You can see Larry Ellison’s announcement of the Oracle Social Network on YouTube – [jump to 32:48 for the announcement].
These are the first impressions of Oracle’s newly announced Oracle Social Network – also known as Oracle WebCenter Social. I do not work for Oracle and have no inside information on these products. However, I did have confirmation from Product Management that WebCenter Social is the same product that was previously called WebCenter Connect. WebCenter Connect was the product previously known as Oracle OnTrack (Youtube video). Much of the analysis in this post comes from experience with and reading of On Track documentation (linked for you at the bottom of this post).
Oracle OnTrack is/was an incredibly innovative collaboration product which focused on real-time collaboration through the paradigm of “conversations”. These often display as activity streams. Activity Streams are an always-updated list of comments and actions: think “Facebook Wall”. The OnTrack team is/was some of the best people combined from the Oracle Beehive initiative and BEA teams. Earlier this year they joined the WebCenter team and their product was pulled under the WebCenter banner as “Oracle Connect”.
Except now they are also powering the Social capabilities in Oracle’s new Cloud offerings. So Oracle saw fit to change the name to Oracle Social. According to Oracle Product Management, its the same product just a better name.
So far, so good. Oracle WebCenter Social really is an innovative real-time collaboration system. In its previous incarnations (all less than 6 months old) I have seen it favorably compared to Google Wave, SalesForce’s Chatter and a host of other collaboration suites (think Jive, Yammer, etc).
One area of caution for customers is around architecture and infrastructure. It shares the WebCenter name but that does not mean is shares a common information architecture.
~~DISCLAIMER~~ the following is based on On Track documentation (linked below) and it is possible that it has changed ~~
For instance, WebCenter Social’s activity streams ARE NOT the same as WebCenter Space’s (or Framework’s) activity streams. Social’s Content Store IS NOT WebCenter Content (aka UCM). Social IS NOT a WebCenter framework application.
To be sure, Social CAN surface content from WebCenter Content (aka UCM). It does this via OpenSocial gadgets (more on this below) and the rumor is that Oracle is working on even deeper integrations with UCM. A WebCenter Portal CAN pull Social’s activity streams into a custom ADF taskflow or application. But Social has its own internal architecture, file store and activity stream paradigm.
WebCenter Social uses “gadgets” to provide integration and injection of features into other applications. These gadgets are Google Open Social gadgets. A more specific application architecture from this documentation from March 2011, is depicted to the left. It remains to be seen if anything in here has changed with the announcement of the newly named WebCenter Social.
The WebCenter Social Whitepaper has only a very little bit of information on how Social plays with with rest of the WebCenter stack. Unfortunately, it is not written very clearly. Nevertheless, here it is (pp 15)
The individual pillars [Sites, Portal, Content & Social] share capabilities across Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Social Network is a component of the Oracle WebCenter family. For example the ability to embed a social channel (e.g. to have Conversations) with customers through the Oracle WebCenter Sites delivered web experience. Or the ability to inject gadgets into Oracle Social Network Business Objects though Oracle WebCenter Portal capabilities. Or the ability to surface content within Oracle WebCenter Sites or Oracle Social Network from the core Oracle WebCenter Content infrastructure. Oracle WebCenter is built onOracle’s Fusion Middleware and is optimized for application integration further extending Oracle Social Network’s unique capabilities.
So it appears that UI focused HTTP-based OpenSocial gadgets are the preferred integration model. The OnTrack SDK has other integration specifications but it remains to be seen if any additional ADF based TaskFlows have been bundled in with this new release of WebCenter Social.
Useful Links:
Oracle On Track Video Series on YouTube
Original Oracle On Track Documentation from March 2011
