FAQ - Oracle Fusion Middleware and Open Source

· How does Oracle Fusion Middleware work with open source?
· What is Apache Trinidad?
· What is Oracle's relationship with Eclipse?
· Why does Oracle support Eclipse when Oracle has its own tools?
· What is Oracle doing to help the Eclipse community?
· Can I use Eclipse to deploy to Oracle Application Server?
· What is Project Dali?
· What is SASH?
· What is the Spring Framework?
· How does Oracle Fusion Middleware integrate with Spring?
· What is JPA?
· What is TopLink Essentials?
· How does Oracle support PHP?
· How can I get more information about Oracle's Open Source efforts?

How does Oracle Fusion Middleware work with open source?

Oracle is committed to enabling, adopting, promoting, and developing viable open source technologies so that customers can deploy those in a business critical environment, with confidence. Oracle invests significant resources in testing, optimizing, enhancing, and supporting many open source technologies and projects, including Eclipse, PHP, Apache, Linux, and more. Oracle Fusion Middleware, combined with fully tested and supported open source technologies, enables organizations to run, secure, adapt, and expand their businesses.

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What is Apache Trinidad?

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What is Oracle's relationship with Eclipse?

Oracle has been a member of Eclipse since its inception. Oracle is a plug-in provider and a committer to a variety of Eclipse projects, including the JavaServer Faces Tooling Project, the Dali JPA Project and the BPEL Project. Oracle frequently presents at and sponsors Eclipse related conferences..

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Why does Oracle support Eclipse when Oracle has its own tools?

Oracle is committed to its leading Java and SOA development environment Oracle JDeveloper. At the same time, Oracle is committed to offering developers productivity with choice. For developers who choose to use Eclipse instead of JDeveloper, Oracle ensures that their experience in deploying to Oracle Fusion Middleware is as prolific and seamless as can be.

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What is Oracle doing to help the Eclipse community?

For customers who elect to use Eclipse as their IDE of choice, Oracle is committed to delivering the same productivity that customers using Oracle JDeveloper experience. The Eclipse architecture is extensible via the concept of plug-ins, which makes it inviting for vendors to collaborate on different areas and contribute their work as a plug-in. Oracle decided to get behind three standards: Java Server Faces for building rich user interfaces, EJB 3.0 for reusable and sophisticated business logic and BPEL for orchestrating Web services. Oracle's efforts further contribute toward making the Eclipse platform a credible enterprise development environment.

Can I use Eclipse to deploy to Oracle Application Server?

Absolutely. Oracle has contributed the support for deploying applications to the Oracle Application Server Containers for J2EE (OC4J) since Eclipse Web Tools Platform project release 1.0 M8. Today, customers can download the latest Eclipse version 3.2.1 it comes with WTP 1.5, which contains the necessary modules to deploy to OC4J. This tutorial outlines the installation and configuration of Eclipse with OC4J for deploying applications to OC4J from the Eclipse environment.

What is Project Dali?

Dali is an Oracle-led Eclipse project which builds extensible frameworks and tools for the definition and editing of Object-Relational (O/R) mappings for EJB 3.0 Java Persistence API (JPA) Entities. Dali provides tools to develop JPA applications targeted at either Java SE or Java EE and supports top-down, bottom-up, and meet-in-the-middle development approaches. Regardless of whether developers want to persist an existing Java object model, manipulate data in an existing database, or connect existing Java classes with an existing database, Dali improves productivity and helps ensure that developers don't waste time in an endless edit, deploy, run, debug cycle. Dali contributes two key views to the Eclipse user interface along with a perspective that defines a layout suitable for performing object-relational mapping. Those two views are the Persistence Outline (offers a JPA view of objects) and Persistence Properties (provides a brief summary of mappings and allows navigation between them).

What is SASH?

One of the challenges most developers face when using open source is integrating projects that were not designed to work together. SASH stands for Spring, Apache Axis, Apache Struts, and Hibernate which are very popular open source projects widely deployed in the enterprise. Oracle has worked closely with Sourcelabs to provide SASH users a great experience on Oracle Fusion Middleware as well as support, maintenance and upgrade subscriptions.

What is the Spring Framework?

With more than one million downloads, Spring is a very popular open source framework designed to help developers construct high-quality applications faster by enforcing commonly used patterns of application design within the framework itself. Spring supports Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) as well as easier transaction management (not tied to J2EE unlike plain JTA) and its powerful MVC implementation. The Spring Framework is licensed under the terms of the Apache License, Version 2.0.

How does Oracle Fusion Middleware integrate with Spring?

Oracle has provided integration with Spring since Spring 1.2 when Oracle TopLink and Spring were first integrated. Today, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Spring offer an even stronger integration. Spring 2.0 now integrates TopLink Essentials, which provides built-in support for the JPA integrated with Spring's own POJO programming model.

What is JPA?

The Java Persistence API (JPA) is part of the new Java EE 5 EJB 3.0 specification and defines, a vendor-neutral standard for O/R mapping. JPA defines a way to map plain old Java objects (POJOs) to relational databases. Even though the JPA specification was developed under the umbrella EJB 3.0 specification (co-led by Oracle), that doesn't mean it's just for Java EE. JPA is designed to work in Java SE as well as EE, and will likely be split off into its own specification in the future.

What is TopLink Essentials?

TopLink Essentials is a freely licensed and distributed open-source community edition of Oracle TopLink, and it provides core Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) functionality necessary for the reference implementation of JPA in EJB 3.0. TopLink Essentials is available in source and binary distributions as the entity-persistence module of GlassFish Open Source Java EE 5 Application Server or it can be separately downloaded from OTN. The OSI-approved CDDL license is being used for project GlassFish which allows developers to view, use, edit, and alter the code, and distribute it or use it in production. More on TopLink Essentials and JPA can be found in this FAQ.

How does Oracle Fusion Middleware support PHP?

Oracle is fully committed to offering PHP developers with seamless access to fully reliable, highly available, secure and scalable infrastructure, both for development and deployment. Many key Oracle products are PHP-enabled. Oracle offers a PHP extension with Oracle JDeveloper, and PHP support with Oracle Application Server. The JDeveloper PHP extension allows for interoperability between PHP and other popular technologies such as Java. Oracle publishes best practices and resources for PHP developers via the Oracle Technology Network PHP Developer Center.

How can I get more information about Oracle's Open Source efforts?

Read the Oracle and Open Source FAQ, and visit http://oss.oracle.com for more information on Oracle and Open Source.

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