Yes you heard right.  Oracle Forms on mobile devices!  If you want to find out more, ODTUG are holding a webinar on the 27th of Feb.  You'll get a rundown on the options you have with Forms, the challenges, and you'll see loads of cool demos of what mobile could do for you.  Oracle Senior Director of Product Management Denis Tyrell and CEO of Auraplayer Mia Urman will be your hosts.  For more information on this must-not-miss event, see this blog post.

You might start hearing mention of a new product/initiative from Oracle called Oracle Mobile Suite.  This is a suite of products covering the development efforts for building Enterprise mobile applications; and that includes the on-device applications as well as the back-end services they consume.  To help you understand a little more of the challenges, the products available, and Oracle's vision, my team put together a short video on Oracle Mobile Suite which gives you the main points to understand.

Interesting survey for all of you with an investment in Oracle Forms.  We want to hear from you.  If you have 30 seconds, please check out the survey.

At a recent Oracle virtual developer day I presented a session on "Oracle ADF For Forms and PL/SQL Developers – Why it’s the right choice".  In this presentation I talk about why you might be considering ADF, the challenges of re-education and what opporuntinies you might be able to realise by choosing ADF.

If you are considering ADF, this might be an interesting watch to arm you with some relevant facts.

Seemingly randomly I started having errors trying to deploy an ADF Mobile application to my Nexus 7 tablet.  I was getting

[10:28:07 AM] Shutting down Android Debug Bridge server...
[10:28:07 AM] Deployment cancelled.
[10:28:07 AM] ----  Deployment incomplete  ----.
[10:28:07 AM] Failed to detect a connected Android device.  Make sure the device is connected.  Otherwise, manually restart the ADB server.  The following results were provided by ADB:
List of devices    attached
 (oracle.adfmf.framework.dt.deploy.android.deployers.CheckAttachedDevicesDeployer)

But in addition, I also noted that some software I was using to view the Nexus on my PC was also not finding the tablet.  I also couldn't see the tablet on the Windows Explorer window - so, something somewhere outside of JDeveloper seemed to be the problem.

What I did to fix this was the following

1. From the Windows Start I ran devmgmt.msc and from here I found "Android Composite ADB Device" - I double clicked on this to chose to uninstall AND delete the driver.
2. I then re-connected the Nexus and it started to install the driver.  I got an error here but I pressed on regardless since now at least Windows Explorer could see the device although JDeveloper couldn't
3. I made sure USB Debugging was ON on the tablet AND I also switch off Media Device (MTP) which is a USB connection option.

The combination of the above and the luck of the gods seemed to have got things working.

 

Jobinesh Purushothaman, author of the Oracle ADF Real World Developer's Guide, will be delivering a free ADF Architecture and Best Pratices course in Bangalore, India.  The course is not for ADF newbies, instead it will focus on real world implementation patterns and best practices including security, advanced task flows, application module design, building scalable business components and much much more.  This will be an must-not-miss event for those who are committed to implementing ADF applications.

This course is for employees and Oracle partners and you get register here: http://eventreg.oracle.com/profile/web/index.cfm?PKWebId=0x51719d89f

The first UKOUG Development SIG of 2014 kicks off in London on the 5th of Feb.  The topics are aimed at de-mystifying all these new technologies that come along in middleware: Service Bus, Coherence, Web Services, IDM.  This will be a great opportunity to get some solid grounding as well as the usual networking opportunities.

You can see the full agenda here http://www.ukoug.org/events/ukoug-development-sig-meeting-feb14/

The ADF Architecture TV channel has over the past couple of months been releasing weekly episodes on ADF architecture and best practices.  Given the demand for this content we've decided to move to a twice a week schedule.  So now on a Tuesday and a Thursday we'll be releasing new episodes.  You can also subscribe to the channel here.  Currently we are running episodes around Application Module design.

Mobile has been a topic that has been making a buzz around the conferences over the past year so it is good to hear Oracle's official position.  On Thursday 12th December there will be a webinar held jointly with Gartner to discuss

• Oracle's mobile strategy
• The challenges of enterprise mobile development
• How Oracle's Mobile Platform addresses those challenges

The webinar is free and you can register here.

Just a reminder that a set of three Oracle Developer Days focused on Oracle ADF are starting out on today .

• Top Ten Secrets of Successful Oracle Application Development Framework Projects
• Improve Your ADF Fusion Application's Response Time by as Much as 70 Percent
• Best Practices for Developing Applications with Oracle ADF Mobile
• Best Practices in Oracle ADF Development
• Developing Mobile Web Applications with Oracle ADF Faces
• Debugging and logging for Oracle ADF applications

There is also a track dedicated to getting started with Oracle ADF Mobile.

You can register for the events here.

Events are running in three time zones on different days:

• Americas - Tuesday  - November 19th / 9am to 1pm PDT / 12pm to 4pm EDT/ 1pm to 5pm BRT
• APAC - Thursday  - November 21st / 10am – 1:30pm IST (India) / 12:30pm – 4pm SGT (Singapore) / 3:30pm – 7pm AESDT
• EMEA - Tuesday - November 26th / 9am - 1pm GMT / 1pm - 5pm GST/ 2:30pm - 6:30pm IST

This is a unique opportunity to get some of the content that you get in real events such as OpenWorld directly from your work/home computer.

Come learn something new!

Oracle is running a 3 day workshop on ADF Design and Architecture.  This is not a beginners course, its a deep dive into the design and architectural decision you have to consider when embarking on an ADF project.  Its running  3-6 December , 2013: Düsseldorf, Germany and topics include:

" Planning & Get Started - Team, Skills and Development Environments
" ADF Reusable Artifacts
" Advanced Task Flows
" ADF Architectural Patterns
" Task Flow Navigation Patterns
" Task Flow Data Control Scope Options
" Task Flow Transaction Options
" ADF BC Application Module Design
" Task Flow Communications Patterns
" Service Integration Architectures
" ADF Service Architectures
" Architecting for PLSQL Integration
" Designing for Security
" Application Customization and MDS
" Designing for Internationalization"

You can Register Here!

There is an Oracle roadshow about to kick off covering topics such as Cloud, Big Data and Mobile.  Mobile (my area of interest) is a real hot topic in business now with many moving to a "mobile first" development approach.  I'll be there talking about mobile and Oracle's solution for mobile offerings.  The UK/Ireland events are in London, Manchester and Dublin.  Places are of course limited but registration is open

Last week I was delivering a Application Usability workshop with Ultan O'Broin to Oracle UK partners.  This workshop was all about building great looking usable apps with Oracle ADF.  Ultan has a great write up of the class here.  There are more of these events running gloablly in 2013-2014.  The next will be in San Francisco on the 5th and 6th November.

The ADF Academy series which focusus on ADF Mobile has been updated to inlcude a new chapter on ADF Mobile security.  A great learning resource for getting up to speed on ADF Mobile.

I'm running an event Building Usable Apps with ADF and ADF Mobile with Ultan from  the UX team at Oracle's UK Reading offices on the 17th-18th October and will cover many aspects of building usable applications based on Oracle ADF and Mobile.  This is an opportunity for Oracle partners to learn about the UX side of application development - and remember, the expectations of users on mobile applications is much higher given the commodity nature of mobile devices.  So come and learn a few lessons from Oracle!