Announcing Oracle Tuxedo 22c

Oracle is pleased to announce a new major release of Oracle Tuxedo, version 22c (22.1.0.0.0).  This release contains a number of enhancements and new features.  This blog post briefly describes the various changes in this release.

Kubernetes and Cloud Based Deployments

Tuxedo 22c simplifies deployment in Kubernetes and cloud environments and enables non-Tuxedo specialists to more easily deploy and manage Tuxedo. Along with this release, Oracle is providing Dockerfiles and Helm charts in Github to help run Tuxedo applications in container-based environments such as Docker and Kubernetes. Using these files as a starting point, developers can quickly create an image that has Tuxedo and their application already installed and ready to run.  Once the image has been created, containers in Docker can easily be started with the docker run command.  To deploy the image in Kubernetes, Oracle is providing helm charts to take care of installation and running the image.  These charts have been tested on minikube, Oracle Kubernetes Engine (OKE) in Oracle Cloud, and should work with other Kubernetes distributions including Red Hat OpenShift. Sample applications along with their Dockerfiles and Helm charts are also in Github.

We plan to continue providing additional tools and integrations for deploying and running Tuxedo applications in cloud-native environment, including integration with native Kubernetes observability and management tools to make it easier to run Tuxedo in Kubernetes and Cloud environments.

Figure 1. Pre-built Tuxedo containers in Oracle Container Registry enable faster and simpler Kubernetes and Cloud deployments

Integrating Tuxedo Applications into a Microservices Based Application

This new release of Tuxedo fosters re-use of existing Tuxedo services (native or re-hosted from mainframe) in Microservices applications.  It includes an enhanced Service Architecture Leveraging Tuxedo (SALT) release that enables Tuxedo services written in C/C++, COBOL, or Java to participate in an XA distributed transaction managed by Oracle Transaction Manager for Microservices (MicroTx).  Using SALT and MicroTx, new microservices developed in Java or TypeScript can use existing Tuxedo services exposed as REST end-points in SALT as part of a distributed XA transaction.  This allows Tuxedo services to be included in an XA transaction coordinated by MicroTx that spans multiple databases, ORDS/APEX applications, Java and TypeScript based microservices, and Oracle Blockchain Platform smart contracts. The result is a broader transaction orchestration across polyglot application components, enabling strong data consistency, reducing development, and simplifying testing and troubleshooting.

Figure 2. Transaction orchestration of Tuxedo services with polyglot Microservices enables re-use and speeds up adoption of more flexible and modular application architectures

Oracle Database Application Continuity Support

Application Continuity (AC) is a feature available with Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), Oracle RAC One Node, and Oracle Active Data Guard options that masks temporary database outages from applications. AC masks these outages by recording the database session locally and replaying the recording should the connection to the database be lost. This is all done in the database driver and transparent to the application so that the outage appears to the application as a slightly delayed execution.

In order to support Application Continuity in all recoverable failure scenarios, it is necessary for the client application to demarcate session boundaries, i.e., when a database session starts and when it ends.  Tuxedo 22c provides an option to automatically call the Oracle Client Interface (OCI) start session API prior to starting to process a service request and then call the OCI end session API when the service completes.  This allows non-XA Tuxedo services to transparently leverage Application Continuity  and hide most database disruptions from the Tuxedo service without any code changes.  Note this only works for servers not currently involved in an XA transaction.  XA transactions are not supported by Application Continuity.

Figure 3. Close integration with Oracle Database Application Continuity shields Tuxedo applications from errors caused by recoverable database disruptions

Secure Deployments

Oracle security policies as defined by Oracle Software Security Assurance program require that Oracle products when deployed are secure by default.  Secure in this context means they only use encrypted communication, they use approved authentication, authorization, and cryptographic algorithms.  Deploying a product in an insecure fashion requires explicit configuration by the customer.  As a result, Tuxedo 22c by default requires that authentication and authorization be enabled, and that all network communication uses TLS with approved ciphers.  This may be difficult to implement or not needed for some Tuxedo customers, so Tuxedo 22c provides options to allow disabling certain security features such as TLS communication, and disabling authentication and authorization.  If customers choose to deploy in an insecure fashion by setting these configuration options, they will be warned in the Tuxedo ULOG that they’re deploying in an insecure fashion.  Other security enhancements include updates to open-source packages used by Tuxedo and security bug fixes.

Source: oracle.com