Oracle CRM On Demand Integration Apps – cut down hosting server costs with client side solutions

Generally in Oracle CRM On Demand (or any other system to that matter), when customer business needs can’t be met using standard out of box features, developing custom integration applications (using web services) is unavoidable. These custom integration solutions needs hosting server and the customers end up spending hundreds of dollars in arranging these servers. Customers who opts for cloud-based solutions doesn’t like to invest in and maintain the servers in general. This is one major pain point that many customers have faced or are facing over the years.

With the latest technology advancements and with few new feature additions to Oracle CRM On Demand this problem can now be addressed to a great extent. Now let us look at these developments in brief to see on how they can be leveraged to solve the hosting server problem.

1. Latest technology development (Evolution of JavaScript to server-side apps): Since its inception in 90’s, JavaScript (JS) has become one of the most popular web development programming language. The JavaScript mainly gathered the popularity due to its ability to deliver rich, dynamic web content, its relatively lightweight and its high ease of use.

Although initially developed as a browser-agnostic scripting language, JavaScript made inroads in the areas such as mobility and server-side enterprise apps. At present, we are witnessing the shift away from server-side development in favor of client-side JavaScript. Organizations are preferring to go with backend API & rich client side applications due to obvious reasons. JS is the language everybody (developers) needs to know and it is not going to go away anytime soon.

The emergence of frameworks such as Angular, Ember, Backbone, Sencha, WebIx, etc. have taken the client side application development to the new heights and have made powerful enterprise apps development using client side technologies a reality.

2. Key feature Additions to Oracle CRM On Demand: Embracing the technology changes and to keep up with current trend, Oracle added the following features to CRM On Demand related to Client side technologies.

    a. Client Side Extension (CSE) in R19 – CSE are files (HTML, JPG, GIF, SWF, and CSS files) that you can upload to and host on Oracle CRM On Demand instead of hosting them on other servers. We can leverage the Oracle CRM On Demand security practices.

    b. JS API in R24 – API provided by Oracle CRM On Demand to customize the screens and perform CRUD operations on objects/tables.

    c. REST API – Planned in the upcoming releases

So using JS, CSE and JS API we can now develop fairly complex and rich client side solutions and host them within Oracle CRM On Demand. At the same time, it is also important to be noted that not every custom integration solution can be solved using Client side technologies. But there is a high probability of solving most custom requirements provided we exploit the powerful features of client side technologies, SOAP & JS API.

Considering the cost saving advantage it offers to the customers, integration solutions using client side technologies should be preferred option while architecting the solutions. All of this is good news for the Oracle CRM On Demand customers 🙂

Originally posted on Prashanth on Technology