOLT Server Properties dialog box Advanced settings actually has three sections. The Operation Mode defines remote services for your project. Remote services are used when there is more than one JDE Connect/iBOLT server used in an integration project. In this case you can choose to use different servers for different purposes: operational data storage (ODS), which is simply the metadata associated with each instance or execution of your flow; messaging (MSG), which as expected is used for the transmission of messages between applications, flows and servers; publish and subscribe service (PSS), which manages the availability and use of services or sub-processes; and the locking service (LOCK) which as the name implies protects data during transaction execution.

So you see, the Operation Mode lets you distribute the load among various servers. For example, you can choose to put all of the services on one server and run your flows on another. You can put only one of the services on a server and run the rest on a different server. This allows you to set up your JDE Connect/iBOLT project so that it runs in the most effective way.
In the Clear Mode section, you define what information the Server should clear when it starts up. By default, the JDE Connect/iBOLT Server clears the data for ODS, PSS, LOCK and RCV at startup. You can also configure the JDE Connect/iBOLT Server to retain the information for these services. In this case, any information entered into these services in earlier sessions is retained when the Server starts. With ease of use constantly in mind, you can configure the server to retain information for any or all of these services simply through the check box next to a service.

The third and final section is the Miscellaneous section where you can declare and control things like path separators, server log locations, the maximum number of requests, and the date format.

All of these appear in a single pane dialog box and can be set very quickly. Click OK and voila! you have your topology.

In our next post, we will explore the JDE Connect/iBOLT Business Process Editor – a great tool for thinking about your high level definition of business processes. Onward!

What is JDE Connect?

This would be a good time to ask "What is JDE Connect?" You could get the answer on Magic Software's website, but that would be too easy and too commercial. So we will get into the detailed how-to in subsequent posts. But for now, let's stick to the basic definition.

I can tell you that JDE Connect is an integration solution for JDE Edwards applications that allows you to extend and integrate external applications and business processes. It is a specially-priced version of the full iBOLT Integration Suite without any reduction in functionality. It allows JD Edwards customers to visually design business processes that connect to the web, integrate applications, and incorporate email into overall business processes. It runs natively on the IBM System i platform (as well as options for Windows, Linux and UNIX) and takes full advantage of native System i features and functionality. On the System i, it supports J.D. Edwards World and J.D. Edwards Enterprise One, which is pretty amazing because the integration techniques are completely different in the two applications. Of course J.D. Edwards World doesn't run anywhere other than the System i, so support by JDE Connect on the other platforms is limited to J.D. Edwards Enterprise One.

No programming is required, so business analysts, architects and administrators can implement solutions using the visual editors, wizards and drill-down dialogs in JDE Connect. This is really the iBOLT paradigm which is fully documented on the Magic Software website.

With J.D. Edwards World, most of the inbound integration work is accomplished by smooth running business processes that create properly formatted Z-files for upload to JDE Edwards World. A well-designed business process will validate data, manage exceptions and accommodate error conditions. Automation of the upload interval can be easily managed to match business requirements for routine batch or near-real time business processes.

JDE Connect services can be deployed across different platforms by installing an instance of JDE Connect on each network and operating system. As mentioned, i5OS, OS/400, Windows, Linux and UNIX (AIX, Solaris and HPUX) servers can run the integration flows produced by JDE Connect using iBOLT, however there can be advantages to keeping the processes on IBM System i, for those that are already in that environment.


With J.D. Edwards World, once JDE Connect has automated the creation of the Z-file as part of a business process, the upload of the Z-file is also automated. While this would often require human intervention in the past, JDE Connect simulates the actions of the operator working through the 5250 connection, thereby creating a hands-free business process that can be conveniently run at any desired interval. This results in benefits such as fewer missed batch jobs, shorter intervals between data updates, and less hassle for your IT department in maintaining integrated, smooth running processes. It also allows you to manage the exceptions, not simply dump them to an exceptions file.

A number of uses for such a solution come to mind. JDE Connect includes http adapters and real-time transformation capabilities between HTML and any other format. So the web transaction information can be implemented using Z-file integration that takes place in an instant.

One of the biggest challenges facing those responsible for a smooth-running supply chain is the lack of item synchronization. Industry estimates suggest that lack of item synchronizations costs the typical business between two and six percent of revenues. Using JDE Connect, all of the master item database information can be maintained accurately and synchronized among disparate systems.

Most small package delivery companies (FedEx, UPS, etc.) and major shipping lines offer automated web services for package delivery and tracking. Automatic shipping processes based on back end transaction triggers are easy to set up with JDE Connect. These processes can be implemented with or without human intervention based on the best method determined for your organization during the business analysis phase of your implementation.

So the above is really just one example: inbound migrtion to J.D. Edwards World. But JDE Connect covers the full gamut: inbound and outbound migration for either J.D. Edwards World or J.D. Edwards Enterprise Ine. It is just a matter of choosing the right methods.

A full range of business processes can be automated: chart of account consolidation with external systems, enhanced audit trails, compliance feeds, email notices, EDI integration, and much more. With literally dozens of adapters, wizards and methods included with JDE Connect, business processes may be designed that overcome the full range of integration barriers facing organizations today.

This includes outbound integration utilizing capabilities for database integration, 5250 emulation, spool file integration, data queue, etc.

So the JDE Connect blog will focus on the how-to of these capabilities. How do we get JDE Connect to actually perform the integration?

Stay tuned...

Welcome to JDE Connect

Here at JDE Connect we will keep you informed and up-to-date on all the latest integration techniques for Oracle J.D. Edwards applications. OK, I know, you may be thinking, what? Start a J.D. Edwards blog in 2006? But, keep in mind, none of us had ever heard of blogs when we started using J.D. Edwards.

And there will be lots to learn about integration with external applications and processes, all of course aided by JDE Connect. So welcome. I look forward to your comments and suggestions. Let the bloging begin!