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Keep IT Simple: Streamlining Web 2.0 Development
As users increasingly expect Web 2.0 functionality, Oracle's new Application Development Framework (ADF) rich client unites Ajax and JavaServer Faces (JSF) technologies to dramatically simplify the assembly of Web 2.0 interfaces.
Named ADF Faces, the new client enables developers to build fast, feature-rich JSF Web applications with a minimum of coding.
"Since the advent of Web 2.0, the stale 'click-and-wait' interaction associated with traditional Web applications is no longer acceptable," says Ric Smith, principal product manager, Oracle, "yet the complexities associated with Ajax have made development complex and time-consuming—and often limited to 'code warriors.'"
By boiling down all that complexity to a single API, Oracle ADF Faces enables application developers to create Web 2.0 interfaces with a rich design by dragging and dropping instead of coding by hand.
The result: more rapid development, increased developer productivity, and a much wider range of developers able to build Web 2.0 UIs.
Ajax and Its Limits
Because it is both platform- and vendor-independent, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) technology have proven ideal for the development of Web 2.0 interfaces. Yet alone, Ajax alone presents clear limitations.
First, Ajax lacks native multimedia support, requiring integration with SVG or Flash. And except for common development languages, Ajax offers few standards. That means developers are left to their own devices when it comes to intricate tasks like marshaling and unmarshaling data between client and server.
To help solve these challenges, there are several pure-JavaScript component frameworks, including Dojo, Prototype, and Rico. While they do hide some complexity, they still require a duplication of server-side data and business logic on the client tier--an evolutionary step backward toward traditional JSP development.
By contrast, Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) offers a strong, standards-based platform for server-side development. That said, its client-side offerings remain lackluster. A combination of Ajax and Java EE is the obvious solution, though this requires bridging the gap between application code on the middle tier and visual components on the client tier.
Talking JSF
Developed through the Java Community Process (JCP), JSF is a server-side framework that establishes standards for building Web-based UIs, and thereby goes a long way in bridging that gap.
Along with a component-centric development model, JSF provides a highly flexible rendering architecture that defines a loose coupling between component behavior and presentation. This is the essential ingredient necessary to create Ajax-enabled Java EE Web applications.
"JavaServer Faces allows developers to build client-agonistic UIs simply by plugging different libraries, called render kits, into the application," says Smith. "Developers only need to know one simple programming language to build a single application that renders to both desktop and mobile browsers."
Standards-based JSF also works on multiple platforms, and custom component sets, render kits, and JSF implementations are portable across development tools and runtime environments.
Face to Face: Uniting Ajax and JFS with Oracle ADF Faces
Oracle ADF Faces incorporates the advantages of both Ajax and JSF in a presentation layer technology that uses the JSF rendering architecture to combine both technologies.
ADF Faces includes more than 100 components--including hierarchical data tables, tree menus, in-page dialogs, accordions, dividers, and sortable tables--each offering complete customization, skinning, and support for internationalization and accessibility. It even provides a rich set of Flash and SVG-enabled components.
An Ajax rendering kit abstracts underlying rich internet (RI) technologies and allows developers to program with the JSP/JSF APIs with which they are already familiar. The result: Developers can build rich internet applications (RIAs) without extensive knowledge about underlying technologies.
"At the end of the day, it's all about developer productivity," says Smith. "Components alone do not radically speed and simplify development, but when combined with the right development tools, it's possible. And that's exactly what the combination of Oracle ADF Faces Rich Client and Oracle JDeveloper 11g achieves."
Learn more about Oracle ADF on the Oracle Technology Network.
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