One of the features of StrikeIron's IronCloud platform is that it can accept invocations of Web services via multiple protocols including both SOAP and REST. This maximizes the audience of potential users and provides for a good deal of flexibility with multiple IDEs, coding styles, and platform implementations.
In addition to the support for SOAP calls within the platform (including SOAP Headers, SOAP parameter-based authentication, and SOAP w/ HTTP Secure) there is also support for accepting REST calls. This is achieved within the “Transformation” sub-system of our IronCloud platform, meaning we translate the REST call to its equivalent SOAP call before hitting the actual Web service living within our data centers, and then translate the response back to the REST format before it is sent back to the calling entity, and of course all within milliseconds.
This is powerful because it allows any of our services to be integrated into Web scripting languages and other places where a REST call might be more appropriate or convenient, and opens up the functionality to Web developers who can quickly put this concept to use. These REST calls for example can easily be used within PHP, Python, Ruby, ColdFusion, JavaScript, Perl and even embedded into Java, .NET, and other IDE platforms, including anything that can utilize Representational State Transfer (REST). In other words, REST provides a nice interface for easy leveraging of functionality out in the Cloud.
Here is an example using REST with our North American Address Verification service, a Web API that validates the existence of any address in the United States or Canada, and then standardizes the address according to postal standards (as well as appending additional data such as county and latitude/longitude coordinates). The example below can be entered into any Web browser address line as-is (with the appropriate authentication - click the Free Trials button to the right or contact StrikeIron to get access) in order to get a response. You can then change parameter values for different addresses to get the different corresponding responses. You can also try other methods within any of our Web services following the same form (you have to change the parameters to match the method of course).
Form:
http://ws.strikeiron.com/NAAddressVerification6/NorthAmericanAddressVerificationService/NorthAmericanAddressVerification?LicenseInfo.RegisteredUser.UserID=[UserID]&LicenseInfo.RegisteredUser.Password=[Password]&NorthAmericanAddressVerification.AddressLine1=[AddressLine1]&NorthAmericanAddressVerification.AddressLine2=[AddressLine2]&NorthAmericanAddressVerification.CityStateOrProvinceZIPOrPostalCode=[CityStateZip]&NorthAmericanAddressVerification.Country=[Country]&NorthAmericanAddressVerification.Casing=[Casing]
Example:
http://ws.strikeiron.com/NAAddressVerification6/NorthAmericanAddressVerificationService/NorthAmericanAddressVerification?LicenseInfo.RegisteredUser.UserID=***********&LicenseInfo.RegisteredUser.Password=******&NorthAmericanAddressVerification.AddressLine1=15501 Weston Parkway&NorthAmericanAddressVerification.AddressLine2=&NorthAmericanAddressVerification.CityStateOrProvinceZIPOrPostalCode=Cary NC&NorthAmericanAddressVerification.Country=US&NorthAmericanAddressVerification.Casing=UPPER
Because a REST call contains parameters including UserID and Password, we of course recommend to our users that these parameters be stored in a non-viewable config file and not the actual Web page source, or some other means of hiding credentials (within non-viewable code or within a database for example).
Have a REST-related question? Contact us at support@strikeiron.com Like a free trial? Contact us at info@strikeiron.com
When Oracle releases version 7.1 of its NetBeans IDE, 8 different StrikeIron Web Services APIs will be pre-integrated into the development environment. This makes it easy to build applications that leverage StrikeIron functionality and its real-time data sources. All of the underlying data sources are updated and maintained within StrikeIron's data center utilizing its IronCloud platform. Since the interfaces, behavior, and data structures are the same across all of StrikeIron's APIs, it makes it very easy to build sophisticated applications that leverage these external data sources, and without the corresponding cost traditionally associated with procuring, updating, and maintaining these data sources internally.
The 8 services to be included are:
Email Verification
Foreign Currency Exchange Rates (160 currencies updated every 30 minutes)
North American (US & Canada) Address Verification (CASS & SERP)
Global Address Verification (240+ countries)
IP Address Lookup
Reverse Phone Lookup
SMS Text Message Alerts (Supports 600 carriers in 60+ countries)
Sales and Use Tax Rates Complete (US & Canada)
Using the IDE, these Web services can easily be integrated into Web applications, business processes, Websites, and enterprise software applications, and anywhere else where SOAP-based Web services can be consumed.
The NetBeans IDE, acquired by Oracle as part of the Sun transaction, is downloaded over 550,000 times per month, and in use by over 900,000 developers according to Oracle. The IDE is a free, open-source development environment enabling the creation of desktop, enterprise, Web, and mobile applications with the Java platform, as well as with C/C++, PHP, JavaScript and Groovy. It includes language support for development to the Java SE 7 specification with the JDK 7 language features, support for GlassFish 3.1, Oracle WebLogic, Oracle Database, Maven 3, HTML 5 and more.
Version 7.1 including the integration will be released soon. The nightly development build of the NetBeans IDE 7.1 that includes these services can however be downloaded and installed now from here: http://bits.netbeans.org/download/trunk/nightly/
At Larry Ellison's keynote yesterday at the Oracle OpenWorld event, he announced the Oracle Public Cloud and Oracle's move into Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IAAS) offerings, primarily geared towards Java developers and users of Oracle's Fusion Applications. The brand "Fusion Applications" represents a set of over 100 different modules (financials, HR, etc.) which have been designed to run both on-premise and now in the Cloud and is launching after six years of development.
Clearly the Sun acquisition gave Oracle a lot of the Cloud technology to get to this point, but Salesforce's $2 billion in revenue, increasing penetration into enterprises, and launch of Database.com at the Dreamforce event might be pushing Oracle more quickly into this direction.
However, Ellison was quick to point out that Oracle's Cloud approach was an open one and would enable deployments to be moved to other Cloud environments such as Amazon.com (at least in theory) because of its Java roots, rather than a proprietary one like Salesforce.com's where applications are built with a proprietary language (Apex). Cost, however, was not discussed.
In addition to IAAS and Fusion Applications, Oracle will also have other hosted applications available in its Public Cloud such as its database platform, the SUN OS's, Fusion Middleware, and its Enterprise Manager offering.
This move is more evidence that the industry is moving full steam ahead to Cloud-based deployments, where enterprises can consolidate legacy spending, have fewer servers and other hardware, fewer on-premise software deployments, and a greater reliance on SAAS applications and other service-oriented offerings such as data-as-a-service (DAAS).
One of the things you can see from the picture below is that the Cloud really lays the foundation for "data service" components (notice the distinction versus "database service"), enabling enterprises to quickly leverage third-party datasets and data-oriented business functions such as customer contact data validation. This would be more difficult to achieve in on-premise solutions because third-party data has to be acquired, stored, maintained, and managed - a costly and time-consuming process. With the Cloud, you can simply plug into these services and have all of the third party data managed for you.
So the Public Cloud has been announced, but when will it be launched? StrikeIron is eagerly waiting.
Oracle's
OpenWorld kicked off this week in San Francisco. CEO Larry Ellison gave the keynote last night where he introduced and highlighted the Exalytics Intelligence Machine, a new in-memory appliance that utilizes data compression and also storing data in DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) to substantially increase business data analytics performance. It analyzes data "several times faster" according to Larry, enabling the scanning of 200 GB/sec of data, enabling "questions to be answered before they are even asked."
This and other announcements highlight what should be a great conference and show. It will be interesting to see if Oracle provides increased clarity around some of the following questions this week, such as:
What are Oracle's long-term Java plans? Will it continue to remain open post-acquisition of Sun, or can we expect to see a flurry of Java-licensing lawsuits such as the current one with Google they may cause some to doubt its interpretation of "openness"?
Will Oracle continue to move into larger-scale systems, including more hardware offerings, to compete with IBM and SAP? Oracle currently has sold over one thousand of its Exadata machines to date, so it is currently heading in this direction.
Will Oracle continue to push the "Public Cloud", or will it steer customers and the industry more towards its "Private Cloud" solutions that are "more secure" but also require individual software purchases rather than time-shared subscriptions?
Now that Fusion Applications have been made available on Cloud, on-premise, and mobile platforms, where is is the collection of offerings and integration with other Oracle platforms headed from here?
Will it continue to add more features and capabilities to its On Demand applications, such as CRM On Demand? Its acquisition of Market2Lead last year demonstrates its advance into On Demand marketing automation platforms.
StrikeIron, as an Oracle Gold Partner, is expressly interested in the future direction of Oracle and where the company is headed. Currently, our
collaboration with another Oracle partner, ActivePrime, enables us to deliver an integrated customer data quality solution to the Oracle CRM On Demand platform. Also, offerings such as our
customer data quality solutions and
mobile messaging solutions are available for integration into Oracle's broad stack of applications, products, and platforms. All of the great database innovation in the world won't help if it's not running on top of high quality, complete, and accurate data.
