With a single management solution to manage SOA services and infrastructure, and products, Grid Control reduces the complexity of an SOA environment. Grid Control is an enterprise-wide solution, so care must be taken to make it into a strategic product. The installation and deployment is not a trivial task. However, it is imperative to set up the management framework to meet the needs of the enterprise.

Grid Control has traditionally been viewed as a database management solution, but this book will highlight the necessity of using this solution for SOA environments.

In this chapter, we looked at some fundamental concepts of the target products, as well as the management solution. In particular, we discussed Enterprise Manager Grid Control as an important management solution. Briefly, we discussed the installation, documentation, and architecture of Grid Control. Then we discussed the SOA products BPEL PM and OSB. We introduced the basic concepts for both products, and a brief background for each.

This was simply an overview of these products. A good administrator should have basic working knowledge of Oracle BPEL PM, SOA Suite, and Service Bus. This book will focus on the next step, which is to manage these products from Grid Control.

The next few chapters will walkthrough hands-on exercises to set up and perform management tasks.