Exposing Application Module as Webservice - Query

Question

Hi,
     I have a few queries regarding ADF Business Components. It will be great if you guys answer these queries:
1. Application Module can be exposed as web service. In this scenario, does ADF support clustering?
2. If AM is exposed as WS, what is the implication in terms of performance and availability?
3. I could not find information related to clustering, performance and availability of WS in ADF developer guide. So, please provide any similar implementations, support statements, articles, blogs, etc for the above two queries.
Thanks & Regards,
Saravanan.

Answer 1

Saravanan, there is a powerful, new web services feature in ADF BC in the 11g release called "Service Interface". If you use the Technology Preview 4 release from OTN, you can follow
along with this Oracle Magazine article to learn more about the
feature: [Services
with a Smile|http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/08-jan/o18frame.html]
Unfortunately, since the feature depends on some SOA infrastructure
that was not ready in time on WebLogic for the first production
JDeveloper 11g release (due out on OTN very, very soon), the Service
Interface feature had to be removed along with the Business Events feature
from the initial JDev/ADF 11g production release. It is planned to be
re-introduced in the JDev/ADF release that will ship with the full
Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g production release in the first half of
calendar 2009.
So, in the initial JDeveloper 11g production release the only kind of
web services that can use ADFBC components would be ones you
hand-create. As stateless components, they should work fine in a
clustered environment (both now and when the "Service Interface"
feature goes production along with the complete FMW 11g suite.