BEA AquaLogic User Interface

holiday time

2009-07-17T00:03:00.002-07:00

am off on holiday at the moment. will come back with more ALUI info after the 28th July. :)

A little bit of history and where ALUI is heading

2009-07-13T00:23:00.000-07:00

BEA was a company that was founded in 1995 to provide middleware applications. I won't go into the details of what BEA did at the time, but suffice to say that in 2006, it acquired a company called PlumTree Software, the makers of the enterprise portal product that would become part of BEA's Aqualogic brand and become known as the Aqualogic User Interaction.

By 2008, Oracle, who had been showing an interest in acquiring BEA, finally completed the acquisition of the company thus absorbing into it the three BEA products : Weblogic, Tuxedo and Aqualogic.

The latest version of Aqualogic User Interaction is version 6.5 with MP 1. There will be no more releases branded under this name. The next release was rebranded as Oracle Webcenter Interaction 10g R3 V10.3.0 and was released in October 2008. As of July 2009, Oracle has released Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, which incorporates the latest version - Oracle Webcenter Interaction 11g. It's interesting to note that Aqualogic Publisher is being replaced with Oracle's Universal Content Management (UCM).

To date I believe that Oracle is still supporting Aqualogic User Interaction 6.5 but with two new releases under its belt, I think we can safely assume that support on this version will not be provided for very much longer. If you're using ALUI, I would suggest you start thinking about a migration path to the newer versions. If you were thinking of using ALUI, I guess you're better off taking a look at Oracle's Fusion Middleware 11g.

The ALUI Components

2009-07-13T00:05:00.000-07:00

In the above diagram (click on image to enlarge), I have tried to summarise the different components that make up Aqualogic User Interface (ALUI).

You have the core Aqualogic Interaction (ALI) components, which make up the essential Portal elements, the in-built Document Repository and along that is a powerful Search engine, an Image service and an Automation service to automate specific jobs.

Adding on to the core components, you can have the Collaboration Suite, the Publisher, BPM and the Studio, which provide additional functionality that can be plugged into your ALUI application.

If you want to further customise your ALUI application, the sky is the limit, thanks to the Interaction Development Kit (IDK), and the .Net Application Accelerators.

On top of it all, you have the ALI Analytics that will allow you to collect statistics regarding portal activity, and Integration Services to other third party products.

Welcome to my Aqualogic Blog

2009-07-09T01:27:00.001-07:00

If like me, you have been scouring the internet for a software product called Aqualogic but instead ended up on webpages dedicated to water-related implements or alternative medicine, then congratulations. You have finally found something related to the real, albeit unfortunately-named, portal creation software pioneered by Plumtree, acquired by BEA, and recently acquired again by Oracle Corporation.

You probably agree that there isn't a vast amount of information readily available out there regarding this product. The main reason for this must be because of the amount of name-changing the product has had over the years. Initially born to this world with the name of PlumTree, this product has gone on to become Aqualogic (I can't for the sake of it understand what possessed them to call it this way), and now that it has joined the Oracle Portal family, it has been re-packaged into a new, more aptly named, product called WebCenter Interaction.