Chapter 21. The Bigger Picture: SOA for User Interfaces, SaaS, and the Cloud

The most visible part of most applications is the user interface—that tip of the iceberg that takes care of the interaction with us human users. This is despite the fact that the bulk of the functionality of most applications is in the services that perform the actual work, leveraging enterprise resources such as databases and various calculation engines. Chapter 10 (on human tasks) and Chapter 11 (on BPM) as well as the previous chapter (on using ADF to create advanced user interfaces) discussed the human-oriented interface that facilitates the interaction between users and (service-oriented) applications. We will take that discussion a little further in this chapter, when we look at the application of the concepts and principles of SOA—decoupling and focusing on reuse with agility as the main objective—to user interfaces.

We will briefly discuss mash-ups and portals, Portlets, and task flows. Our primary technology focus in this discussion is Oracle Fusion Middleware and ADF and WebCenter in particular, although most considerations apply more generally.