This chapter introduced the notion of a composite application that can be seen as a set of design best practices and technologies to form a link between the SOA services and concrete applications that use those services. We took a look into the standard for creating such reusable components—SCA. We discussed the current trend towards moving away from programmatic solutions to typical programming tasks, such as integration or business rules, and how they are gradually replaced by a declarative approach in which we use models and wizards to create these solutions. In a brief walkthrough, we touched upon the key technologies that comprise these composites and saw how new features in Oracle SOA Suite 12c, such as Templates, allow more consistent architecture and design.

We looked at emerging ways of virtualizing the access to data and functionality through tools such as the API gateway.

A key focus of this chapter is on architecting and designing the respective composite applications and...