Publishing OWB Transformations As Web Services

There's an interesting technical note available on OTN on invoking OWB processes or mappings as web services.

Traditionally, OWB mappings and processes are run using the OWB deployment manager, SQL*Plus (using the Execution Template) or through Oracle Enterprise Manager. However, from OWB 9.0.4 onwards, mappings and process flows can be called by any application that can communicate via a web service interface.

The way this is accomplished is to create a PL/SQL procedure that accepts a set of input parameters, calls the OWB mapping or process, and outputs the results as output parameters. This procedure is then published as a PL/SQL web service using Oracle JDeveloper, and the web service is then deployed to a J2EE application server such as Oracle OC4J or Apache Tomcat.

The article describes a scenario where an OWB mapping is put together that takes as it's input a customer address, cleanses the address using the name and address transformation, then outputs the cleaned up address as output parameters. This mapping is then published as a web service and can be called by any J2EE or .NET application, allowing you to deploy and use OWB's transformation capabilities outside of the normal OWB environment. The article comes with a sample .mdl export and PL/SQL package files and full instructions on how to set up your own OWB web service. Well worth a look.