Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.6.0): New Features

Introduction

The 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.6.0) version of JDeveloper and ADF is a minor update release. It contains many bug fixes as well as a few new features to enjoy.

Important Note: After the initial release of 11.1.1.6.0 in February 2012, we have since updated the release to enable working with Oracle Cloud. These are JDeveloper IDE changes only and do not affect the ADF runtime installation or deployed applications. To confirm which version of the 11.1.1.6.0 release you have, choose Help > About from the JDeveloper main menu. The full version information is displayed in the About box:

• Build JDEVADF_11.1.1.6.0_GENERIC_111205.1733.6192.1: Initial 11.1.1.6.0 release with limited Oracle Cloud Early Access support (Feb, 2012)
• Build JDEVADF_11.1.1.6.0CLOUD_GENERIC_121118.1600.6229: Updated 11.1.1.6.0 release with full Cloud support (Nov, 2012)

As always, we welcome your feedback on the OTN forum.

Previous Version? If you are looking for the new feature list for a prior 11g release, please refer to the 11g Release 1 release archive documentation page.

• JDeveloper IDE
• Java EE Development and Deployment
• ADF Framework
• ADF Faces and Data Visualization (DVT)
• ADF Business Components
• ADF Desktop Integration
• Metadata Services (MDS)

New In This Release

JDeveloper IDE

• Oracle Cloud (added in build 6229): JDeveloper provides facilities for connecting to and deploying to Oracle Cloud. Users can take advantage of the Java Cloud Service by connecting to an instance and deploying applications (including ADF applications). Additionally, JDeveloper is integrated with the Cloud SDK, allowing users to dynamically run the whitelist tool on their applications to check for compliance with Cloud feature restrictions prior to deployment. Functionality to browse, upload, and download schema contents in the Database Cloud Service is also integrated with this release of JDeveloper.
• Git support (added in build 6229): Git is a popular, open source distributed version control system. JDeveloper now provides the ability to manage code in a Git repository directly through the IDE.
• Application-level Ant files (added in build 6229): A new gallery item has been added that creates an Ant build.xml file at the application level to control the build for all the projects in an application.
• Opatch support: Opatch is the common patching utility for Oracle products. JDeveloper now bundles Opatch with the product, so customers who need to apply patches to JDeveloper no longer need to separately download, install, and configure Opatch.

Java EE Development and Deployment

• Oracle Public Cloud: Debut of creating and deploying Oracle Public Cloud applications from JDeveloper. Developers will be able to create a connection to the Oracle Public Cloud using their credentials and deploy Java EE and ADF applications using that connection. This document will be updated with additional details when the Oracle Public Cloud is generally available to customers. For more information, please see http://www.oracle.com/
• DefaultDomain creation password: The user is now prompted to define a password for the administrator of the Integrated WLS "DefaultDomain" domain when the domain is first created.

ADF Framework

• Connections.xml Enhancements: The ability to work with connections defined for the application in connections.xml has been enhanced in the following ways:
  • A new Mbean operation to write ADF connection and ADF config data to disk
  • Consolidation of connections.xml for reuse across applications
  • A new Mbean and WLST command for updating ADF credentials

ADF Faces and Data Visualization (DVT)

• All ADF Faces and Data Visualization components now support touch gestures for interactivity on the touch-enabled devices, such as touch support for drag and drop, tooltips, data tips, and context menus. This support is enabled through the new v1.2 version of the FusionFx and FusionFx-simple families of skins. ADF Faces and DVT components are now certified on iPad.

  

ADF DVT Graph and Gauge

• HTML5 Output Format: Graph and Gauge now support HTML5 output format. A new web.xml context parameter oracle.adf.view.rich.dvt.DEFAULT_IMAGE_FORMAT was introduced to change the default output format to HTML5. In addition, a new value for the imageFormat attribute imageFormat="HTML5" is now supported to allow for explicit usage.
• Touch Gesture Support: Graph now has touch gesture support for all the major interactivity features, such as touch support for selection, zoom and scroll, legend scrolling, time selector, data cursor and magnify lens.
• Line Data Cursor: When rendered in HTML5, Graph now supports line data cursor, a line which follows the user's gesture as it moves across the graph.
• Magnify Lens: When rendered in HTML5, Graph now supports magnify lens, a floating window that magnifies the content under the mouse or finger. It is most useful on touch devices, where the user's finger will cover the data of interest, especially when interacting with a scatter graph with a large data set.
• Bi-Directional Locales: All image formats for Graphs and Gauges (HTML5, Flash and PNG) now support bi-directional locales.
• Right-click Context Menus: Graphs now support right-click context menus using facets for any selectable, or non-selectable elements within the component
• Actionable Popups: Graph now supports displaying an actionable popup using af:showPopupBehavior tag.
• Drag and Drop: Graphs now support drag and drop within the graph, from one graph to another, or from a graph into another ADF Faces component such as ADF Table.
• Selection: All graph types now support selection, with selected series appearing as highlighted, as well as multi selection using Crtl+Click.
• Legend Alignment: A new PositionHint attribute is now available on the dvt:legendArea tag to specify the alignment of the legend toward the center of the plot area using the value alignToCenter. By default the value is set to alignToEdge which aligns the legend toward the edge of the graph frame.

ADF DVT Geographic Map

• iOS and Touch Gesture Support: DVT Geographic Map now supports display on iOS and touch gesture support for zooming and panning on touch-enabled devices.
• Accessibility: Screen readers such as JAWS are now supported.

ADF DVT Hierarchy Viewer

• HTML Rendering: The Hierarchy Viewer now supports rendering in HTML, which can be used for displaying on browsers that do not support Flash, and for printing.
• Support for Bi-Directional Locales: BI-directional locales are now supported for Hierarchy Viewer node content, search panel and search results.
• Customization Support: Starting from this release, Hierarchy Viewers saves and maintains the states for selectedRowKeys, disclosedRowKeys, lateralNavigationRowKeys, selectedShowDetailItems, isolate, zoom level and pan position. These Hierarchy Viewer states are persisted to the session or MDS via change manager.
• Disclosed Row Keys Property: To be consistent with tree and tree table, Hierarchy Viewer now has a new property "disclosedRowKeys", which provides another way to specify the expansion state.
• New Interaction Behaviors: The Hierarchy Viewer now clears Zoom Level and Pan Position state automatically while handling setAnchor or navigateUp events, and zooms to fit when user changes the layout.
• Accessibility Support: In screen reader mode, Hierarchy Viewer now renders as an accessible TreeTable.

ADF View Framework

• Web Crawler Support: When ADF Faces framework detects an application is being crawled by a search engine, it outputs pages in a simplified format for the crawler, similar to that for an emailable page. Supported search engines are: Google, Bing, Yahoo and Oracle Secure Enterprise Search. If you want to generate special content for web crawlers, you can use the EL-reachable Agent interface to detect when an agent is crawling the site, and then direct the agent to a specified link, for example:
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  <c:if test="#{requestContext.agent.type == 'webcrawler'}">
    <af:goLink text="This Link is rendered only for web crawlers" 
            destination="http://www.newPage.com"/>
  </c:if>
  
  

  For more information, see the Trinidad JavaDoc.

• Content Delivery Networks: ADF Faces provides a URI rewriting solution that can be used to apply prefixes to resource (eg. JavaScript, style sheet, image) URIs. This feature is targeted at public facing applications that wish to improve performance by delegating resource delivery to a content delivery network (CDN). Resource URI prefixing rules are specified centrally in the adf-config.xml file and can be applied both to application-defined as well as ADF-provided resources. See the "ADF Faces Configuration" appendix of the Oracle Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer's Guide for details.
• Disabling Loading Splash Screen: ADF Faces displays a "loading" splash screen for each user on the first access to any ADF Faces application in order to provide some feedback while various resources (eg. JavaScript libraries) are loaded. Such feedback might not be desirable in all cases. As of this release, the splash screen can be disabled by setting the oracle.adf.view.rich.SPLASH_SCREEN context parameter to off.
• Script Partitioning Support for Tablets: Added the ability to segregate touch and desktop specific JavaScript code. This feature allows the framework to alter behavior based on agent capabilities. A new "touchScreen" capability was added to the trinidad agent. The "touchScreen" capability has three enumerations: "none", "single", "multiple". The same capabilities map is now published by the client AdfAgent. The "touchScreen" capability is also available to the implicit agent object that is resolved by evaluating EL that defines the <feature-class> node in the XML file for declaring what source files are featured in individual script partitions.

  Consider:

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  <feature-class>
    $\{(agent.webkit and agent.capabilities['touchScreen'] ne 'none') ?
    'oracle/adfinternal/view/js/agent/safari/AdfSafariMobileAgent.js' : 
  null}
      </feature-class>
  
  

  For more information, see the Trinidad JavaDoc.

• Redistributing Touch Events for Tablets: For tablet devices that support touch screens and do not have a mouse, the browser simulates some mouse events, but not always. In order to achieve functional equivalency for these platforms, client components need to be broadcast touch events. A new touch event object AdfComponentTouchEvent will be made available to components when agents support single or multiple "touchScreen" capabilities. Component peers can conditionally register for touch event handling using the same mechanism.

  Consider:

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  AdfDhtmlPanelSplitterPeer.InitSubclass = function()
    {
      // Register event handlers specific to touch devices    
               AdfRichUIPeer.addComponentEventHandlers(this,
                       AdfComponentTouchEvent.TOUCH_START_TYPE,
                       AdfComponentTouchEvent.TOUCH_END_TYPE,
                       AdfComponentTouchEvent.TOUCH_MOVE_TYPE);
    };
    AdfDhtmlPanelSplitterPeer.prototype.HandleComponentTouchMove 
            =  function(componentEvent) {...}
    AdfDhtmlPanelSplitterPeer.prototype.HandleComponentTouchStart 
            = function(componentEvent) {...}
    AdfDhtmlPanelSplitterPeer.prototype.HandleComponentTouchEnd 
            =   function(componentEvent) {...}
        
    

• Simulating Context Menu and Tooltip Activation from Touch Gestures for Tablets: Webkit on IOS and Android platforms do not raise contextMenu events. Under the desktop platform the contextMenu event is derived from the right mouse click. The tooltip is also not supported by these platforms. For desktop browsers the tooltip is shown on mouse over of elements that have a title attribute. Since these tablet devices do not fire contextMenu events or show tooltips, we have added an enhancement to simulate this event from touch gestures. The default gesture is tap+hold (500ms). However, this gesture is also used to active component drag-and-drop. To resolve this conflict, in the cases where drag-and-drop behaviors exist for a component, the context menu and tooltip will be activated on tap+hold+finger-up. Only single finger gestures can be used to active context menus and tooltips.
• Drag and Drop on Touch Devices: On touch devices like tablets, the component drag and drop has a different gesture than with the mouse. An item that can be dragged must activated by a tap and hold gesture. The item will change its appearance to indicate that it can be dragged once held long enough. The same gesture applies to reordering table columns. Tap and hold the column header, then drag it to reorder the columns.
• API to Access the WAI-ARIA Live Region: There is a new API method in AdfPage.js, announceToAssistiveTechnology(). This method can be used to add messages to the WAI-ARIA status live region present on the page when in screen reader mode.
• Improved Compression of JavaScript: By using improved obfuscation techniques, the size of the compressed ADF JavaScript libraries has decreased by an average of 20% across all libraries.
• MIME multipart/related Email Type: If you use the email mode to render your page in emailable html (e.g., css is inline instead of an external stylesheet because email clients do not load external stylesheets), by default all URLs in the page are absolute URLs. A new feature has been provided to add images as attachments when it's necessary to view the email offline. This is done if you add this request parameter:

  org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.agent.email=true& oracle.adf.view.rich.render.emailContentType=multipart/related

Carousel

• New attributes: Added some new attributes to the carousel for configuring the displayItems="circular" mode: auxiliaryPopOut, auxiliaryScale, and auxiliaryOffset. Also added a controlArea="none" option if you only want the current item text to be displayed.

Input

• Thai Buddhist Calendar Support: The inputDate, chooseDate and calendar components now support the Thai Buddhist calendar. The behavior can be seen by setting the browser locale to th_TH. When the locale is set to th_TH, dates will be displayed in Buddhist Era-based year numbering.In Buddhist Era, year 1 corresponds to BCE (BC) 543 (Julian). Therefore, Gregorian year + 543 is the B.E. year value. The RCF components only support users picking from Buddhist year 2484 onward - if earlier years are picked, the behavior is not defined. For more information, see the JDK Supported Calendars documentation.

Layout

• PanelHeader and ShowDetailHeader have new headerLevel attribute: PanelHeader and ShowDetailHeader have a new headerLevel attribute. This attribute allows the default HTML header level (H1 through H6) of the header component to be overridden, and have the provided header level value used instead.

Table

• Export to Excel: Export to Excel (af:exportCollectionActionListener tag) now supports two new attribute values for exportedRows: 'allWithoutDetails' and 'selectedWithoutDetails'. These two attribute values can be used to suppress exporting data from disclosure region.
• New Editing Behavior in click-to-edit Table: The user clicks on a cell to get to Edit mode (single click to edit is preserved). While in Edit mode, the content inside the cell is highlighted without cursor focus, and:
  • If the user presses Right/Left Arrow keys, the content highlight disappears. The text insertion point now appears and navigates within the content of this cell. If the user clicks on the cell again or presses F2, the insertion point is placed behind the last character (or anywhere user clicks). If user presses Right/Left Arrow keys, the insertion point navigates within the content of this cell.
  • If the user presses the Esc key, the current cell's content changes are canceled. The cell and its row returns directly to Read-only mode.
  • Tab and Enter key behaviors remain unchanged as before.

PanelCollection

• Hide/Show Multiple Columns: Hide/Show multiple columns of a table is enhanced to improve user experience. When there are 3 or more columns are available in the table, "Manage Columns..." menu item will show up to allow user to hide/show multiple columns in one batch. Note that when column grouping is enabled for table, this feature is turned off.

Skinning and Styles

• New Version of FusionFx and FusionFX-Simple Skins: There is a new version of our fusionFx and fusionFx-simple skin families, v1.2, that includes optimization for when your application renders in a touch screen device as well as enhancements to the look of the carousel items in circular mode. Carousel items in circular mode will now have a gray border and shadow, when item is selected it will have a blue border and shadow, and when hovered over it will have an orange border and shadow.
• Calendar, RichTextEditor, and PanelCollection's toolbar icon selectors: When skinning icons and images, a '/' at the beginning of the url means context-relative, and a '//' means server-relative. http://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/devguide/skinning.html#urls. In previous releases, for the calendar toolbar icons (e.g., af|calendar::toolbar-day-icon), a '/' did not work, and a '//' erroneously means context-relative. For richTextEditor and panelCollection's toolbar icons (e.g., af|richTextEditor::bold-icon, af|panelCollection::freeze-icon), both '/' and '//' mean context-relative. This is Bug 12357558 , and this bug has been fixed in 11.1.1.6.0. Therefore, now '/' means context-relative and '//' means server-relative like it should. If you skinned these selectors, and you used '//' to mean context-relative, you will need to change your url to use a single slash '/', otherwise your icon will not render.

ADF Business Components

• Customization Support for Groovy Validation: Groovy triggers are now exposed in the customization role, and subsequently can be modified as part of a seeded customization.
• MySQL Support: ADF Business Components have been tested with MySQL 5.5

ADF Desktop Integration

• Workbook Time Zone Conversion At the ADF Desktop Integration workbook level, time zone changes are detected at runtime. When such a changes occur, all date-time values are automatically converted so that subsequent uploads produce the expected results.

Metadata Services (MDS)

• Integration with new Patch Set Assistant: MDS is integrated with the latest version of Patch Set Assistant to provide a consistent approach for updating the MDS schema between patch set releases.
• Customization of Fusion Application EAR Files: The JDeveloper customization role can now be used to customize the Fusion Application EAR files. This feature is intended for customers who are extending Oracle Fusion Applications.
• Support for MySQL: MySQL 5.5 is now a supported environment for Fusion Middleware, including the MDS database repository.

Bug Fix List