Getting started with Oracle ADF

Hi all,

Oracle ADF is an evolving technology and many of the web application developers are tend to learn and use it in practice. So, for the purpose of new learners, I'm about to start a step-by-step tutorial of what is Oracle ADF technology and how easily and efficiently we can use it to build our next generation web applications.

Please note that I'm not going to copy-paste the content from Oracle ADF developer guide. I'm just going to write my understanding of ADF based on my experience working with it for about more than 3years. Having said that I can't be 100% sure that each line I write should be correct. Or, there might be a better way of accomplishing a task than the way I followed in here. So, if anybody has any suggestions or feedback, you're always welcome to write in comments.

Lets start now with answers to some basic questions.

What is Oracle ADF?
ADF stands for 'Applications Development Framework' and it's developed by Oracle. ADF is a framework and it'll help you build your applications easily as many of the redundant things that we do while we develop our applications are taken care by the framework.

How ADF is different from JSF?
ADF comes with ADF business components which are not available with JSF. You can develop an application using ADF mostly declaratively (drag and drop) and with very minimal java coding. The Java code we write in ADF application mainly uses the Framework's API. ADF mainly uses ADF faces components in the development. The main advantage of ADF is that we can blend any technology with it. For example, you don't need to have ADF business components in your model, you can have plain java code or EJBs as well. So, we can also use other components like JSF Core, JSF HTML and Trinidad components in ADF web application.

Coming to JSF, we need to have our entire business logic in java code. And, the java and there won't be any internal predefined business components in JSF. Even though you can use JSF declaratively, you need to bind the JSF components manually with bean properties. And, JSF mainly uses the JSF Core and JSF HTML and Rich Faces components in the development.

What is Oracle Fusion Middleware?
Oracle Fusion Middleware is the platform that provides various capabilities to develop, deploy and test enterprise business applications. It has a sound architecture that supports different technologies at a single point. Oracle says it's build with the 4 unique design principles 'Complete Integrated Hot-Pluggable and Best of Breed'.

Oracle JDeveloper 11g (11.1.1.3.0) is the latest version available and the same can be download from here. Check this link occasionally as the versions will be updated frequently. And, latest version means more features and less bugs in the software. Oracle Jdeveloper includes IDE(Integrated Development Environment) along with Database Navigator and Weblogic Application Server along with several other tools that help smooth and easy application development.

With this basic introduction, we'll dive into the development of Oracle ADF Web Application in the next posts.

Stay tuned :)

Thanks,
Murali.