Oracle E-Business Suite Technology

If you are ever uncertain as to which JDeveloper patch to use with which Apps 11i or R12 release, Support have published Note 416708.1 "How to find the correct version of JDeveloper to use with eBusiness Suite 11i or Release 12"

You will notice that we snuck out a new Jdev version for 12.0.2 (Patch 6491398 10g Jdev with OA Extension ARU for R12 RUP2 (replaces 6197418))

Thank you

Why does the OA Framework Developers Guide not have a proper hyperlinked Table of Contents as in the other Oracle PDF documentation?

Abhijeet,If that's true, I don't know why this particular manual diverges from our documentation publishing standards.  That documentation is owned by the OA Framework development group.  I'd recommend logging a Service Request asking for that to be resolved in a future version.Regards,Steven

Hi,
We are going through an OAF implementation for R12 for an external internet facing website for the State of CA.
Some of the biggest issues I have with the stack is that it seems to be a step back from Forms. Two biggest gripes - no javascript allowed for client side validation and of course the dreaded bounce of the web server. It is extremely detrimental for a team of developers working because it adds additional coordination. Not so in the forms world.
It is very difficult to sell the concept of a network roundtrip (at least a visually seen one - even AJAX has it but it is unseen) and no client side javascript validation for simple things like capitalization and number validations etc to consumers spoiled by the Googles and Yahoos and expecting web2 functionality from OAF.
Another factor is that the turnaround time of a developer of OAF is much more compared to doing the equivalent functionality in forms. Not to mention the excellent debugging and diagnostics available on the forms side (Examine functionality, last query run etc).
We have invested a lot of training, research time and effort in developing to this tech stack but the productivity user interface and maintenance benefits are still to be seen, and, the recent changes by Oracle to move metalink to an Adobe Flex based framework hints that Oracle might suddenly throw another curveball and say Flex is the new OAF for R13 or 14 or Fusion or whatever.

Abhijeet,

I appreciate your concerns. Oracle Forms and OAF are very different technologies and are aimed at two different user models. Fat clients will always have more capabilities than HTML-based interfaces, although that gap has narrowed over the years with things like DHTML and AJAX. Forms and OAF each have their own strengths and weaknesses, and it's up to the developer to determine which is the best technology for his or her users' needs.

I'm not familiar-enough with the subtleties of OAF APIs and features to comment. Your feedback might be better directed to our OAF Development organization via a formally-logged Service Request. That way, an OAF specialist can work with you to identify bugs or enhancement requests, as appropriate.

It's also worth noting that Oracle Metalink and the E-Business Suite are different divisions and have significantly different development standards, goals, and strategies. Extrapolating upon E-Business Suite directions based on Metalink's UI may not be a fruitful exercise.

Regards,
Steven