1 Introduction

This chapter provides an overview on how to use Oracle Application Server Integration InterConnect (OracleAS Integration InterConnect) Adapter for Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP adapter). This guide provides information about installing and configuring the HTTP adapter to use either Secure Socket Layer (SSL) functionality (HTTPS) or non-SSL functionality (HTTP).

This chapter contains the following topics:

HTTP Adapter Overview
HTTP Adapter System Requirements
HTTP Adapter Features
Known HTTP Adapter Limitations

HTTP Adapter Overview

The HTTP adapter enables an HTTP application to be integrated with other applications using OracleAS Integration InterConnect. The HTTP adapter is useful in all Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) environments that use HTTP. EAI is the integration of applications and business processes within the same company.

The HTTP adapter can monitor incoming HTTP requests received by the HTTP adapter servlet. The HTTP adapter is also capable of sending messages to remote Web servers by proxy host. The payload for this adapter can be XML data or D3L data.

Figure 1-1 depicts the data flow of incoming messages from an HTTP client to OracleAS Integration InterConnect. Incoming messages are sent to a servlet provided by the HTTP adapter. The servlet sends the message to an HTTP receiver in the adapter through Remote Method Invocation (RMI).

Figure 1-1 Incoming Messages

Description of "Figure 1-1 Incoming Messages"

depicts the data flow of outgoing messages from OracleAS Integration InterConnect to a remote Web server. Outgoing messages are sent from an HTTP sender object in the adapter to the remote Web server.

Figure 1-2 Outgoing Messages

Description of "Figure 1-2 Outgoing Messages"

HTTP Adapter System Requirements

The following sections describe the HTTP adapter system requirements:

Hardware Requirements
Software Requirements

Hardware Requirements

Table 1-1 lists the hardware requirements for installing the HTTP adapter.

Table 1-1 Hardware Requirements

Hardware	Windows	UNIX
Disk Space	400 MB	400 MB
Memory	512 MB	512 MB

Software Requirements

The following sections describe the HTTP adapter software requirements:

Operating System Requirements
JRE Requirements
Servlet Requirements

Operating System Requirements

Table 1-2 lists the operating system requirements for installing the HTTP adapter.

Table 1-2 Operating System Requirements

Operating System	Version
HP Tru64	HP Tru64 UNIX (Alpha) 5.1b
HP-UX	HP-UX (PA-RISC) 11.11, 11.23
IBM AIX	AIX (POWER) version 5.2
Linux (x86)	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1, 3.0 SuSE SLES8, SLES9
Sun SPARC Solaris	Sun SPARC Solaris 2.8 and 2.9
Microsoft Windows	Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 (SP3 or higher)

JRE Requirements

OracleAS Integration InterConnect uses Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.4, which is installed with its components.

Servlet Requirements

The HTTP adapter requires Oracle Application Server Containers for J2EE (OC4J), which is provided by Oracle Application Server. OC4J is not required to be installed on the computer where the HTTP adapter is installed.

HTTP Adapter Features

The HTTP adapter has the following features:

Supports HTTP versions 1.0 and 1.1.
Provides SSL functionality (known as HTTPS) with Oracle JavaSSL, which uses a wallet generated from Oracle Wallet Manager.
Enables selection of suitable cipher suites for an SSL connection. Cipher suites control the combination of encryption and data integrity used by SSL.
Supports sending HTTP requests and receiving HTTP replies through a proxy server.
Supports the synchronous and asynchronous request/reply and publish/subscribe messaging paradigms.
Supports Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) through use of the OracleAS Proxy Plugin for Microsoft IIS for inbound communications.

Known HTTP Adapter Limitations

The HTTP adapter has the following limitations:

The point-to-point messaging functionality is currently not supported.
All the incoming messages for an HTTP adapter application are received through a single HTTP adapter servlet.
The sending and receiving applications must support HTTP.
Only the HTTP POST access method is supported by the HTTP adapter servlet to receive incoming messages.