The Oracle SOA Suite provides you with an SOA platform for the complete management of composite applications. Besides providing out of the box functionality, Oracle SOA Suite also provides abilities to extend its functionality. Since it is based on Java technology, the extensions usually involve Java class files, Java Archives, or both. Along with the configuration, usually in the XML format or properties file, this provides you with extensions of the Oracle SOA Suite suitable for utilization by different clients. Furthermore, the extensions are also exposable to the external environment via web services or by BPEL processes. We can expose various functionalities through extensions, for example, parts of business processes, integrations with payment gateways, logging facilities, support of digital signatures and encryptions, authentication mechanisms, and so on.

Fundamentally, the third-party libraries act in two ways during the development process. When using JDeveloper as the development environment for the Oracle SOA Suite, the third-party libraries need to be placed accordingly. That way, we eliminate much of the issues that can occur in the process of project deployment. We can also develop solutions in Eclipse or NetBeans; however, this is not a topic of this chapter. In this chapter, we will examine recipes for adding custom classes and third-party libraries to the JDeveloper projects and Oracle SOA Suite server. By adding custom classes and third-party libraries to the JDeveloper projects, we are able to deploy different versions of custom classes and third-party libraries with the BPEL processes. Also, by placing custom classes and third-party libraries in the Oracle SOA Suite server extension directory, we are able to use custom classes and third-party libraries globally without packing them into the BPEL process deployment package.

With extensions in place, the next interesting part involves the usage of extensions. We are focusing on the utilization of extensions in BPEL processes. We will examine how to utilize the embedded extensions in a BPEL process in the Design and Source view of JDeveloper.