Shay Shmeltzer's Weblog

Alternative Weekend Watching - ADF 11g Overview

2008-08-22T20:52:06Z

Tired of looking at the summer Olympics?
Here is an alternative, watch the fastest and strongest Java development framework - Oracle ADF 11g.

Last week I did a web seminar for our partners showing off Oracle ADF 11g - you can now watch the recording of this session here.

About half of the session is dedicated to demos - and if you are not interested to hear the explanation of what ADF is, why we have it, and what it does you can just jump to the demos from the right side navigation menu.

Can ADF be used with Oracle E-Business Suite / Siebel/ Peoplesoft

2008-08-14T20:09:56Z

Whenever I finish showing an ADF 11g demo to people who are working on enterprise applications like Oracle E-Business Suite or Peoplesoft or Siebel - the first question I get is "can we use ADF with our existing application".
Basically they would like to build new UIs on top of their existing systems - and leverage the cool new Ajax based functionality in ADF Faces.

The short answer is YES.

There are two ways of doing this.
One is just build an ADF application directly accessing the database underlying your application.
All you need is the DB connection info and an understanding of the underlying tables.

However one thing to note here is that Oracle EBS and other applications usually use roles when they are accessing the DB from UIs - and using the above approach you are not using the roles/security that are set in the applications.

So the more "correct" way of accessing these enterprise systems would be to use SOA - or basically access the applications through the official interfaces they expose. These would basically be web services that allow you to interact with the system using correct roles and security.

A very basic way of doing this from ADF is to use the Web Service Data Control - or just create a java class that access the Web Service and then expose it as a data control.
You can also of course bring in the full Oracle SOA Suite with its set of adapters into the picture.

Some other questions you might have are:
Is this recommended by Apps?
Yes it is one of the top ways they tell you to prepare for Fusion apps. See the "Highlight" section of this page.

Do you have samples/demos?
Here's one for PeopleSoft.
Here's a how-to for Siebel.

Do you have customers doing this?
The answer is yes - we have several customers doing it (for example see Viewsonic story) and we also have Oracle products doing this (Siebel Self Service 8.1).

Where do I get more info?
One place to start would be the fusion middleware for apps page on OTN.

Oracle ADF 11g Online Seminar for Partners Tomorrow

2008-08-13T17:38:47Z

If you are an Oracle Partner working either as an ISV or SI and you are wondering about the future of enterprise application development at Oracle you might want to join us tomorrow (Thu) at 11:00am PDT for an online seminar that will give you an overview of Oracle ADF 11g.

To register (and get more details) go here: http://www.oracle.com/go/?&Src=2931347&Act=41

This is part of the partner training effort we'll be doing for ADF 11g.
Since it is the framework that is used for Fusion applications we expect a lot of requierments poping up for ADF consultants that can help in customizing and extending applications using ADF.

We'll also be hosting the first partner training on ADF 11g in October at Oracle HQ - if you are interested in this one - here are more details.

ADF Methodology Group Created

2008-08-04T17:56:28Z

Several of the Oracle ACEs that work intensively with ADF have started a group dedicated to ADF Development Methodology.

Their immediate call to action is running an ADF Methodology session at Oracle OpenWorld as part of the un-conference program.
You can read about this session in this Oracle wiki page.

This is definitely a must attend session for anyone who is doing ADF work - you can register here.

That said aside, their Google group is also worth reading in the meantime. They are discussion all sorts of interesting things in there. So check it out here.

Reserve Your Place at Oracle Develop Sessions

2008-08-01T18:04:52Z

The schedule builder application for Oracle OpenWorld and Oracle Develop is up and running.
One good reason to use this tool and use it early is to make sure you get into the sessions and hands-on labs you are interested in.

Last year we had multiple hands-on labs and several sessions that ran out of space in the room - in these cases entrance into the sessions is limited to people who pre-registered to them through the session builder tool.

So I would recommend that if you already know of specific sessions you want to be in - go into the schedule builder and add them to your schedule as soon as you can.

This also gives us at Oracle a bit more feedback on which sessions are more popular and in some cases allows us enough time to move popular sessions to bigger rooms and sometime event offer a re-run of a session.

The New JDeveloper is Here

2008-07-30T00:14:28Z

Don't get too excited - it is still not JDeveloper 11g - it's just the 10.1.3.4 version that contains some bug fixes for the 10.1.3 editions.

Check out the fix-list here and go to OTN to download if you have an issue that got resolved.

Using selectOneChoice with JPA relationships

2008-07-15T21:32:45Z

On OTN some asked how to create a selectOneChoice item from an object that relates to another object when using JPA and ADF Faces.

Here is the quick how-to.
We'll use the default Employees and Departments table from the HR schema. Just create default JPA entities on them with the JDev wizard and then create a service facade and right click it to create a data control.

First you'll drag the Departments object from the queryDepartmentsFindAll DC onto a JSF page and drop as an ADF Form.
Now you want to show the name of the manager of each department in a drop down list.
To do this expand the Employees object underneath the departments and click the firstName.

Drag it over to the JSF page and drop as a selectOneChoice component.
You'll be prompted to bind the list. You want to bind it to a list of employees - so you'll create a new List data source based on the queryEmployeesFindAll

You'll map the EmployeeID and you can choose to display the first name.
Like this:

And that's it. Run the page and it will look like this:

The new WebLogic Developers Conference

2008-07-08T22:22:49Z

Now that BEA and WebLogic are part of Oracle, what is going to happen to the yearly conference BEA held for developers?

Well it got merged into the Oracle Develop conference this year at OOW.

Last month when I posted my previous entry on this year's Oracle Develop conference, I said we have 135 sessions in the conference - turns out we actually have 188 sessions according to the content catalog.

Most of the sessions that got added have to do with WebLogic/BEA products.
A quick search on "WebLogic" brings back over 25 sessions and hands-on labs and seraching for JRockit will bring more.

So if you are a WebLogic developer, we hope you'll join us this year at Oracle Develop and OOW.

New Free Fusion Development Workshops

2008-07-07T23:33:51Z

For the past several years we've been running the OTN Developer Days across the US and Canada with great success.
Well the time has come for an update of the material, so Lynn from our team did an update of the content to be based on the upcoming 11g version - and we ran the first pilot event here in HQ last week - and now we are ready to roll it to the rest of the world.

The workshop is built from two half days - the first half consist of presentations and demos that will introduce you to the concepts of development used for Fusion Applications development. In the second half of the day you'll be running through hands-on labs and actually experience building a complete application.

We are covering the ADF stack used by the Fusion Applications inside Oracle (ADF Business Components, ADF Controller and ADF Faces Rich Client Components).

This workshop is a great introduction to the future of application development in the Oracle world.
Beyond our regular Java audience, we expect to see also Apps customers (EBS, PeopleSoft, Siebel etc), Forms customers and of course BEA customers who won't to see a more productive approach to Java based application development.

Check out the current schedule here.

If you don't see an event coming to your town - contact your local Oracle office and ask them to make sure this roadshow comes to your location. (They can call me if they need details on how to get this going).

I'll be doing the event in Pennsylvania on July 22nd - drop by and say hello.

What can JDeveloper do with WebLogic?

2008-07-01T20:49:51Z

So now the picture is clearer about what Oracle is going to do with the various products we got from BEA. (If you missed the webcast check the replay here.

JDeveloper is still Oracle's strategic IDE and since we now also have the WebLogic Java EE server, you might be wondering what type of integration do we have in place between the two.
Well as a matter of fact we have been certifying JDeveloper and the ADF framework with WebLogic for a long time.
As a result you can do direct deployment from JDeveloper to a remote WebLogic Server.
You can also deploy the ADF Runtime libraries on such a server and have an ADF application running there.

Just to prove it, I recorded an online demo and wrote a how-to that shows you how to connect JDeveloper to WebLogic and deploy the SRDemo ADF sample application on top of it.

Get the details here.

Entry 200 and a new home

2008-07-01T15:36:04Z

Welcome to my new/old blog.
What's new? Well the main thing you'll be noticing is the new color schema and layout - everything else should function just as before including all the entries and the URLs.
But underneath the blogs.oracle.com server which this blog runs on has moved and is now based on a new blogging platform.

An interesting coincidence is that I had 199 blog entries on the previous server and this new blog server gets my 200 entry - nice round number.

So welcome to my new blog and let me know if you are missing anything from the old blog and I'll try and fix it.

How to Get More JDeveloper content into OOW

2008-06-20T03:35:04Z

One new thing about Oracle OpenWorld this year, is that there is a specific allocation set aside for sessions that will be suggested by users online on Oracle mix.
Anyone can suggest a session they want to deliver and anyone can vote for the sessions they would like to see.

It's all done from here.

I browsed the list of sessions out there, and there are several interesting sessions suggestions around JDeveloper and ADF.

For example:
This one
Or This
and some others

If you want to hear any of these you should vote for them.
And if you have any other ideas for sessions you should submit them - it is a great opportunity to share your knowledge.

P.S.

This blogs and all the rest of the blogs on blogs.oracle.com will be out for a couple of weeks while we migrate the server to a new platform. If all goes well I hope to see you back here July 1st with a new look and feel, more features, and new content.

Who provides the best IDE value according to Evans Data?

2008-06-07T01:03:30Z

Evans data did a survey among developers about their satisfaction with their IDE - and JDeveloper came out in second place.

Now since we didn't make first place (IBM) did, I wasn't planning on blogging about it (even though we beat Microsoft, NetBeans and others) - but then I came across an interesting spin that the myEclipse marketing people created.

They claim that when you look at the difference in scores compared to the difference in price they provide the best IDE value - after all the IBM tool clock at about $4,200 per license and they charge you $60 per year.

Really ?!

They forgot two simple facts:

JDeveloper is cheaper than MyEclipse (JDeveloper is FREE)

and JDeveloper got second place compared to their last place.

So there you have it - according to the MyEclipse guys' logic - JDeveloper is the Best IDE Value.

Oracle Develop and OOW Session Catalog is Out

2008-06-05T03:32:13Z

Wondering what to do on the week of Sep 21?

Well here is a list of options for you - the content catalog for Oracle Open World and Oracle Develop has been published.

This year Oracle Develop, the key event for developers on the Oracle platform, is bigger then ever.

We expended the event to run for three days - Sunday-Tuesday and added more sessions and more hands-on labs. (and brought it closer to the Moscone center - so no more long walks between Oracle Develop and OOW).

This year we'll have 130 technical sessions and 75 hands-on labs.

This is the must event for any JDeveloper/ADF user - with over 25 sessions and labs from the JDeveloper product management team and other JDeveloper related sessions by users and customers - you are bound to learn new things that will help your daily work.

In addition, this is a great opportunity to get some one-on-one time with your favorite Oracle expert or to tap into the experience of other developers working on the same technology as you do.

So go to your favorite travel planning site and start planning your trip to the biggest Oracle event ever.

And don't forget - this year we are starting on Sunday!.

Master with Two Details on the Same Page

2008-05-17T01:32:12Z

ADF makes it very easy to create a master detail page with one drag and drop operation from the data control palette onto the page.
But what if you want a master with 2 details on one page?

It's actually quite simple to achieve this - but I got asked this a couple of times last week so here goes...

All you need to do is drag the first detail over and drop it as a master->detail.

Then drag the second detail over and drop it as a table or a form - and now you have the three tables on the page and you are almost done.

But if you'll run your page now you'll find that your second detail is not refreshing when you are switching between the master records the way that your first detail does.
ADF did this synchronization part automatically for the first master-detail you dropped. All you are missing is a partial page rendering setting on your second detail.
See the difference between the two detail tables here:

So let's set it up - all you need to do is go to the form or table that contains your second detail and set its partialTrigger property to point to the master component.
(You can look at the setting for your first detail component and copy them).