Olaf Heimburger's Blog

No fancy words this time, let's start.

Setting Up the Gear

OK, you've decided to learn to develop with ADF. Now is the time to get the minimal environment setup for you. Your toolbox should contain these tools:

• JDeveloper - This is the primary tool for developing with ADF, none gives you better support. Get it from OTN.
• Oracle XE Database - To makes things much, much easier, I prefer to use the Oracle XE database. This is a stripped down data base, which behaves a lot like a normal Oracle database, but uses less memory and allows only 4 GB data files. Get it from OTN.
• On Linux you'll need to get a recent JDK 5 before running JDeveloper.

Once you've downloaded these tools. Install them.

Installation Verification

Once everything is installed, we need to verify our setup.

Verifying XE

First start XE. On Windows and Linux you'll find an Oracle Database 10g Express Edition menu with a Start Database entry. After XE came up, you need to point your browser to the XE Homepage (http://127.0.0.1:8080/apex/). On the XE Homepage you can log in to the XE management console and can check the data base settings. Log in by entering sys and your password value provided during the installation. To finish this step click on the Logout link on the upper right corner.

Verifying JDeveloper

Now we're able to start JDeveloper. Depending on your JDeveloper download, you might be asked to supply the location of the JDK. On Windows, a window pops up and lets you browse to the java.exe file of your JDK. On Linux, you have to supply the home directory of the JDK installation (ie. /opt/java/jdk1.5.0_14 on my machine). Next, you'll see the JDeveloper splash screen which will be followed by the JDeveloper main window.

Verifying the Database Connection

The last step for today is the setup of the database connection in JDeveloper.

In 10.1.3.x

1. Click on the Connections Navigator tab (upper left under the tool bar)
2. Select Database
3. Open the Context Menu and select New Database Connection...
4. A four step wizard appears.
5. Step 1 - Enter the Connection Name as sysXE
6. Step 2 - Enter the Username as sys, the Password with your value, and the Role as SYDBA
7. Step 3 - Enter the Hostname (localhost), the Port (1521), and the SID (XE)
8. Step 4 - Test the connection by clicking on the Test Connection button. This should show a Success! message in the text area below.
9. Click on the Finish button to close this wizard.

Now you can find your newly created database connection in the Database folder in the Connection Navigator.

In 11g TP 3

1. Find the Resource Palette (if not visible chose View->Resource Palette)
2. Once available find the New icon (a folder with a star on the upper right), click on it, a menu will appear.
3. Select the New Connection sub-menu and select the Database menu item.
4. In the Create Database Connection window fill in the blanks with the similar values as above. Connection Name sysXE, Username sys, Password your value, Role SYSDBA from the drop down, Host Name localhost, JDBC Port 1521, SID XE.
5. Click on the Test Connection button and get the Success! message in the text area below the button.
6. Before you close the window be sure to have the Create Connection In:IDE Connections (Resource Palette) radio button checked.
7. Once everything is correct, click on the OK button to close the window and create the connection in the Resource Palette.

JDeveloper Differences So Far

With this little setup chapter you have already seen a major difference between the JDeveloper 10.1.3.x and 11g TP3 versions:

• All connections are available as IDE-global in both versions.
• 11g adds application-specific connections which can differ from the global settings
• In 11g the Create Database Connection is now in one window only and much easier to use.

What's Next?

So far so good, we have the gear ready now and are prepared to continue. In the next part we'll use JDeveloper's Database Modeler to create the database model and schema for the application we'll develop in this series. Stay tuned.