Just having ‘fun’ today exploring the new framework Oracle has launched a little time back. For some time Oracle JDeveloper 10.1.3 EA (Early Access) has been available. It boasts the new stack of technology for Oracle. The technology stack (for us) consist of:
- Business Components (ADF BC)
- JSR-227 (The binding layer)
- ADF Faces (Oracle’s JSD implementation
Nice to play with but it is giving me quick some headaches. JSF is quite different from Struts as we used previously and JSF resembles ADF UIX (Oracles view layer in JDeveloper 10.1.2) but works very differently.
As i’m just randomly rambling on now i’ll let you share my experiences and big bone-headed blunders.
First of all… The development environment has been revamped. I quite like it, but i’m kind of partial to JDeveloper (oppossed to some co-workers). Refactoring has been extended quite a bit and they included the one feature i liked from Eclipse: double clicking on a title expands that window…
Secondly i started lookign at Business Components, not much new here, anybody that has worked with ADF BC in 10.1.2 should have no problem jumping in here.
Now the changes started: JSF! or in other words: ADF Faces… Completely back to the drawing board for me. Everything works a little different. A button on a page can call a method, back where does that method go? For my own purposes i made a mental mapping between the Struts Action and the JSF backing bean. All the code for the page goes in there. Just double click on the button and a method will be made for you (reminded me of those visual basic editors ). Now the problems started: i wanted to get at my data… but where was it stored? UIX gave you a nice event context from with you could get everything. The event context of JSF contains about nothing… However the OTN Forums helped me along. You need to leverage the strengths of JSF to get a connection to the bindings layer. You need to create a managed property in your managed JSF bean that is filled with #{bindings}. A presto the magic happens.
So far so good… we have a working data layer (ADF BC) and a ready to go binding layer (using JSR-227) to go and build our application.
I’ll keep you informed.
Within LogicaCMG we organize an event called the NLJUD. A strange acronym for something called “Nederlandse Java Update Dag”. The guy or girl who invented this aconym is yet to be found and propably hiding somewhere. If I had made up such an awfull acronym I propably would do the same thing. But nevertheless
The NLJUD is an internal event where people from within LogicaCMG have the opportunity to express their idea’s and knowledge. It is a perfect way to get in touch with Java enthousiast from within the entire LogicaCMG company.
During the event a spy from our Microsoft competence was spotted. He was taking pictures from people attending the event! We apprehended the spy and confiscated the contents of his digital camera. If you want to take a look at the contents please follow the link below
I will update this post with presentation material as I receive this from the speakers!
See you all next year during the next NLJUD! Or maybe someone can come up with a nicer acronym