Roadmap for the Oracle ADF UIX technology

Last Updated: August 17, 2006.

Introduction

This paper provides a roadmap for the ADF UIX technology within Oracle JDeveloper 10g and Oracle ADF (Application Development Framework), and describes how it will affect the way developers build the view layer of enterprise Java applications

Technology Evolution

Oracle has been a leader in the advancement of component based web UI technologies. From the innovation of UIX through to driving the standards of the latest technologies, this journey has lead to an evolution of solutions.

ADF UIX

ADF UIX is one of the view technologies available with Oracle ADF (10.1.2) and is a user interface component framework for building JEE web applications that are component-based and XML metadata driven.

The initial drive for UIX came through Oracle's own Applications software. The eBusiness Suite, iLearning, Enterprise Manager, etc., all had requirements for a view framework to provide Java class libraries, APIs, and parsers for creating web applications with page-based navigation, and supporting a variety of clients including HTML-compliant browsers and mobile devices.

However, as the development community at large started to recognize the need for a view framework, the solution of a standards based view framework started to evolve through the Java Community Process (JCP).

Java Server Faces (JSF)

Java Server Faces (JSF) is a user interface standard for Java web applications. It is designed to ease the burden of writing and maintaining enterprise Java applications that run on a Java EE application server.

From the formative years of JSR-127 in 2001, through the first release in 2004, up to the current release (JSR-252) in 2006, the JCP has brought together resources from the community, including Oracle, to define the specification and produce a reference implementation of the specification; and is now part of the Java EE standard.

With Oracle's extensive experience gained through the development of UIX, it should be no surprise that the architecture has similarities to that provided by JSF.

ADF Faces

With JSF being a standard for building enterprise Java view components, any vendor can develop their own components that can run on any compliant application server. Given Oracle's work on the specification, the library of UIX components was redeveloped as standard JSF components. This set of components is called ADF Faces and can be used on any runtime implementation of JSF.

ADF Faces Open Source

To underline its commitment to the technology and the open source community, Oracle has donated their ADF Faces component library to the Apache Software Foundation, and within this community it is called Trinidad. The Trinidad component library is currently undergoing Incubation at the Apache Software Foundation.

Roadmap for UIX Applications

Because of the shift in the development community and the move to standardization, the UIX technology has been deprecated in the 10.1.3 release of JDeveloper and Oracle ADF. Furthermore, Oracle recommends JSF as the preferred thin client component development technology with Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF

Design Time Support

ADF UIX design time will remain a supported technology within JDeveloper 10.1.2 for the supported life of that release. There will be no ADF UIX design time support in JDeveloper 10.1.3 and beyond.

Runtime Support

There are currently two runtime options for UIX applications.

Runtime 10.1.2

ADF UIX applications developed with JDeveloper 10.1.2 are supported to run in a 10.1.2 environment for the supported life of the 10.1.2 runtime.

Runtime 10.1.3

ADF UIX applications developed with 10.1.2 are supported to run in a 10.1.3 environment subject to the application being configured using the steps documented in "Deploying a 10.1.2 UIX Application to a 10.1.3.x OC4J Instance".

Support for running in this environment is available only for the supported life of the 10.1.2 runtime (because you are actually using the 10.1.2 jars when running under 10.1.3).

Migrating ADF UIX to JSF/ADF Faces

For customers who have existing ADF UIX applications and wish to follow the recommendation to use JSF/ADF Faces, Oracle provides a migration utility.

This utility is available as an extension for Oracle Developer 10.1.3 and migrates the metadata in the ADF UIX pages to ADF Faces.

The migration utility handles most of the core ADF UIX components, but code migration requires manual intervention. Features such as the ADF UIX-specific data binding and event/controller are proprietary and are difficult to automatically migrate to ADF Faces compatible code. Therefore, only limited code migration is supported.

Other ADF UIX concepts such as, for example, UIX struts components, UIX templates, UIX configuration components, UIX stylesheet components, UIX BC4J components, and UIX look and feel components, do not have equivalent features in JSF or ADF Faces, and as such do not have an automatic migration path. Instances of these UIX features are logged as warnings by the migration tool.

As noted here, some features of UIX do not map to JSF. There are also some features that currently do not map but may do so as JSF evolves. This would, of course, be outside the scope of the migration utility and would have to be considered for manual migration

Conclusion

With ADF UIX, Oracle led by innovation in developing a view framework for enterprise Java applications. This innovation contributed to moving the development community to adopt a standard for view technologies: JSF.

As a leading advocate of JSF, Oracle is recommending adoption of this technology while providing a roadmap for those customers with an existing commitment to ADF UIX.

This roadmap follows Oracle's own Applications strategy, including the E-Business suite, of evolving from the proprietary UIX technology, and embracing the benefits of using a standards based solution offered through JSF.