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The views expressed on this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Introduction to Oracle J2EE Application Development Framework: Oracle ADF

If you are Java Developer and looking for a great, future proof J2EE Framework, you are at right place.
Oracle J2EE Framework has been evolved for more than 10 years. It has been improving in every release and still intensively developed by Oracle. In fact, it is the core development framework for Oracle Fusion Applications (Oracle E-Business, SOA Suite, WebCenter etc).

It started using the name Java Business Object (JBO, that's how oracle.jbo package came from), then change into Business Component for Java (BC4J), then Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF). Despite of these different naming, basic design principal is still the same with enhancement, features, bug fixes, etc.

I learned this framework since version 9i and all the experiences I had since then are still valid and it's never been a wasted effort, and i am really glad about it.

There are three main components of Oracle ADF:
1. Model
2. View
3. Controller

Simple explanation for above components:
Model is where your business data is stored (Persist).
View is where users view the Business Information based on the Model.
Controller is the connectors or links for your Views.

OK, let's start with a very basic Oracle ADF sample project. Typically, ADF Application has two projects: Model and ViewController.


Model Project contains all your business data objects. You can use different technology for this. Currently it supports ADF Business Component (XML of your database tables), Plain XML, Toplink, Text File, etc.

ViewController Project contains all your Web Application pages and ADF Controller XML files.


In above screenshot, i'm using ADF BC (That's it AppModule, Emp, EmpView are my Business Components which are built using ADF BC) in Model Project and Facelets (Emp.jsf) with ADF Controller (adfc-config.xml) in ViewController project. I hope with this very brief explanation of Oracle ADF could help you to understand what is Oracle ADF and its components.

Want to see the demo? check out this link Oracle ADF demo

Cheers!