# Oracle Enterprise Gateway Overview

## Contents
Overview Performance Governance Integration Security

## Overview
Oracle Enterprise Gateway provides governance, acceleration, integration, and security for SOA systems. Oracle Enterprise Gateway is available on Windows, Linux, and Solaris (for more details, see System Requirements). The following sections describe the high-level functionality available in the Oracle Enterprise Gateway.
## Performance
Oracle Enterprise Gateway accelerates performance as follows: Processing Offload The Enterprise Gateway can be used to offload the heavy lifting of XML from application servers, and on to the network. This frees up resources on application servers and enables applications to run faster. The patented high-performance core XML Acceleration engine (VXA), coupled with hardware acceleration ensures wirespeed network performance. VXA Platform The core VXA engine is integrated into the Enterprise Gateway to accelerate the essential XML security primitives. This engine provides XML processing at faster levels than those performed by common JAXP implementations in application servers and other applications that sit downstream from the Enterprise Gateway. The VXA engine performs Document Object Model (DOM) processing, XPath, XSLT conversion, and XML validation. XML Data Enrichment The Enterprise Gateway can automatically populate content in XML documents from sources such as databases. By putting this functionality on to the XML network infrastructure, data is automatically populated in XML messages before they reach the consuming Web Services. This simplifies and accelerates applications in ESBs and application servers.
## Governance
Oracle Enterprise Gateway provides the following governance features: Ease of Deployment The Enterprise Gateway includes many features that speed up deployment. For example, certificates and private keys, necessary for many XML security functions, can be issued on board. The Enterprise Gateway has a deny-by-default defense posture, to detect and block any unauthorized deployments of Web Services. Policies can be re-applied across multiple application endpoints using simple drop-down menus. Policies can also be imported and exported as XML files. This minimizes the time needed to replicate policies across multiple Enterprise Gateways, or to move from a staging system to production environment. Centralized Management A policy management console enables administrators to add security and management policies to the Enterprise Gateway. You can manage policy versions across multiple Enterprise Gateways using the Oracle Policy Studio enterprise policy management tool. This enables enterprise policy management to be brought under centralized control, rather than be managed separately on each Enterprise Gateway. Web-based system administration tools are also provided to simplify Enterprise Gateway management tasks. Oracle Service Manager provides quick and easy access to enable you to manage your services and policies. You can use the Traffic Monitor and Real-time Monitoring tools to monitor the messages sent through the Enterprise Gateway. Traffic Throttling The Oracle Enterprise Gateway protects Web Services from unanticipated traffic spikes by smoothing out the traffic. It also limits clients to agreed Web Service consumption levels in accordance with service usage agreements. This enables Oracle customers to charge their clients for different levels of Web Services usage.
## Integration
Oracle Enterprise Gateway provides the following integration features: Identity Management Oracle Enterprise Gateway can use an existing Identity Management (IM) infrastructure to perform authentication and authorization of message traffic. For example, integration is provided with LDAP, Microsoft Active Directory, Oracle Access Manager, CA SiteMinder, Entrust GetAccess, IBM Tivoli Access Manager, RSA Access Manager, and other IM products. The Enterprise Gateway also interoperates with leading XML products and platforms, including Microsoft .NET, Oracle WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, and SAP NetWeaver. Pluggable Pipeline The Enterprise Gateway’s internal message-handling pipeline is extensible, enabling extra access control and content-filtering rules to be added with ease. Customers do not have to wait for a full product release before receiving updates of support for emerging standards and for additional adapters. Scalable Architecture The Enterprise Gateway is designed to offer a highly flexible and scalable solution. Network administrators can deploy new Enterprise Gateway instances as needed, and deploy the same or different policies as required. This enables administrators to apply polices at any point in their SOA system. Policy enforcement points can be distributed around the network, anywhere traffic is being passed.
## Security
Oracle Enterprise Gateway includes the following security features: Identity Mediation Through its support for a wide range of security standards, Oracle Enterprise Gateway enables identity mediation between different identity schemes. For example, the Enterprise Gateway can authenticate external Web Services clients using passwords, but then issue SAML tokens that are used for identity propagation to application servers. Application-level Networking The Enterprise Gateway routes data based on sender identity, content, and content type. This enables XML messages to be sent to the appropriate application in a secure manner. This also enables service virtualization to be performed, whereby Web Services are exposed to clients with virtual addresses to mask their actual addresses for security and application-delivery reasons. In this way, the Enterprise Gateway serves as an important control point for traffic on the network by shielding endpoint Web Services from direct access. Audit Trail The Enterprise Gateway satisfies audit requirements by enabling Web Services transactions to be archived in a tamper-proof store for subsequent audit. Oracle also facilitates privacy compliance support by allowing sensitive information, such as customer names, to be encrypted or stripped out of message traffic.