K21 Academy went a step ahead and interviewed some of the well known Cloud Integration Experts so you could take inspiration from them and accordingly plan to achieve what they have achieved.
This post discusses Phil Wilkins‘ journey to Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC).
Phil Wilkins is an Oracle ACE who has co-authored 2 books (Implementing Oracle API Platform Cloud Service: Design, Deploy, and Manage Your APIs in Oracle’s New API Platform, & Implementing Oracle Integration Cloud Service) on Cloud Integration & API Tech. With more than 20 years of experience, he is currently working as a Senior Consultant and iPaaS Specialist at Capgemini. After learning OIC, Phil has managed to reach the new heights of success.
For you to become an Oracle Integration Cloud expert, we engaged Phil in an interesting conversation. He talked about a lot of things that will guide and help you in choosing the right direction which will make your journey to Cloud much easier.
Question: Your brief introduction and how you started on Oracle and Integration?
Phil: For a long time, I worked with an open source tech. About 8 years ago, the company I worked for decided to move to use Oracle across the enterprise from EBS to Exadata including SOA Suite.
As an Enterprise Integration Architect, I needed to get to grips with the Oracle technology quickly. So I invested in the training, taking advantage of the opportunities with the UKOUG and as I worked, a large number of customers participated on the customer advisory board. As Oracle started to develop ICS and SOA CS and my employer was struggling with the Cloud/On-Premises considerations along with getting SOA Suite deployments built efficiently, I lead the company through some early PaaS adoption and the pilot solutions.
Question: Who do you think should learn Cloud Integration?
Phil: In the world of open source solutions, microservices, SaaS, etc I would recommend everyone should build some understanding in Integration whether that is Cloud or On-Premises although it is Cloud which allows you to focus on the Integration activities.
We have reached an age where we can solve solutions, not by building from scratch but by orchestrating or choreographing the existing or prebuild capabilities. Even if you’re not actually doing the Integration understanding which makes it easy to integrate, and understand what good integrations are like and crucially the consequences of different approaches.
We have reached an age where we can solve solutions, not by building from scratch but by orchestrating or choreographing the existing or prebuild capabilities. Even if you’re not actually doing the Integration understanding which makes it easy to integrate, and understand what good integrations are like and crucially the consequences of different approaches.
Question: What are the few things you would suggest to get one started?
Phil: Get familiar with the patterns, key factors such as choreography and orchestration are central to the way things are moving. Understand why a pattern is appropriate, and when to deviate – don’t just slavishly follow patterns like VETORO which can be complete overkill for some Integration requirements.
Understand APIs – in the purest sense, not just SOAP and REST. ALWAYS remember to look at what should happen when things go wrong. Keep up with the thought leaders who talk about why things should be done (or not). Translating this to your tech is the easier step. This should cover design principles, security, deployment,
Phil: Get familiar with the patterns, key factors such as choreography and orchestration are central to the way things are moving. Understand why a pattern is appropriate, and when to deviate – don’t just slavishly follow patterns like VETORO which can be complete overkill for some Integration requirements.
Understand APIs – in the purest sense, not just SOAP and REST. ALWAYS remember to look at what should happen when things go wrong. Keep up with the thought leaders who talk about why things should be done (or not). Translating this to your tech is the easier step. This should cover design principles, security, deployment,
Question: How do you keep yourself updated on the latest changes?
Phil: I keep a track of blogs, particularly those written by the product managers, the Oracle A-Team and ACE members along with some blog aggregators like the PaaS Community. Feedly is a great tool for that. Attend events when I can – such as user group events, developer meetups, webinars, conferences – you’ll learn to watch out for knowledge and interesting speakers in different areas.
Read release notes – Oracle don’t provide nice RSS feeds for their release note pages, but tools like visual ping can overcome that. This means I know at least what features are available. Podcasts and YouTube videos can help as well but these approaches are my least favorite.
Phil: I keep a track of blogs, particularly those written by the product managers, the Oracle A-Team and ACE members along with some blog aggregators like the PaaS Community. Feedly is a great tool for that. Attend events when I can – such as user group events, developer meetups, webinars, conferences – you’ll learn to watch out for knowledge and interesting speakers in different areas.
Read release notes – Oracle don’t provide nice RSS feeds for their release note pages, but tools like visual ping can overcome that. This means I know at least what features are available. Podcasts and YouTube videos can help as well but these approaches are my least favorite.
Question: Any top 3 blogs that you recommend for the beginners to read?
Phil: Difficult, as integration is such a broad space, but I’d have to start with https://oracle-integration.cloud/, https://blog.mp3monster.org/category/technology/ because these are my own and also https://www.thoughtworks.com/blogs & https://paascommunity.com/.
Question: If someone is already working, what suggestions would you give to them to become an expert?
Phil: Read, experiment and understand WHY people recommend things. Take your reading outside of just your specialism, often ideas will be relevant from other sources .e.g whilst Bounded Context as a concept often associated with microservices – it has potential applications for more traditional integration.
Phil: Read, experiment and understand WHY people recommend things. Take your reading outside of just your specialism, often ideas will be relevant from other sources .e.g whilst Bounded Context as a concept often associated with microservices – it has potential applications for more traditional integration.
Question: What’s your Success Mantra?
Phil: They say it takes 10,000 hours to become good at something, that’s 10k of different things. Watch for the trap of doing variations of the same thing. I find the act of trying to explain ideas helpful in unraveling the questions that should be asked myself.
Phil: They say it takes 10,000 hours to become good at something, that’s 10k of different things. Watch for the trap of doing variations of the same thing. I find the act of trying to explain ideas helpful in unraveling the questions that should be asked myself.
That was all from Phil Wilkins’ end who believes everyone should have an understanding of Integration and understand why a pattern is appropriate, and when to deviate. Also, he suggests everyone read, experiment and understand why people recommend things.
Well, Phil took the first step and is currently helping his customers in integrating various applications to Cloud.
So, what are you waiting for? Start learning Oracle Cloud Integration by downloading our Free Guide i.e., 6 Docs Every Oracle Cloud Integrator Must Read.
If you want us to interview an expert or share content related to Oracle Cloud Integration which might be useful for the readers of this blog post, please leave a comment in the comment box.
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