ADF Adventures

With ADF 11g release1  we put ADF Desktop Integration (ADFdi) in production which I’ve explained in a previous post. In this article I will explain how you can learn ADFdi by exploring a sample application that we shipped together with the Fusion Order Demo.

The Master Price List module is an application that provides Web and MS Excel frontends for accessing and editing the list of products that are sell within the StoreFront Module of FOD.

In order to access the MPL you first need to download the demo and install the required database schema. You can find detailed instructions in the following link http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/samples/fod/index.html

Running the demo for the First Time

For this article I will use JDeveloper 11.1.1.2.0 (PS1), although  the steps are the same for the ADF 11g R1 release. Open the Master Price List Application located under <FOD_Home>\FusionOrderDemoV2\MasterPriceList

Now set your database connection properties on the Model project, then rebuild your projects and finally run the login.jspx page located on your ViewController project.

Overview of the Application Structure

This is a secured application and for instance all of the protected pages are located under Secured package, the excel spreadsheets are located under the excel package,

if you expand this folder you will see all the spreadsheets with the -DT suffix which means that these are spreadsheets for design time or in other words the spreadsheets that as developer you would work on. The published sub-package groups all the spreadsheets that have been published and would be available for the end users.

Also notice that besides the regular page definitions for the Web pages we have pageDefs for each one of the spreadsheets.

Executing the Demo in Excel

There are two alternatives on how execute the demo in Excel one from the design spreadsheet which we use on development time to Test the spreadsheets or we could access directly the runtime version of the published spreadsheets that are accessible from the Web Application Menu.

Before you run the spreadsheet the ADFdi client must be installed on the client machine, the instructions for installing ADFdi are described in detail on the ADF Developer's guide (see at the bottom).

After running the setup, you can open directly from JDeveloper any of the design-time (*DT) spreadsheets in excel. I recommend you to run you application from JDeveloper first before you jump to excel so you can execute your spreadsheet on test mode at any point in time.

When opening the spreadsheet you can notice on the right hand side the ADFdi component palette which contains the bindings coming from the pageDefinition that this spreadsheet is set to use. On the cells there are visual components like buttons, tables, input texts, etc. you can right click into any component and inspect its properties from the Edit ADF Component Properties

You can also access the worksheet and the workbook properties that are located under the ADFdi Component Palette

If the application is already being executed into the server you can go to the Excel Add-Ins tab en Run the Spreadsheet in Test Mode.

This will launch the authentication dialog in which you can enter credential sking/welcome1 and you will see the spreadsheet in runtime.

To go back to design time you can stop the application from the Add-ins menu as well. Remember that we the Oracle ADF Desktop Integration Developer's Guide is available and it uses the MPL module to cover the ADFdi features. Instructions and detail explanations about the MPL are also provided in this document.

This is one of the busiest times of the year for many of us at Oracle. At the same time is really cool to see such a massive event that gets bigger and bigger every year. In our team we always love to put a great show in this yearly appointment and share with all of you all the latest and greatest that we have been working  within JDeveloper and ADF.

Also we use this type of events to talk to our users about the product and collect their feedback that can help us shape the next releases. There are usability activities dedicated for the product and also we have the demo grounds where you can find us at all times.

For  those of you that are coming to San Francisco and are wondering what am I going to be doing and where to find me next week here is my schedule:

Sunday Oct 11:

3:45 p.m - HOL: Productive Java Persistence API and JavaServer Faces Development with Oracle JDeveloper

Monday Oct 12:

11.30 a.m - HOL: Adding Dynamic Data Visualization to Web Applications

4.30 p.m - At the Demo booth of JDeveloper

Tuesday Oct 13:

1:00 p.m - Presenting: Developing Microsoft Office Front Ends for Enterprise Java Applications

2.30 p.m - At the Demo booth of ADF Faces

Wednesday Oct 14:

9.15 a.m - At the Demo boot of ADF Faces

11. a.m - 4. p.m : Participating of the ADF Day at the Oracle Un conference.

4.00 p.m - Presenting: Adding Data Adding Dynamic Data Visualization to Web Applications with Dana Singleterry

Remember that all demo grounds are going to be located in Moscone West our Pod numbers are:

Mobile Application Development Middleware                                                                 W-109
Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle Application Development Framework Middleware W-114
Rich Internet Applications Development Middleware                                                    W-116
Oracle Forms and Oracle Designer Middleware                                                            W-115
Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse Middleware Middleware                                        W-112

See you next week!!!

August is around the corner and a new round of the OTN Developer Days is coming. I'll presenting in Vancouver, Canada on August 4th. During this event we will introduce you to the Oracle fusion development platform for the next generation of Enterprise Applications with the the latest version of JDeveloper11g part of the FMW11g release. If you haven't register yet, what are you waiting for? this is a free event, don't be the last one getting your hands on the Technology.

This workshop is designed for developers, project managers, and architects. Whether you are currently using Java, traditional 4GL tools like Oracle Forms, PeopleTools, and Visual Basic, or just looking for a better java development platform - this session is for you. Get explanation from Oracle experts, try your hands at actual development, and meet potential customer or business partners that are on the same space.

See you there.

ADF Desktop Integration or ADFdi is one of the new features of JDeveloper 11.1.1.1.0 and part of the ADF framework that enables desktop integration with MS Excel spreadsheets to manage large volumes of data from web applications via excel, at the same time that the information is being persisted into the application's data sources. In this article I´m going to provide an introduction to this new component of ADF 11g.

ADFdi leverages the use of business services that are exposed through the ADF Model - allowing us to create end-user spreadsheets that can pull and send data from/to the business model layer in online or offline mode, supporting batch transaction management. All of the above following the rich declarative approach of the ADF framework, without writing a single line of code in .Net.

With ADFdi the ADF developer will create pageDefinition files that will be used to generate visual components and execute server-side operations such as business methods or ADFm operations (create, insert, delete, etc.) into MS Excel spreadsheets. This way all of the web application business services can be used on excel the same way they are used on a web interface. Also the developer can integrate web content from the web either coming from the ADF application or from external sources.

The end result will allow the end-users to use desktop tools to access and manage web application data perform calculations, sorting, bulk operations and all the regular tasks performed with spreadsheets in a secure way (ADF Security) and reducing the risks that normal spreadsheet handing involves for organizations.

The main components of ADFdi are: 

• A client side program (windows) to convert the spreadsheet so it becomes ADFdi enable.
• A MS Excel 07 plug-in that allows to access published adfdi-workbooks as well as to open workbooks on design time.
• A servlet that enables bi-directional communication with the web application.
• The ADF Model which takes care of the data access, transaction management and operation execution on the server side.

If you want to get started with ADFdi we have an OBE available on OTN,  a video tutorial where you have a preview of the design time and runtime features and last but not least the ADF Desktop Integration Developer's Guide. I will start exploring more features of ADFdi in this blog and hope you can provide us with tons of feedback on this new piece of the ADF framework.

For those of you who are on Twitter we have good news, now you can find JDeveloper and ADF on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jdevadf , here you will find news, links to technical articles, events and updates from the ADF team in Oracle. If you have suggestions or feedback on what other things you would like to see published on this twitter account let us know.

Next week I'll be in Pasadena, CA presenting the OTN Developer Day. During this event we will introduce you to the Oracle development platform for the next generation of Enterprise Applications. Registration is still open.

This workshop is designed for developers, project managers, and architects. Whether you are currently using Java, traditional 4GL tools like Oracle Forms, PeopleTools, and Visual Basic, or just looking for a better development platform - this session is for you. Get explanation from Oracle experts, try your hands at actual development, and meet potential customer or business partners that are on the same space.

See you there.

I'm going to show you in this article how to get a the ADF databindings in this case from a POJO to deploy in JBoss5GA.This is article is the second part of a previous post. As you will notice after reading this post, approach that I follow this time differs from the one in the first part regarding the location of the libraries and the addition of the JBoss classloader into my project.

The first step is to create our sample project that uses the POJO datacontrol to expose data from out java class to our WebUI. The structure of my project is shown in the image, the first new element that appears is the jboss-web.xml which we are going to use to define our own class loading configuration for our project.

The jboss-web.xml file contains:

  1: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  2:  <!DOCTYPE jboss-web PUBLIC
  3:     "-//JBoss//DTD Web Application 5.0//EN"
  4:     "http://www.jboss.org/j2ee/dtd/jboss-web_5_0.dtd">
  5: 
  6: <jboss-web>
  7:     <class-loading>
  8:         <loader-repository>
  9:             com.oracle.adfpojo:loader=adfm.jar
 10:             <loader-repository-config>java2ParentDelegation=true</loader-repository-config>
 11:         </loader-repository>
 12:     </class-loading>
 13: </jboss-web>

The loader repository setting points to any of the jars that are included into our WAR file. The last step is to include all of the necessary libraries into our project and deployment profile.In the project properties make sure the following libraries as well as individual jar files are selected.

Then on your WAR deployment profile under libraries you should have the following list of jars selected:

adf-controller-api.jar
adf-controller.jar
adf-controller-rt-common.jar
adf-dt-at-rt.jar
adfdt_common.jar
adf-faces-databinding-rt.jar
adflogginghandler.jar
adfm.jar
adfmweb.jar
adf-pageflow-dtrt.jar
adf-pageflow-fwk.jar
adf-pageflow-impl.jar
adf-pageflow-rc.jar
adf-richclient-api-11.jar
adf-richclient-impl-11.jar
adf-share-base.jar
adf-share-ca.jar
adf-share-support.jar
adf-transactions-dt.jar
cache.jar
commons-cli-1.0.jar
commons-el.jar
db-ca.jar
dms.jar
dvt-databindings.jar
dvt-facesbindings.jar
dvt-faces.jar
dvt-jclient.jar
dvt-utils.jar
groovy-all-1.5.4.jar
identitystore.jar
inspect4.jar
javatools-nodeps.jar
javax.xml.bind_2.1.3.jar
jaxb-impl_2.1.3.jar
jdev-cm.jar
jewt4.jar
jmxframework.jar
jmxspi.jar
jps-api.jar
jps-common.jar
jsf-api.jar
jsf-ri.jar
jsp-el-api.jar
jstl.jar
mdsrt.jar
oc4j-unsupported-api.jar
ojdbc5.jar
ojmisc.jar
oracle-el.jar
oracle.ucp_11.1.0.7.0.jar
share.jar
trinidad-api.jar
trinidad-impl.jar
weblogic-injection-provider.jar
xmlef.jar
xml.jar
xmlparserv2.jar

After that you can deploy your War file to JBoss.

The next week I'll be in the OOW Latin America which is happening in Sao Paulo, Brazil. April 10-12 This is the biggest Oracle event in the Latin America region. This is going to be my second OOW LAD but my first one as a speaker. I'm really exited to go back to Sao Paulo and present our latest news from the Development space to our users.

If you happen to be in Sao Paulo and are attending don't miss these 2 sessions:

March 11

17:15 - 18:00 Auditorium 5: S298738 -  The Oracle Fusion Development Platform

March 12

17:15 - 18:00 Auditorium 5: S305752 - RIA and Web 2.0 Development without Coding

Apart from that I'll be at the ADF Demo Booth. See you there!!!.

In recent days there was an article written by Sony Mathew that was referenced on  TheServerSide.com comparing RIA Framework which I found really interesting. Unfortunately the ADF Faces RC was not included as well as others. So I'm including the ADF Faces missing column in this post.

Also you can check the JavaFX/Java column thanks to Alexander Bell

If you are a Woodstock developer and are wondering what other options do you have in the JSF/AJAX components space -after the announcement that Sun no longer will be developing the Woodstock components. We have good news, you can evaluate to use the ADF Faces Rich Client components.

How do you get started? We have put up a page on OTN for all the Woodstock developers, that contains a Matrix showing the equivalences of ADF RC and Woodstock and also contains how-to get started tutorials and useful links.

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/adf/adffaces/woodstock2adfMatix.html