Oracle Architecture for Application Modernization

BRIDGING THE GAP

BACKGROUND

It is common to see software and hardware platforms evolve over time to be more efficient and performant at lower cost. Deployment environments using Hardware and software frameworks like Kubernetes and Docker are taking away market share from traditional Virtual Images and standalone servers.

In terms of development paradigm, Organizations are moving from Monolithic Application architecture to MicroServices and CICD ( Continuous Integration Continuous Deployments ) delivery models.

In terms of Datatype, the adoption of multiple formats like XML, JSON, Relational tables, Text docs, Spacial, Big Data , IOTs and NOSQL are getting popular.
With the proliferation of multiple players, we see (a) a plethora of data formats such as XML, JSON,(b)Data storage formats such as Spatial,  

These modern approaches  are  mushrooming because it is easy to setup and accessible due to Cloud providers who readily provide the platform services.
However, this phenomenon has led to multiple issues and inefficiencies, which i want to address in this blog.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

We have witnessed in several customer scenarios, where the DBA is not involved in the design of the modern application. While DevOps attempts to break the silos between development and operations, there is a dire need to bring developers and DBAs together.

In a customer environment with  multiple  services dependent on heterogeneous "single trick pony" databases, these are the key problems that surface.

• High Total Cost of Ownership.
• Challenges in assuring High Availability, Security, Elasticity and Performance.
• Need for practitioners proficient in multiple  technology for data store.
• Cumbersome and time consuming mechanism  to move data across data stores.
• Inability to leverage existing DBA capability in the organization.
• Unproven technical support for mission critical production systems.

RECOMMENDED BLUE PRINT

In line with the evolution of  modern application architectures, Oracle has ensured continuous innovation to be ahead of the curve. Oracle provides a solution architecture that is agnostic of development environment and data representation format. 

This is where Oracle Database Multitenant and DB features comes into play. Oracle DB has the a native capability to support all the Modern representation formats like JSON, XML, Big data format like parquet files, Text docs, Spatial, etc. 
Consolidating the data store, helps us clearly establish the segregation of responsibilities for developers & DBAs, thereby enabling the DBA to focus on  assuring database Reliability, Scalability, Availability and Security.

Oracle Pluggable database (PDB) provides an elegant model that 

• can establish either "one to one" OR "consolidated" mapping for micro services in containerized environments
• can facilitate automated provisioning   of instances for developers
• helps Developers build solutions with confidence & with the assurance of Reliable data store
• can autoscale upto 4000 instances in a cost efficient manner
• provides a flexible model where in one can either isolate or aggregate the instances depending on the need.

Solution Use case :  The  use case below clearly illustrates the possibility of achieving  a High availability architecture at all levels of the solution stack. 

• Kubernetes in a docker container environment managed by Developers
• Backend Oracle managed by DBAs

Some of the key benefits are

• Cost effective deployment with Multitenant Model.
• Built in solution model that addresses all the requirements needed for highly reliable and secure systems. 
• Leverage and upskill existing talent pool
• Converged data eccentricity provides an efficient and salable model than a discrete and dispersed model.
• Gather insights utilizing Machine Learning,  Elasticity with Auto scaling, Visualization with Spatial & Graph capability
• Proven and time test model for supporting mission critical systems.

NEXT STEPS
Oracle has been investing heavily to be a dominant Cloud Provider and has many data-centers worldwide and rapidly growing.  We have adopted cloud native architecture solutions based on Oracle Container engine for Kubernetes (OKE). We would be happy to engage in further conversations to address your unique needs.