The Java Platform brings whole host of opportunities and possibilities to the
world of application development. However, the Forms and Designer developer
is in danger of being drowned in the sea of new terms and acronyms. There are
numerous J2EE glossaries available on the web, so this glossary is written specifically
for Forms and Designer developers and explains, in terms with which you are
already familiar, what these new concepts are. This is not meant to be an exhaustive
list so please feel free to post any other acronyms/terms to my
blog.
A
|
| ADF |
Application Development Framework |
Oracle ADF is a comprehensive framework for J2EE
developers to help build J2EE applications. In a similar
way, Forms provides you with a "black box" framework that does
things like persisting data you query from the database, locking records,
mapping the data from your UI to the underlying database etc.. Infact, ADF
does more than that and does so as a "white box" meaning you can
change the code if you need. However, the analogy is that ADF provides a
framework to do all the "plumbing" so you can concentrate on the
business logic of your application. |
| ADF BC |
ADF Business Components |
Where ADF is a complete framework, ADF BC is one choice within
ADF that allows you to build the business services for
your J2EE application. Business services are the part of the framework used
for implementing your business logic and providing the ability to connect
to the database. In Oracle Forms, you don't have to worry about how your
data gets retrieved and sent to the database, Forms does it for you. This
is the job that ADF BC performs. Although there are other technology choices
for building the business services, ADF BC is closest to the development
paradigm implemented by Oracle Forms. |
| ADF Faces |
|
A fully JSF compliant library of enhanced
components for building web user interfaces. Includes color pickers, date
choosers and tree controls. |
| Ant |
|
Coming Soon |
| Application Module |
|
In ADF Business Components, the application module
is a logical grouping of VO instances relating to a
specific business transaction. So, in the same way a single Form usually
encompasses a number of blocks and is related to a defined business transaction
(like maintaining employee details for a specific department), the application
module is made up of VO instances and performs a similar
role.
|
B
|
| BC4J |
Business Components for Java |
Business Components for Java was a precursor and a subset
of what has now grown into Oracle ADF (although ADF
is much more). It provided persistence and a framework for business logic.
This functionality is now included in ADF as ADF
Business Components. |
C
|
| Container |
|
A container is essentially the generic name for a J2EE
environment that provides runtime services, such as security, to the program
running in that container. The container and any application code you write
will run on a JVM. You can get different containers which
provide different services - e.g. an EJB container or
a servlet/JSP web container. A
loose mapping can be made to the Forms runtime engine which provides a number
of services (analogous to a container) which can be used when running FMX
files. |
| CSS |
Cascading Style Sheet |
In Oracle Forms if you want to give a common look and feel
to your application you would define Visual Attributes and then assign these
visual attributes to the user interface. A Cascading Style sheet is the
same concept. It is a text file which defines a set of tags and visual properties
to each of these tags. An HTML page can then be annotated with the CSS tags
to give a visual appearance to the user interface. And by changing the CSS,
the application can inherit a new visual appearance - exactly as you did
with visual attributes. |
D
|
| Design Pattern |
|
Generally speaking - it is a "best practice"; an
often used solution to a well defined problem. So a description of proved
techniques and best practice for developing applications could be called
a design pattern. |
| Domain |
|
Coming Soon |
E
|
| EAR |
Enterprise Archive |
When it comes to deploying a Forms application you need to
get all your FMX, PLL and MMX files and make sure you put them on the correct
place on the application server before you can run the application. Wouldn't
it be great if you could zip up all of these files in the correct structure
and just "drop" them onto your new application server? Well J2EE
already gives you that. The EAR file allows the J2EE
application to be bundled and deployed as a single file. |
| EJB |
Enterprise Java Bean |
Part of the J2EE specification, the EJB
specification defines an object or service in which you can place business
logic and which is also responsible, amongst other things, for persisting
data from the database, providing transactions, security, etc.; and all
across a distributed application. The advantage of using EJB for your business
logic versus a plain old Java object (POJO) is that the EJB specification,
and the container in which it runs, defines a number of services and extra
functionality you therefore don't have to manage yourself. Again, it is
hard to find an analogy in the Forms world but if you can imagine a standardised
version of the Forms record manager (which is responsible for locking records
etc.) then you are in the right area. |
| EO |
Entity Object |
In ADF Business Components, the EO is an
object which represents the underlying database table. So the EO is doing
a similar job to a Forms block in that in the middle tier it is persisting
the data of the underlying database table (as well as providing some validation).
It can almost be seen like a "copy" of the database table held
inside the application code. |
F
|
| Framework |
|
Pre-written code or services made available to aid an applications
developer in building their business application. Often the framework will
provide much of the "low level plumbing" allowing the applications
developer to focus on the business logic. Oracle Forms provides a framework
that provides services to update, insert and delete records into the database;
and does so in an automatic and "hidden" manner meaning that the
applications developer protected from those low level actions. ADF
performs the same services in the J2EE world |
G
|
H
|
I
|
J
|
| Java |
|
Programming language developed by Sun. Often used for programming
web applications and can run on any platform that has a Java
Virtual Machine. |
| JAZN |
|
Coming Soon |
| J2EE |
Java 2 Enterprise Edition |
J2EE is a platform for developing and running Java enterprise
applications. It includes the language and the definition of a number of
services, protocols and interfaces. There is no real analogy with Oracle
Forms since Forms is not written to a public specification. However, if
Forms was, it would mean that the FMX file would follow a well defined specification
and so other vendors could write their own implementation of a Forms runtime
to run on their platform. Thus, the advantage of a defined specification
is that anyone can write their own implementation of that specification. |
| J2ME |
Java 2 Micro Edition |
Where as J2EE gives you the specification
for writing full blown enterprise applications, J2ME is the specification
for hand-held, PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). So think of J2EE for mobile
types of devices. |
| J2SE |
Java 2 Standard Edition |
The core of J2EE comprising of, basically,
the Java language and the JVM runtime. |
| JAAS |
Java Authentication and Authorization
Service |
Coming Soon |
| JAR |
Java Archive |
A zip file full of Java classes. In Oracle Forms you are already
using JAR files since the Forms client is downloaded automatically to the
client machine via a file called F90all.jar |
| JDeveloper |
|
Oracle's Java Builder. Oracle's tool for building J2EE
applications. |
| JClient |
|
JClient is the part of ADF used for building
rich Java user interfaces. Oracle Forms uses a Java UI and JClient gives
the similar rich interactive interface. Within ADF, JClient
provides the binding and framework responsible for integrating the actual
UI components (Using Java Swing) and the underlying data. |
| JDBC |
Java Database Connectivity |
A programming interface that allows Java to execute SQL statements.
Oracle Forms has a similar type of interface called OCI (Oracle Call Interface)
since the Forms runtime is written in C instead of Java. Both interfaces
are responsible for logging on, setting up cursors and querying data. |
| JMS |
Java Messaging Service |
Coming Soon |
| JSF |
Java Server Faces |
As a Forms developer you are used to using UI components to
build your user interface. When you move to J2EE, you
may start with JSP. As a Forms developer, you may find
this like a step back to using code for your user interface instead of UI
widgets. Hence the introduction of JSF. A specification/framework that provides
a set of UI components (buttons, text fields) as well as the hooks to get
data to and from the items and to pass user events. As a Forms developer
you take it for granted that Forms did all this for you: UI controls, UI
triggers etc. JSF provides that functionality for web UIs. |
| JSP |
Java Server Page |
An HTML page with Java code embedded in it. At runtime, the
Java code is executed by a servlet and outputs additional
HTML tags. In Forms, the data that appears inside a multirow block is passed
down to the client at runtime and displayed inside the appropriate text
fields. An HTML user interface displays data using standard HTML tags which
are generated at runtime by some code on the application server. |
| JSR |
Java Specification Request |
Coming Soon |
| JSTL |
Java Standard Tag Library |
Coming Soon |
| JVM |
Java Virtual Machine |
The engine on which Java code is run: in the same way that
PL/SQL code is executed in a PL/SQL engine. |
K
|
L
|
M
|
MVC |
Model View Controller |
In the Forms world, the definition of the user interface, business
logic and navigation logic is all contained within the FMB/FMX. MVC is an
architecture (or often called a design pattern)
in which the implementation for the user interface (view), the business logic
(model), and the navigation logic (controller) are implemented separately.
The advantage of MVC is that you can develop, for example, different user
interfaces (views) ontop of the same business application (model and controller) |
M
|
N
|
O
|
| OC4J |
Oracle Containers for Java |
Oracle's implementation of a J2EE container. |
P
|
Q
|
R
|
S
|
| Servlet |
|
Simply a Java program that runs on your application server.
Possibly without you knowing it, you are using servlets when you run Forms
on the web. The Forms Servlet, for example, is a small Java program that
runs on the application server and is used to start Forms on the web by
reading the configuration files and converting into HTML to be passed to
the browser. |
| SOA |
Service Oriented Architecture |
A collection of services that communicate with each other
using simple data passing and activity coordination. |
| SOAP |
Simple Object Access Protocol |
The protocol for passing XML based messages
across an HTTP connection. Forms uses a proprietary protocol inside HTTP
messages for passing data from the browser client to the application server.
In the same way, web services use the SOAP protocol
for transferring data; and being a standard it can be understood by all
services which subscribe to that standard. |
| Struts |
|
Coming Soon |
T
|
| Toplink |
|
Coming Soon |
U
|
| UDDI |
Universal Description Discovery and Integration |
In web services, UDDI is simply
a directory of available web services - like a yellow pages of web services. |
| UML |
Unified Modelling Language |
Coming Soon |
V
|
| VO |
View Object |
In ADF Business Components, the VO defines
the query on top of the entity objects (EO). So a view
object can define a query across a number of different EOs
in the same way that a database view does with database tables. |
W
|
| WAR |
Web Archive |
Whereas the EAR is the complete application
zipped up into a single file, the WAR file is a only the web interface part
of the application zipped up. So an EAR file will/may
contain a WAR file. |
| Web services |
|
Simply put, a web service is a piece of functionality that
exists out on the web. Imagine you could write a PL/SQL function and allow
ANY program running on the web to access it (like a remote procedure call).
You would put your package spec on the web and that would define what the
function did and what results it returned. Anyone could then call that function,
passing any required parameters, and would get a result. So, you could publish
an "order lookup" web service that would accept an order number
and return the status of the order that any 3rd party application could
use. In web services, the actual implementation of the web service (analogous
to the package or function body) is hidden and is implementation agnostic
(so it could be written in Java or C or C++). The analogy of the package
spec is implemented by the WSDL and the messaging protocol
for actually calling the web service is called SOAP |
| Web Start |
|
Coming Soon |
| WSDL |
Web Services Description Language |
In the description of a web service
you were presented with the analogy of a remote call to a package spec.
In web services the WSDL is in effect the package spec. It is an XML
file that defines the name of the web service, the parameters it takes and
the types of values that it returns. |
X
|
| XML |
Extensible Markup Language |
A tagged text file with a defined format that follows rules
in the same that an HTML file is a text file with tags that define data.
So comparing XML and HTML, XML was designed to describe data and what that
data does, HTML was designed to focus on how data is displayed. |
Y
|
Z
|
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