Introduction to ADF and its Basic Concepts

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Introduction to ADF

The Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) is an end-to-end application framework that builds on J2EE standards and open-source technologies to simplify and accelerates implementing service-oriented applications. If you develop enterprise solutions that search, display, create, modify, and validate data using web,Wireless, desktop, or web services interfaces, Oracle ADF can simplify your job.

Framework Architecture and Supported Technologies

In line with community best practices, applications you build using Oracle ADF achieve a clean separation of concerns by adhering to a model, view, controller architecture.


Above figure illustrates where each ADF module fits in this architecture.
The core module in the framework is Oracle ADF Model, a declarative data binding facility that implements the JSR-227 specification.

The Oracle ADF Model layer enables a unified approach to bind any user interface to any business service with no code.

The other modules Oracle ADF comprises are:
  1.  Oracle ADF Controller integrates Struts and JSF with Oracle ADF Model
  2.  Oracle ADF Faces offers a library of components for web applications built with JSF
  3. Oracle ADF Swing extends Oracle ADF Model to desktop applications built with Swing
  4. Oracle ADF Business Components simplifies building business services for developers familiar with 4GL

View Layer Technologies Supported

In the view layer of your application, where you design the web user interface, you can develop using either classic Java Server Pages (JSP) or the latest Java Server Faces (JSF) standard.

Alternatively, you can choose the polish and interactivity of a desktop UI, and develop using any off-the-shelf Swing components or libraries to ensure just the look and feel you need.

One compelling reason to choose JSF is the comprehensive library of nearly one hundred JSF components that the ADF Faces module provides.

ADF Faces components include sophisticated features like look and feel "skinning" and the ability to incrementally update only the bits of the page that have changed using the latest AJAX programming techniques. The component library supports multiple JSF render kits to allow targeting users with web browsers and roaming users with PDA telnet devices. In short, these components dramatically simplify building highly attractive and functional web and wireless UIs without getting your hands "dirty" with HTML and JavaScript.


Controller Layer Technologies Supported


In the controller layer, where handling page flow of your web applications is a key concern, Oracle ADF integrates both with the popular Apache Struts framework and the built-in page navigation functionality included in JSF.

In either case, JDeveloper offers visual page flow diagrammers to design your page flow, and the ADF Controller module provides appropriate plug-ins to integrate the ADF Model data binding facility with the controller layer’s page processing lifecycle.

Business Services Technologies Supported by ADF Model

In the model layer, Oracle ADF Model implements the JSR-227 service abstraction called the data control and provides out-of-box data control implementations for the most common business service technologies. Whichever ones you employ, JDeveloper and Oracle ADF work together to provide you a declarative, drag-and-drop data binding experience as you build your user interfaces.
Supported technologies include:

1. Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) Session Beans
Since most J2EE applications require transactional services, EJB session beans are a logical choice because they offer declarative transaction control. Behind the EJB session bean facade for your business service, you use plain old Java objects(POJOs) or EJB entity beans to represent your business domain objects. JDeveloper offers integrated support for creating EJB session beans, generating initial session facade implementations, and creating either Java classes or entity beans.

2. JavaBeans

You can easily work with any Java-based service classes as well, including the ability to leverage Oracle TopLink mapping if needed.

3. Web Services

When the services your application requires expose standard web services interfaces, just supply Oracle ADF with the URL to the relevant Web Services Description Language (WSDL) for the service endpoints and begin building user interfaces that interact with them and present their results.

4. XML

If your application needs to interact with XML or comma-separated values (CSV) data that is not exposed as a web service, this is easy to accomplish, too. Just supply the provider URL and optional parameters and you can begin to work with the data.

5. ADF Application Modules


These service classes are a feature of the ADF Business Components module, and expose an updateable dataset of SQL query results with automatic business rules enforcement.


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