ADF Developer's Guides and Recommended Technology Stacks for JDeveloper/ADF 10.1.3

ADF Developer's Guides for JDeveloper 10.1.3

We heard loud and clear that what was missing in the base documentation set is a proper ADF Developer's Guide you can read cover to cover and learn all the fundamentals of using the framework. We've studied our current and future potential customer base and have identified two key constituencies to target as part of helping people get started quickly with Oracle ADF, based on their background and priorities for declarative development:

• One group comprises developers coming from 4GL tools like Oracle Forms, Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, or other similar environments for whom a maximally declarative end-to-end development experience is top priority. The 4000+ developers in our own Oracle Applications division (and growing!) fall into this category, along with thousands of existing JDeveloper/Oracle ADF developers and partners outside of Oracle. This group also includes existing Oracle Forms and Oracle Designer customers who might be thinking to target J2EE development for a future new application project. These developers appreciate the prescriptive business tier approach that ADF Business Components provides to complement the other layers of the overall ADF framework. You can already see our focus ramping up steadily over the past year on this important target audience by visiting the J2EE Application Developer for Forms and Designers home page on OTN.
• The other group are experienced J2EE developers for whom maximum implementation flexibility in the business service tier is top priority. These developers will appreciate the value-add of our declarative databinding layer, but prefer creating their own business domain classes, mapping them with Oracle Toplink, and building service facades using EJB Session Beans. This crowd includes numerous J2EE architects and consultants in Oracle Consulting's Java Technology Practice, as well as many existing developers with years of J2EE experience under their belt, but who might be new to Oracle ADF.

Therefore, we will have two manuals for Oracle ADF Development in JDeveloper 10.1.3 timeframe:

• The ADF Developer's Guide for Forms/4GL Developers will be released in the first quarter of 2006, following the JDeveloper 10.1.3 production release. It targets developers coming from a Forms/4GL background and developers like our own Oracle Applications teams (and thousands of existing external customers) for whom a maximally declarative end-to-end development experience is top priority. This guide focuses on building ADF Applications like the SRDemoApplication using ADF Business Components using the technology stack used by Oracle Applications (both at present and for the future Fusion Application suite).
• The ADF Developer's Guide (available now), targets experienced J2EE developers who prefer to use Oracle ADF with EJB and O/R mapping frameworks like Oracle Toplink for their business service layer.

Recommended Technology Stacks

• As illustrated by the SRDemo Sample ADF BC Version and the ADF Toy Store "JSF Edition" examples, for developers coming from a Forms/4GL background and developers like our own Oracle Applications teams (and thousands of existing external customers) for whom a maximally declarative end-to-end development experience is top priority, we recommend the technology stack of:

  • Oracle ADF Business Components for the business service layer
  • Oracle ADF Model for data binding
  • Oracle ADF Faces and JavaServer Faces for the (web/mobile) view layer
  • Oracle ADF Swing for desktop applications

• As illustrated by the SRDemo Sample, for experienced J2EE developers who may prefer EJB and O/R mapping frameworks, we recommend the technology stack of:

  • EJB 3.0 Session Beans wrapping POJO objects mapped using Oracle TopLink for the business service layer
  • Oracle ADF Model for data binding
  • Oracle ADF Faces and JavaServer Faces for the (web/mobile) view layer
  • Oracle ADF Swing for desktop applications

We've tried to make this clear in Chapter 1 of the ADF Developer's Guide for experienced J2EE developers:

1.1.1.4 Recommended Technologies for J2EE Enterprise Developers

The remainder of this guide focuses attention on using Oracle ADF with technologies Oracle recommends to J2EE developers building new web JavaServer Faces for the view and controller layers, and the combination session bean with mapped Java classes for the business service implementation. However, this chapter begins with a very simple Oracle ADF applicationthese technologies to acquaint you with typical development process.

Note: If you are a developer coming to J2EE development with experience in 4GL tools like Oracle Forms, Oracle Designer, Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, and so on, Oracle recommends that you take advantage of the additional declarative development features offered by the Oracle ADF Business Components module. Oracle ADF Developer's Guide for Forms/4GL Developers covers using Oracle ADF with additional framework functionality in the business services tier using this module. You can access the developer's guide for Forms/4GL developers from http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation/jdev/B25947_01/index.html.

Oracle Applications Technology Stack

Oracle's own Oracle Applications teams (now in eBusinesSuite 11, and in the future for the Fusion Applications releases) leverage the maximally declarative development provided by our recommended technology stack including ADF Business Components. Thousands of existing partners, ISV's, software houses, and IT departments have used this same technology stack with success since 1999 when it first became available. It is undergoing extensive additional enhancements for even further visual, declarative development for the Fusion Applications release.